For the initial research, we sat down a looked at list of producer’s and artists who we could use as influence for the EP and to give us the type of direction we would look to be heading in with the sound of the recording.

Artists which we’re highlighted in the playlist we created were :-

Mike Rosenberg (Passenger)

Laura Marling

Ben Howard

We also choose some producers to take example of their process and techniques used on their work. A key producer who is a similar example to the process we will use was Ethan Johns who worked on Laura Marling’s 2013 album “Once I was an Eagle”.

Ethan Johns produced, engineered and mixed this album as well as featuring on it as a session musician adding overlays to tracks.

In interview with Sound on Sound, he says explains his techniques and ideas:

“I have compressors. I’ve got some [Universal Audio] 1176s and [Dbx] 160s. I mean, I like compression, I like messing around with it. But I’m using it much less now. Interestingly enough, with this new Laura Marling record [Once I Was An Eagle], as I went on in the mixing, I very quickly started to unplug all the compressors. If you listen to Heartbreaker, there’s almost no compression on that at all. There’s no bus compression on any of the Kings Of Leon records I’ve made, none of the Ray LaMontagne stuff, it’s all completely open. There’ll be minor compression on individual things. If you’re recording to digital, you’re compensating for the fact that there’s no tape compression, so you’re trying to soften things”

Ethan Johns explains his use on compression when recording digitally and why he choose to use it or not use it.

Link to the interview: http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jun13/articles/ethan-johns.htm