Case Study: The White Stripes – Hotel Yorba

Title: Hotel Yorba

Artist: The White Stripes

Album: White Blood Cells

Year: 2001²

Length: 2:10

Key: G Major³

BPM: ~195

Introduction

Hotel Yorba is the second track on the White Stripes’ third album, White Blood Cells.² The track is fairly minimalist, consisting of only vocals, acoustic guitar and drums.  According to Jack White, while recording the album they “tried to keep it as unorganised as possible” and recorded the whole thing in three days.⁴ With such a small amount of time to record, the minimal instrumentation is no surprise. The genre is garage rock, it’s lo-fi, structurally simple and sounds like music you’d make with your friends after having a few beers.

Structure

The structure of the song is very straight forward, it is essential ABB’-ABC-A’BB, with A representing the standard verse, B representing the standard chorus and C representing the bridge. A’ is a modified verse that begins with minimal instrumentation until it returns halfway through, and B’ is a chorus with no cymbals or vocals.

The verse consists of the chords G C D G twice, then the chorus consists of the same chords once, and the bridge is the same chords, strummed and let to ring out for two bars each. ³

The BPM hovers around 195 but it drifts slightly so it is likely the track wasn’t recorded to a click.

Instrumentation

It is clear that this song was always supposed to sound quite ‘raw’. There is minimal processing on the instruments and vocals.

The vocals sound as if they were high passed. They sit fairly high in the mix, and are clearly the star of the show. They have been saturated and sit between around 200Hz – 9kHz. The vocal recording is quite detailed so it is likely a condenser mic was used. There are vocal doubles through the choruses.

The kick sits almost entirely below 200Hz so it was likely low passed. It sounds quite natural and not overly compressed. It is fairly punchy but not particularly tight, and the lack of any discernible click further leads me to think its high passed.

The snare sits between about 200Hz and 8kHz, there is very little information below 200Hz so it was likely high passed. The snare ‘pops’ quite a bit, so I believe there was likely parallel compression applied. There is a moderate amount of snare sound and it sounds like a medium sized snare drum.

The acoustic guitar displays a full range of frequencies but it is quite dark so it likely had a high shelf applied, and possible some midrange carved out to create space for the vocal.

There are very few changes in the instrumentation other than cymbals coming in during the choruses and the drums dropping out during the bridge and the first half of the second verse.

Effects

As I mentioned before this song sounds very raw. As far as I can tell the only effects applied are saturation and vocal doubling (which I mentioned before) as well as some type of room reverb with a short decay time. Sticking with the raw feel, this reverb isn’t anything fancy and Jack White literally sounds like he’s singing loudly in a bedroom or similar.

It is also worth noting that the whole song cuts off steeply at around 10kHz, I assume this is to compliment the lo-fi nature of the track.

This song has been given to me as a reference track by Harry, and this analysis will surely inform the recording and mixing process when we begin on the album.

References

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZPEUyiNcjA

² http://www.allmusic.com/song/hotel-yorba-mt0012557467

³ http://www.e-chords.com/chords/white-stripes/hotel-yorba

⁴ http://www.whitestripes.net/articles-show.php?id=04

 

Frag/ments Project – Workflow Reflection

This trimester has been a great learning experience, in which I have been working on both the Frag/ments Project (CIU) and the AbstrActions Project (AUS). This brief reflection will cover what I feel I have learned about recording workflows and how I think we have performed.

First of all, this trimester I have truly come to value the importance of performance. Having a great tone is one thing, but it wont matter if the performance is lacking. It’s much easier to improve a mediocre tone than a mediocre performance. With that said, I believe that ensure the comfort of your artist is of maximum importance, if you wish to capture the best performance possible. Sometimes this means turning the lights off, sometimes it just means gentle encouragement. The last thing you want to do is put your artist into a position where they feel overly pressured or self conscious. Also with respect to capturing a good performance, you must always be ready to record. Sometimes the warm up take will end up being the best take of the day, so make sure you hit record.

Another important step in the development of our workflow was having a dedicated session where we auditioned a number of mics, with the express purpose of listening to the particular qualities of each microphone. The reason that we did this was so that we won’t be feeling around in the dark when picking a microphone to record with. This also means that once we have a singer in the booth we will know what to try if their voice sounds too bright, for example, without having to line up a bunch of mics in front of a (potentially very nervous) artist. I’m definitely not saying that we won’t be auditioning mics in the future, just that now we have a solid reference point.

As far as how I think we have performed in regards to workflow. I believe that we have all developed a substantial amount of confidence running a desk, coaching artists, and expressing our ideas and concerns in the studio. I think we have developed an effective workflow that suits the purposes of this project. A typical studio session looks like this:

• Listen to the latest version of the track
• Discuss what we like, don’t like, what could be added and changed
• Adjust the track based on aforementioned discussions
• Experiment with vocal ideas and discuss how we want the vocal to sound
• Choose a mic based on these discussions and get the singer to do a few ‘practice’ takes
• Give feedback and move on to ‘actual’ takes
• Pat each other on the back, pack up and go home

This is what most of our sessions have run like lately and as far as I can tell it seems to be working, I believe we will continue running sessions this way as long as it remains effective.

AbstrActions Pitch Reflection

This will be a brief reflection on how I feel Ash and I pitched the concept of the AbstrActions EP. This post will be broken into the sections that were discussed during the pitch and I will explain how I think we performed on this point. Before addressing each section, I would like to acknowledge that due to our artist being out of the country until roughly a week before the pitch, we did not have much time to discuss the nature of the project and as such our pitch was rushed and certain aspects were based on misunderstandings.

EP Overview

We pitched the EP before we had a full understanding of what the artist intended. Our pitch was based on a document that Harry had made for himself, discussing his intentions for the project. As very little of the music had been written, we were too quick to take the details of this document to heart. I’m not sure how we could improve this aspect of our presentation, given the circumstances, other than acknowledging further that we didn’t exactly know what we were getting into.

Studio Sessions

We pitched the idea of having creative and practical studio sessions. I think this is a valid idea, yet it wasn’t suited to our project given our particular constraints. If we owned a studio or had sophisticated home studios I believe this idea would prove much more practical.

Release Platforms

I think we handled this aspect of our pitch well. At this stage Harry isn’t looking to join a label, he is just after some exposure and to attract band members.

Reference Tracks

At the time we pitched we hadn’t been clear with Harry about the difference between reference tracks, and tracks that his music was inspired by. As a result we had a number of tracks given to us as ‘references’ when most were just inspiration.

Timeline

Our timeline was not fleshed out as well as it should have been. We underestimated how long certain tasks would take, and we didn’t allow as much time as we should. I believe this is in part due to the fact that we weren’t able to begin our project as early as we would have liked, but we still should have planned more thoroughly.

Methodology

We chose the agile methodology as it would allow us the flexibility required for the project. Unfortunately I believe that because of this presumed flexibility we didn’t lock in certain time frames as strictly as we should have.

Conclusion

This trimester has been a great learning experience. If I was to repeat this project under similar circumstances I would ensure to take further steps in the pre production stage allowing me to have a better sense of the project prior to pitching, hopefully resulting in a more polished pitch and production.

Case Study – Acoustic Covers of EDM Songs

This case study will look at a handful of acoustic versions of popular EDM songs. The purpose of this case study is to explore how EDM songs are covered acoustically in preparation for one of my current projects in which we will be recording and mixing 2 acoustic covers.

The first song I’ll look at is Clarity by Zedd ft. Foxes. In the acoustic version of the song there is just vocals and piano. Rather than going entirely ‘acoustic’, this version is recorded with a midi keyboard and a high quality piano plug-in, as seen in the video. The song is roughly one minute shorter. This is because there are no ‘drops’ to speak of, and the focus is very much on the vocals, with little time between verses and choruses, and few instrumental sections. The piano in the verse is highly arpeggio driven, while in the pre chorus and chorus sections the arpeggios remain, but the driving force is full chords played in half notes. It is also worth noting that the voice is quite processed, with mild saturation, pitch correction and occasional doubles and delays. From the second chorus onward certain lyrics are accompanied by what seems to be an all male choir. There is a large, hall sounding reverb with a fairly quick decay time on everything.

The next song I’ll look at is 3LAU’s version of Red Lights by Tiësto. This version of the song is slowed down slightly, from 125BPM to 118BPM.¹ Once again the instrumentation is just the piano and the vocal, until the very end. It is unclear whether the piano is recorded live or played on a midi keyboard, but it is expressive to the point where it was very likely played rather than sequenced. The tone is quite warm. The vocal appears to be the actual vocal from the original track, including doubles, slowed down slightly. I believe that the strings at the end are sounds from plug ins, because they only play for a couple of bars at the end, and this is a remix, I don’t think that 3LAU would go to the trouble of recording. Once again there is a large amount of reverb on everything, but the piano has the most. This song is also markedly shorter than the original, because it is missing the addition breakdown, build up and drop at the end.

The last song I’ll look at is the acoustic version of I Need Your Love, performed by Ellie Goulding. This version is only about 15 seconds shorter than the original, because the only change in structure is the lack of a drop at the end. Unlike our other two songs, this one also features a guitar alongside the piano and vocals. The guitar is a bright acoustic which supports the piano chords with picked melodies and occasional slow strums. The piano is quite dark, and it plays chords throughout the whole song. The vocals have been retaken for this version. I believe that they were recorded live because there are notes that aren’t pitch perfect and at moments it sounds like you can hear the mic bumping something. The vocals are substantially dryer in this version, with much less reverb and no stereo delays.

Examining these tracks has provided food for thought in regards to our upcoming recordings. The main takeaways I believe are: consider the use of instruments other than guitar, consider rhythms of chords and whether to arpeggiate, consider whether or not to retrack vocals.

References

¹https://songbpm.com/tiesto-red

Vocal Production Techniques

This Blog will be an overview of a handful of techniques that I have researched, to enhance the vocals in a mix. The effects discussed will be primarily creative effects as opposed to techniques for correction.

Creating Vocal Doubles

The first effect I will discuss is a technique for creating realistic yet customisable vocal doubles. This technique may be more effective than recording vocal doubles in the case that your singer is struggling to perform the song again in the same way, if the decision to add a double was made at the mixing stage, and if you are wish to have maximum control over the specific ways that the double differs from the original.

The first step is to duplicate the vocal track. Then by using some sort of pitch correction tool such as Melodyne, alter the pitch of most notes by several cents, ensuring that some notes are made sharper and some flatter. This is the stage where you can control how detuned the double is. The next step as to adjust the timing of the notes slightly, by both nudging, and lengthening and shortening various notes. The amount that the timing is adjust will effect the perception of the singer’s precision as well as how realistic the double is. No singer will sing their doubles with exactly the same timing so by leaving the timing intact this technique becomes more of an ‘effect’. Next the formants should be adjusted, they can be raised or lowered globally as an effect, or adjusted individually for realism. Finally the vabrato can be adjusted globally to create a double that is slightly looser or tighter than the main vocal, or adjusted individually, like the formants, for added realism.

This technique was found in an ADSR / Echo Sound Works video¹

Vocal Flanging Effect using Pitch Correction Software

The second technique once again uses pitch correction software, this time to create an organic flanging effect. The intensity of this effect means that it will likely be most effective when used on single words or short phrases, rather than an entire vocal take.

The first step is to duplicate the specific words or phrases onto a new audio track. Next using your pitch correction software move each note so that they sit perfectly on the tonal center. At this point the volume slider of this track essentially acts as a wet/dry knob to be adjusted to taste. The resulting flanging effect is different to a normal flanger as the modulation is created by the natural pitch fluctuations in the singer’s voice.

The technique was found in a video by Matthew Weiss for The Pro Audio Files²

“Vocal Swarm” Effect

The last technique I will discuss, I learned from a Recording Revolution video³ by Graham Cochrane, who refers to the effect as a “vocal swarm” which is a fairly accurate representation of how it sounds. The technique can be used to fill gaps between vocals which sound empty, and to create interesting trails at the end of vocal phrases.

The first step is to take a section of the vocal (e.g. chorus) and copy it onto a new track. Next the clip should be reversed. Now the audio should be heavily bandpassed with a boost in the area of the spectrum which sounds most appealing in the mix. Now a quick, high feedback delay should be added. At this point compression should be added as necessary and it should be decided which sections sound good in context and which don’t. Remove the sections that don’t complement the song and add fades if necessary.

Obviously there is a huge variety of effects that can be used when processing vocals, these were just a few which I though would suit my current project and the genres which we are working within.

References

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdCGi8IQ1t0

² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMymes_d1gM

³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocbrUpxu4Hc

Case Study – Sports Commercials

One of my current assignments is to completely resound a commercial. The commercial I have chosen is for the Chinese sportswear brand, Anta.¹ In this post I will be analysing the audio from two similar commercials in order to deepen my understanding of sound design in advertising in general, but especially in this case, sports advertising. The two commercials that I have chosen are both produced for television by Anta, like the one that I will be replacing the sound for.

The first commercial is set in dark, dusty warehouse. Basketball player Danny Seigle is seen dribbling a ball between large concrete pillars, cracking the ground beneath his feet as he runs. He finally jumps before slam dunking the ball, smashing the glass of the backboard and bringing the whole warehouse crashing down around him. Some adjectives that I would use to describe the sound design as a whole are raw, intense and (literally) explosive.

The majority of the sounds are made from recordings and not synthesized as far as I can tell. The first sounds that we here are two consecutive ‘hits’. The first sounds rather metallic, like a metal bar striking cement, and the second sounds more wooden like a bat, perhaps also striking cement. It sounds like both sounds have been recorded in a large warehouse type space much like the one in the commercial. The first hit is higher pitched than the second, creating almost an epic clock type sound of, “tick – tock”.  This is followed by an also very reverberant ‘swish’, the sounds of a basketball passing through the net. Immediately afterwards we here rapid rhythmic taiko drums. These make up the musical component of the commercial, which features no melody, but the drumming moves between slightly higher and lower pitches. The drums are also heavily reverberant, again sounding like they were played in this space. Throughout the middle section of the commercial we here more hits, similar to the ones at the beginning, as well as numerous ‘whoosh’ sounds, like a rope being swung through the air. At one point Danny slides, and the sound used doesn’t sound like a shoe sliding but perhaps a piece of wood being dragged through sand on a hard surface. Finally Danny jumps for his dunk, and the jump is accompanied by the sound of an explosion. As he flies through the air we hear what appears to be the ring of a large, church like bell, reversed. He dunks the ball and we hear the glass smash and as he lands we once again hear an explosion.

The second commercial takes in a computer generated tunnel. It is very futuristic and here the main character is a transparent ball of jelly, bouncing around one of Anta’s shoes. It has a very different feeling from the first one, taking place somewhere bright and clean looking, and it sounds different too. Here many of the sounds are synthesized, and the music has a high tempo drum and bass type vibe. First we here a soft metallic scraping sound, like a spoon scraped inside of a metal bowl, and we also hear a light fluttery synth sound, very reminiscent of a UFO’s tractor beam in a cartoon. The ball bounces, with a combination of the scraping noise and what sounds like 808 toms, blended with white noise. On one of the ball’s bounces  the music begins, a high paced, intense beat crafted from synthesized drums. We here several whooshes as the ball passes through holes in the tunnels structure. Then a saw wave synth joins the mix providing a rapid semi melodic component, and this is accompanied by the sound of electricity. This sounds like a recording of actual electricity in the air, perhaps sampled from a recording of a Tesla coil. The ball zooms past the shoe with a reverberant whoosh before smashing a panel of glass as we hear the sound of glass shattering. At this point the shoe disassembles itself with a reverberant noise that I found myself unable to identify. It starts chasing the ball and we hear more of the electricity sound. As the shoe prepares to capture the ball we hear a pitch modulated vocal sound, and the the shoe surrounds the ball and we hear the roar of a lion. The shoe reassembles itself with the ball inside and we hear more electricity, as well as several metallic sounds including hits and something resembling metal grinding as if in a machine. This ends in time with a deep drum hit.

These two commercials are both appealing to different sides of a larger target market of people who play sports. The first seems to be appealing to the crowd who like the more primal, dominating side of sports. It uses raw, organic sounds and repetitive drumming, not unlike the sounds one would be likely to hear in a battle scene in a movie (minus the orchestral score). The huge drums and the explosion sounds invoke a feeling of something quite grand and powerful. If you buy this product you will feel like a hero and dominate your opponents. The second commercial appears to be appealing to the crowd who prefer strategy and intellect. The rapid, intricate rhythms allude to precision. The sound of electricity and the quick synth lines invoke a ‘high tech’ feeling. The glass breaking in this commercial reminds the viewer of the potential impact of agility. If you buy this product you don’t have to be the strongest, because you will outpace and out think your opponents.

It is interesting to notice the difference between two different shoe commercials by the same company. Both are selling very similar products, and both are designed to appeal to sports fans, but by working with opposing aesthetics they can target consumers who feel entirely differently about how sports should be played. The commercial that I will be resounding fits somewhere in the middle. It features a pair of tennis players playing a highly explosive game on a court in space. I will draw on what I have observed in both of these commercials and attempt to find an aesthetic middle ground.

References:

¹ http://en.anta.com/

² https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7kBjfbJ4w0

³ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9TzgUhzjQo

 

 

 

1 Hour Mixes and Analysis

Hip-Hop Instrumentals Project: Reflective Podcast

 

Here is the track itself. I have opted to post to Soundcloud, and I think this will be my primary upload format for a while. I decided not to promote my account, or the project outside of class as I feel that I would rather have a larger body of work before drawing attention to my account, in order to ensure that I have material to post consistently. Nonetheless the track is public, in the hopes of attracting a small number of followers before continuing to post.

 

 

Thank you for listening, and I hope you enjoyed the track.

 

Star Wars Resounding Project: Reflective Podcast

 

Project Plan:

Brief:

The goal of this project is to recreate the entire audio aspect of a scene from the 1980 film “Star Wars Episode VI: The Empire Strikes Back”. This Scene is situated in a rebel base on the snow planet “Hoth”, and the characters present are Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, and Two ‘Rebel Alliance’ members. Various sounds include dialogue, footsteps, snow jacket movement, background machinery/ computer fuzz, electronic button sounds, drone movement, explosions, etc. The duration of this scene is 1:26.
The purpose of this project is to create a solid piece for our portfolios, demonstrating that we are efficient with ADR, Foley, and sound design.  As it is basically our first time working on a resounding project, this will be a great learning curve, and provide us with much needed insight into the world of sound design. This will be carried out over the next 6 weeks. The second goal for this project is to make the audio as authentic as possible, meaning we use the least digitally recreated sounds (ableton, midi, etc), and try stick to organic recordings of natural sound.

Equipment List:

Foley (in post-production studio): 

• 2x AKG 414 condenser microphone.
• 1x Shure sm58 dynamic microphone
• Neuman km184

ADR (in C24 studio):

• 1x AKG 414 with pop filter

Location Sound

• Zoom F8 Recorder
• PZM
• Rode ntg4 with filter

Foley Sounds/ Sound Effects:

• Footsteps of Leia, Han, Chewbaccas, and Rebel leader (all on a concrete surface, and later on snow)
• Leia’s snow jacket movement
• Han’s leather belt and jacket (slight rubbing of jacket and belt)
• C3PO’s robotic arms
• Background computer fuzz
• Beeping radars
• Constant medium pitched wave sound from electronic gadgets
• Wind (quite aggressive snowstorm)
• Radio static
• Electronic button pressing
• Blaster
• Droid explosion
• Metal shrapnel

ADR Script:

Rebel leader (Xavier)

–             Princess, we have a visitor. We’ve picked up something outside the bases own, 12 moving east.

Operator (Riley)

–             Its metal.

Princess Leia

–             Then it couldn’t be one of those creatures

Han Solo (Ben)

–             Could be a speeder? One of ours

Operator (Riley)

–             No. Wait! There’s something very weak coming through!

Radio transmitter (Isaac)

–             *un recognisable language

C3PO (Isaac)

–             Sir, I am fluent in six million forms of communication, this signal is not used by the alliance, it could be an imperial code.

Han Solo (Ben)

–             It isn’t friendly whatever it is, come on chewy let’s check it out.

Chewbacca (Riley)

–             Ggrrraahh

Rebel Leader (Xavier)

–             General its 10 and 11 to station 3 8.

Announcer (Nick)

–             All pilots to report to hanger 7.

*Scene break*

Han solo (Ben)

• Afraid there’s not much left.

Leia

• What was it?

Han solo (Ben)

• Droid of some kind, I didn’t hit it that hard it must have had a self distruct.

Leia

• An imperial probe droid

Han solo (Ben)

• It’s a good bet the empire knows we’re here

Rebel Leader (Xavier)

• We better start the evacuations

Dates & Milestones:

Additional Thoughts:

There are just a couple of points I have forgotten to mention in the podcast regarding publishing techniques and meeting the brief.

As far as publishing techniques go, as this is primarily a portfolio piece, I believe that YouTube is the right choice. It allows for simple linking and embedding, and is easily the most popular video hosting website. Aside from this it allows Star Wars fans to find it too, which may be challenging on a more obscure site. We both have the video on our Facebook timelines, and Riley also linked the video to several Star Wars fan pages.

As far as meeting the brief I feel that we were highly successful. The project was created using as many organic sounds as possible, we have created a high quality portfolio piece, and the product was completed within the six-week timeline.

That is all from me.

Thank you for listening and reading.

Mr. Shifty Project: Reflective Podcast