Ep Journal
Below, in no particular order, identifies some of the processes and procedures used to create the EP.
Song 3:
Eyes In The Back Of Your Head
Inspiration
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This song came about by listening to heavy music such as ‘periphery’ and ‘Era’.
I wanted a section with djent style guitars and heavy double kick patterns whilst still having a upbeat feel. I liked the idea of have a slow build up into a fast riff. The structure of this song is the most varied compared to the EP. I wanted the section especially at the begging, to change and not be predictable, hence the breakdown after the first verse.
Vocals
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The vocals similar to the rest of the EP were recorded using a Shure SM7, layered and mixed with harmonies to create thick sounding vox part.
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For the screams, I also used a Shure SM7 with a small amount of hardware compression on the way in (Dwarmer mx30) which kept the transients controlled providing clarity and warmth. Multiple takes were recorded and auditioned to find the right one. Both a high and low screams recorded and mixed and blended together using Sonnox compression and slight EQ.
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The bridge section was originally meant to be purely instrumental. However, as I was waiting for the scream vocalist to arrive in the studio, I decided to sing random lyrics over the bridge for fun. This lead to the creation of the vocal melody. After the scream vocalist had finished and everything was recorded, I stayed behind and tracked these new vocal melodies and lyrics along with harmonies. I then asked the scream vocalist to come back in a few days later to emphasise specific words in the bridge to provide impact.
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The backing vocals were recorded and sent though an PCM81 Digital effects processor using the patch bay and re-recorded back in. The effect was a hall reverb that I designed which gives the BV’S a short decay and a thick texture making the chorus more impactful. I also sent the main vocal, screams and harmonies though a dbx 166XL compressor to make the vocal sit better within the mix which enabled the vocals to stay a similar level throughout
Guitars
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As this was the heaviest song on the EP, the guitar tones were really important to me. I spent hours tweaking the parameters on the Archetype Nolly plug in to achieve this. I needed a mixture of clean defined tones mixed both heavy bass oriented and distorted rhythm tones which were then quad tracked.
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For the intro, the lead guitar has a ping pong delay, created to add texture and variety to the build up. This was placed on a separate aux input in which the guitar track was sent. Automation on the volume level were applied to the lead guitars in the intro so that it gradually gets louder until the riff for the first verse plays. As the rhythm guitars are hard panned left and right, it left space in the middle for the lead guitars, bass and vocals. As the bass and vocals will be panned central, the lead was panned 30% L and 30% R in order to create a wide stereo image whilst maintaining an uncluttered taxonomy.
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Bass
I recorded the bass guitar with an RE20 and a 421 to make the bass tones similar thought the EP. A DI tone was also recorded and blended as the fundamental bass tone of the song. On the way in, I applied some hardware compression to control the transients and glue the tones together which beefed up the bass and made it more consistent throughput.
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I record the bass with a 4 string jazz bass firstly, however due to it’s thin strings the bass felt a little wobbly and not as consistent as it needed to be. I went in the studio some time later with a 5 string bass with thicker stings. This provided the full low end I envisioned.
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After coming up with the idea to side chain a sub bass to the original bass guitar line in Apathy, I decided to do it for this song too, which helped define the bass line.
FX
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I used the same FX as the other songs such as the boomer, reverse cymbals and white nose sweeps, sine drops and sine rises.
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However during the bridge the vocal line says “feels like surround sound, the bass goes boom” shortly after the sine drop dives creating word painting.
Mixing
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Automation was used to make the track seamless throughout. Creative automation was used at the beginning of the second chorus by a frequency sweeping EQ on the guitar and bass leaving the vocal to bring in the rest of the instrumentation. Additionally, buss automation was used to level the song out to avoid unwanted drops in dynamics.
Preparing the Mix
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The tracks were colour coded, arranged in instrument order, busses, aux sends, groups, VCA’s and reverb and delay sends were created, all to ease workflow. Automation was applied on most tracks in order to create an interesting moving mix.
