This was a very enjoyable experience working in a genre of music which I hadn’t really explored before. Firstly, Lizzie is a very talented artist and it was a pleasure working with her, learning about her musical styles and her knowledge within this genre itself.

We set out a target at the start of getting some airplay for her tracks, and this is in the process. Siren FM have currently received the tracks and Lizzie will send the copies off to BBC Norwich, where she is from locally and BBC Lincolnshire to the hope of some BBC Introducing recognition, to which she has been affiliated with before a couple of years ago. I am also going to be sending the tracks to my local BBC radio station, BBC Humberside for airplay as well.

None of Lizzie’s previous recordings featured any extra instrumentation on it, which was something she wanted first and foremost. Working together, we managed to discuss what parts would fit where and why, linking back to inspirations of hers, and extended research that we had done, such as producer Ethan Johns, who was a key figure for us after learning that some of his processes of composing, playing and producing on records would be similar to my role here.

A few problems did arise, which was expected, but I felt I managed to overcome them efficiently in a short period of time. Problems such as bleed from the headphones into the microphone, a few notes being slightly off key which required subtle pitch correcting, and creating harmonies with the same vocal track we recorded using a pitch shifter.

One thing which I thought could have been better was the MIDI’ing of other instruments, this is a very natural sound and if I had the time available, I would instead of liked to get each individual musician in to record their part, but with the time we had available, we decided between us that MIDI would be the best and most efficient course of action, and we are happy with the overall outcome nevertheless.

 

I would like to personally thank Lizzie for her co-operation throughout this process and it again was a pleasure working with her. I believe together, we have made an EP which we are both proud of.

Also to Lee Gretton for his brilliant advice and reassurance throughout this project. His words have helped structure this project massively and it has been appreciated greatly.

 

Brad Walker.

The final track off the EP, ‘The End’ was the second song we decided didn’t require a full band set up. This is similar throughout therefore to find changes I started off with just guitar and vocals then included strings. I built up more string sections adding violins and cellos to reach its peak during the middle of the song before slowly bringing it back down again fading each string section out as the track came close to the end, before mellowing in it out completely again.

 

My inspiration for the ideas in this track came from Oasis – ‘Songbird’. It uses the same chords as ‘The End’ and similarly to Songbird, it adds string sections and other instruments as it the goes on. After showing Songbird to Lizzie, we agreed that a similar style of instrumentation would work as it has already worked for Oasis, being a big hit for them and we agreed this would be a good direction for this track to go in.

Oasis – Songbird – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0KJgBkreAuw

 

Key Editing

After recording, when I sat down to edit the track I noticed that when we recorded this there was some bleed from the headphones when Lizzie came in to sing her vocal parts. The way I went in combatting this was to add a noise gate and to mute any parts where there isn’t any vocals.

It worked effectively on parts where there was no vocal and it cut all the bleed from the headphones apart from the highest peaks in the waveform. However, the noise gate had cancelled out the bleed to where it would be noticeable. And some fine EQ’ing later help tackle this issue.

 

The third track, ‘You, The Ghost’ is one that took a significant change from the original demo recordings. When I played this to Lizzie the first time she liked the jazzy style. She originally recorded this just using minor and major chords, so I changed these to minor 7th’s for the minor chords and the major chords I changed to suspended chords, which gave it the jazzier feel. The rhythmic pattern for the bassline also emphasises this as well.

 

This was also the only track without a click track, so input the drums individually was difficult to keep in time throughout. However, I avoided quantizing the MIDI inputs to stick to our goal of keeping this a ‘live’ feel. I didn’t want to over produce the EP so I felt it quantizing everything to perfection wouldn’t be necessary.

Key Editing

The bass I used however seemed to aggressive for the type of song and style of this track, so it was something I had to alter.

I changed the attack to 35ms to add a bit more smoothness when the notes are being played, this also made the bass not so ‘in your face’ and made it so it was subtly in the background, which is how we planned the other instruments around it.

The second track ‘Miles’ was the first track which we decided would be best suited for a string section. It has a quite sombre mood to it and it is soft and quiet dynamically. This sombre mood made it very important to make sure the emotion coming from the vocal stood out in the mix. The use of reverb and compression helped this massively!

 

String sections were added, similarly to where this song took inspiration from, ‘Crash Land’ by Twin Atlantic.

 

Key Editing

After recording was Lizzie mentioned about harmonies which we never recorded. She asked me if there was any way to include harmonies without going back in the studio which I could potentially add in post-production.

I copied her original vocal line where she wanted the harmony to be and added it to a new audio track. I changed the EQ slightly and added a pitch shifter 3 semi-tones higher to create a new harmony line which seemed to work quite well!

The first track off the EP – Wild Things – Lizzie Sawyer

The inspiration for this track came from Mumford & Sons album ‘Sigh No More’ and the way that sounded. It starts off with just guitars and vocals then during the second verse creates a build up with that bass drum beat which is often featured in Mumford tracks. This bass drum along with a bassline in the background creates a build-up for the track. It mellows out during the break which adds suspense before coming back in with the bass, drums, and an added string section before once again mellowing out a the end. The idea of this track was to create suspense throughout it.

 

Key Editing

In this track, there was something in particular which needed changing on the vocal track. In the studio we thought the vocal tracks were fine until there was a note slightly flat which was noticeable, therefore, the use of subtle pitch correction was required. The video below shows this effect.

Although we tried to make this as live as possible, the use of pitch correction was used to save time going back into the studio to re-record this one small part.