Production Walkthrough: “Daylight Savings”
“Daylight Savings”
Guitar
This one started out as a very simple two chord progression using major sevens and a picked arpeggio lick coming up each chord. Moving back and forth between each chord I threw in a few more licks, most of which I felt were too busy and were edited out later. I used my Les Paul studio for this part originally, with the pickup selector set to the neck position to give a warm mellow feel. It went into my Warm Audio 273 Preamp before hitting my interface, as most of my guitars and vocals do. My chain inside Cubase looked something like this:
1. Overloud THU running an AC30 simulation and room reverb.
2. EchoBoy Jr. with a super fast, almost inaudible delay and slight detuning that created more of a subtle doubling effect than delay.
3. Cubase’s stock “Vintage Compressor” to tame a few transients and bring forward some of the reverb.
4. EQ with a pretty aggressive band pass, especially taking out a lot of the low end. In the image below you can see a substantial dip right around 2k to make room for the vocals and avoid a buildup of harshness.
Notice the aggressive band pass and dip around 2k!
Towards the end of the mix, I spent more time than I would like to admit making the guitar part work for ME. I kept hearing ends of chords and notes that were slightly out of tune, stuff that I think like 95% of listeners would never hear. I feel like most producers would probably pick 10 things they would change in this mix before the guitar I agonized over would come up, but that’s my brain and my process, I had to re-track! I got it where I wanted after re-recording the part with my Stratocaster that has much better intonation. Finally I added an awesome FREE plugin called Tape Cassette 2 for the tape machine “wow and flutter” effects that I love. With that, I could say the guitar was done.
Drums
For the drums I pulled a loop I liked from the Cubase sample library and dropped it into the sampler window. With the built in Sampler Track I can splice the loop as seen below, assign it to my midi, and edit nearly any parameter of the sample. Once I liked the sound, I plotted the drums in the accompanying midi track.
A lot of the time for lo-fi and hip hop productions I will have the drums a little behind the beat to deepen the groove and feel. Sometimes I’ll even have the hi hats or “top” pushing the beat while the snare and kick are behind. But for this one it felt pretty solid and natural on the grid, and I think that’s because the guitar is very loose timing wise and meanders quite a bit. The last step I usually take with any midi is “humanizing” the timing by slightly randomizing each note's position on the grid. This can be really cool with pitch as well on some instruments, but you definitely want to keep your range small! The drum samples I ended up using for this song were already pretty heavily processed and very close to the sound I was going for, but I did add a bit of additional processing as seen below!
1. EQ: a cut to the far low end to get rid of any rumble and a modest roll off of the high end, trying not to interfere too much with the crack of the snare or the hats, but just enough to smooth things out a bit.
2. Decapitator I love the decapitator on drums, and everything really, just a little or a lot, you can get some great results. Here I used it to just thicken and dirty things up a bit in a fairly subtle way. Be careful with your application of saturation in the low end or you could end up with a farty kick!
3. Compression. It is a pretty common practice for me to employ parallel compression on drums. However, for this track the samples themselves already cut and thumped excellently so I let them be for the most part. I did run the kick into the Cubase stock “Vintage Compressor” just to “lengthen” and sustain it a bit more. Another fairly common practice in lo-fi production is to use sidechain compression to have the kick duck the mix, but I did not feel it served this song very well so I skipped it in this case.
Bass
Most of my lo-fi type recordings are pretty straight forward when it comes to bass. I used my Mexican made Fender P-bass direct into the WA273 before hitting the interface. I again used the TH-U amp simulator with a setting that recreates what I think is a vintage Fender Bassman? I’m not sure, but it sounds nice! Processing went something like this.
1.EQ-ing out the low rumble, and creating a nice place for the kick to live with another dip around 75 hertz. Sometimes I will add a boost right after the dip to accentuate the fundamentals of the bass while keeping the sound natural, but here, it cut well on it’s own. Occasionally I will also boost the mids of the bass considerably in an area that won’t mask any other midrange elements. I find this greatly helps the bass project on smaller, low-end deficient speakers and devices.
2. Compression to taste, usually just to bring out the tails and sustain on the longer notes and even out the overall level.
3. Saturation to help the bass cut through, mostly in the midrange.
Here you can see that the subtractive EQ in the bass makes room for the kick!
What amp is this supposed to be?
Keyboards
Next in the production came two keyboard parts. The first is a simple ascending major 7 arpeggio on a Fender Rhodes simulation. That one is panned to the left about 50%. The second is a cool low mid counterpoint on A Steinway Grand simulation by East West panned to the right at 50% . Both of these got just a touch of chorus, reverb, and saturation. As far as EQ-ing, a liberal roll off of highs and lows creating a band pass to smooth things out and give them that lived in lo-fi vinyl vibe.
Vocals
Vocals came last in the arrangement, and there is good reason for that. This, like most of my recent lofi projects, was going to be instrumental, but after listening to these tunes over and over again melodic ideas started to stick, and with those ideas came stream-of-thought lyrics that I decided to develop and explore a bit more. The whole idea of this new project is to try and defeat my perfectionism, to just let things be what they are, so I have been going for a much more natural approach to my vocal delivery, trying to stay well within my “warm” range and near my speaking voice, and for processing, focusing more on creativity and what sounds good, rather than what is “right”.
For the front end of the vocals going into my DAW I use a WA87 into my WA273, yes I like Warm Audio! On the DAW side I usually start with a basic chain that looks something like this:
1.Frequency EQ with a low cut right after my voices fundamental right around 250 hertz making sure not to interfere with the “warm zone” of my vocals. I also cut the highs at around15k and dip some of the harshness around 3.5k.
2. De-esser if necessary to remove any distracting sibilance.
3. Two Cubase “Tube Compressors” that are each doing light compression, not really looking for coloration or vibe just yet, just evening out the vocals a bit so I can clearly hear the quitter passages and get an even response from the mic when I’m tracking.
In addition to the chain I mentioned above, to thicken and enhance the vocals I used what is lately one of my favorite plugins ( and probably my “secret weapon” for making awesome lo-fi vocals, at least on this track! ) Soundtoys Little Alterboy, I actually used two of these parallel the original vocal track, running one an octave up, with the format adjusted so to avoid the’ “Alvin and the Chipmunks effect” and one, running with the format rolled back, to just sure things up a bit in the low-mids, while introducing a different timbre in the vocals. The octave up “Alterboy” really works well with my voice, so much so, that to my ears, it sounds like a female voice, really helping to give the vocals more depth and substance in an organic and musical way. The last thing the vocals got on the main channel was again, two plugins from Soundtoys, “Little Plate” for reverb and “Echoboy” for both a bit of saturation and delay.
The format control on these sort of shifts the fundamental around, so that you can change the timbre of the vocal, it can sound really organic when dialed in correctly!
Sound Design
Sometimes genre conventions are awesome and when it comes to lo-fi, we love our ambience, our vibe, our atmosphere, and our mood. For this track I grabbed user uploaded recording of a day at the beach mixed with another recording of calming ocean waves, though subtle I felt like it added a ton to the song overall, it helped me feel the sun on my skin. I like to grab most of my ambient sounds from freesound.org it’s totally free and all sounds are uploaded from other users!
Mxing
As I am sure you have surmised by now, I tend to mix as I track, trying to think about the frequency range each element will occupy as I am recording it. If I have arranged and tracked correctly, most of the heavy lifting of mixing is already done, from here I will start to make balance and panning calls. Does something need to be double tracked? Does something need to come out all together? Do I need another element to help move the song along? In this case I decided the vocals needed a lot of help to sit where I wanted them to. It was at this point I added the vocal processing that I described above using the “Little Alterboy”. I also went through and automated the vocal levels to help the more quite parts peak out without upsetting the dynamics and feel. Finally, I added a lead guitar part that follows the vocal melody, to add even more depth to the chorus.
It was also during mixing I decided I wanted just one more element to help move the song, so I tracked a few simple nylon string guitar parts to add a little more textural variation, I also added the slow arpeggiation you hear in the outro. The guitar was lightly processed with compression, room reverb, and a band pass.
For leveling and balance I wanted the drums and low end to really lead the way as is traditional in lo-fi. The addition of vocals however, did make things interesting, but the sweet spot for my voice seems to sit really nicely in the midrange, so it was not an issue making the vocals dominant in the mix. I did go back here and use subtractive EQ on several elements in the midrange to make sure the vocals sat nicely.
As far as panning I have the Rhodes about 50% left, the piano 50% right, with some of the percussion elements spread around the mix as well. Kick, bass, and vocals are all straight down the middle. The electric guitar is about 20% to the left with the nylon about 50% to the left. As of late, I tend to rely a bit more on subtractive EQ and arrangement choices to give everything a place rather than relying too heavily on panning to make things fit, I also like to reference in mono to really make sure I am nailing the mix as far as frequency balance.
Mastering
Disclaimer: I am not a mastering engineer! Looking back I can see I was pretty heavy handed in the mastering stage of this track. If you can afford a professional mastering engineer, hire them. When you hire a mastering engineer you are not only paying for the finishing touches that will help your track be competitive and professional, but you are getting another pair of highly trained and experienced (hopefully) ears on your project before it is let loose on the world, and that can be invaluable. However, if you are like me, and every buck counts, or just want to learn how to master in its most basic form, here is what I did for this track. These plugins are all stock in Cubase Pro and most should have an equivalents in your DAW of choice!
1. EQ:I felt like there was a bit of build up in the mids right around 350-400 hertz, I dipped them about 3db with a shallow q and that helped clear things up a little. Then feeling as though the Rhodes was just a little heavy in the midrange I came by with a side channel dip of about 3.5 db to clear up the midrange a bit more without upsetting any of the “ more important” elements panned center. I also rolled of a little more of the low end and pulled a little harshness out at 10k.
2. Multi-band Compressor to clean up and control the low end and help the kick and bass move as one. The compressor is ideally not doing much more than 2 or 3db of reduction here, you don’t want to over process or kill the dynamics in your tune, you just want to bring everything together a little bit more.
3. Multi-band Envelope Shaper to bring out just a little more from the kick and snare transients, I also played with the release a little bit to effect the sustain of the bass, helping to fill the low end, a handy trick but you really have to be careful not to go overboard here, especially since we are using this at the mastering stage!
4. Magneto II tape emulator, I like to play around with this plugin to try and bring out certain frequencies in a musical way. I also like that it has a frequency range, I tend to avoid too much saturation in the low end.
4. Maximizers, two of them running one after the other. I saw someone else doing this and wanted to give it a try. I feel like it works much like the dual compressor idea on vocals. By spreading the work out between two plugins, you get the desired volume increase in a very transparent way.
5. Brickwall Limiter to catch any stray peaks that get by the maximizers.
A word on levels
There are certainly some best practices as far as levels go, and I will share some of the ranges I was shooting for, but you’ve got to use your ears ultimately. As long as you are not squeezing the life and dynamics out of the track or clipping in an unappealing or unintended way, you are doing good. For about 90% of the mastering process I am using my ears to match volume and frequency balance, but towards the end before I bounce, I will have a look at the numerical values for my references and try and make sure I am at least in the ballpark. I also tend to keep in mind that most of my music is headed for streaming platforms and I consider that in my approach as well. Here are some numbers I shot for
True Peak of -1.0 dB
LUFS around -13 to -16 LUFS
RMS between -8 to -12 dB RMS
Obviously, these numbers are going to range quite a bit from song to song and genre to genre and again I strongly urge you to use your ears. I do not claim to be a mastering engineer, so crank thy levels at thy own risk! If your DAW does not have a built in loudness meter, be sure to check out Youlean!
Conclusion
There were a lot of things I still felt like I wanted to change as I got to the end of mastering, but at some point you have to say it's done and move on. I added this section so I could share some things I learned from this production.
1.Do your editing on every track as soon as you are done tracking! This is kind of obvious, but sometimes I get swept away in the creative flow, forgetting to come back and nudge this or that, making sure crossfades are nice and smooth, no clicking or popping etc. Getting this stuff out of the way early will save you a lot of time and back tracking.
2. Reference, reference, reference! At every stage, but also trust your gut. I like to work with multiple reference tracks, it really helps you get into the ballpark, but once you are in the ballpark, trust your ears and your gut, every track is different, don’t mix visually, close your eyes and listen!
3. One pro to mastering your own work, is that you can easily run back to the mix if there is something that you feel you need to correct, but this can also easily slow you down if you are over correcting.
5. Like I said before, if you can afford to hire a good mastering engineer, DO EEET, at the very least get feedback from friends you trust! Full disclosure, after listening to this track a few weeks after finishing and releasing it, I feel like I squeezed it a bit too much and killed some of the dynamics in mastering. The good news though is that I learned something and that if I ever choose to re-release this as part of an album, I can fix it through knowledge gained.
6. Trust your gut and listen to yourself even if it means more work. If that guitar is a little out of tune and it keeps bothering you, re-track it!
Thank you for reading!
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