production of purple epidemic track
The track was
recorded with a neumann m 150 tube and 2 neumann km 185 microphones. The guitar was
recorded with the 2 km185s placed in front of the sound hole and one in the
middle of the neck. I recorded it in a concrete room with wood floors which gave a nice natural reverberation. It was recorded at 140 bpm. I recorded a lead guitar part
playing over the rhythm throughout the song, first i kept it clean with some
reverb on it, but i didn’t think it was accompanying the track very well. So i
put an echo effect on it. The
bass was recorded into a preamp, it had a mixture of finger plucking and slap
bass playing, so it was a challenge to get the whole bass track to sound the
same, i wanted the finger plucked parts to still sound punchy. So i split the
track into 3 and put different effects on each one. The first I just put an eq
on it and
compressor to make the bass frequencies a bit fuller, the second
and the 3rd I cut up, so I took out all the parts where I was
playing slap bass and left the finger bass tracks in line with the original
bass track. I put eqs on them and raised the treble side and
the mids. The third track I turned the volume down a lot, just so it could add
a bit of depth to the bass. I think it worked well, because it does have a nice
punch to it. The vocals were recorded with the m 150 mic, and there are 3 vocal
tracks, the main one has a small amount of reverb on it. The second track is a
very low harmony over the chorus, this is my voice again, i didn’t put any
pitch benders on it, it was just natural singing, it sounds like there is some
distortion on it but its just a lot of rasp that I had in my voice. The third
track is in the same low voice, but it is singing "ooooo" throughout
the second verse, I then duplicated that track and layed it over the top, to
make the ooos sound more like a Gregorian choir singing in the background. All
three of these tracks i put in quietly so it was more subtle and in the
background. The drums were digitally made, these were made in Pro - tools
9, it is a kick drum, snare drum and a crash cymbal. The simple drum beat i
made really accompanies the bass, which added to the paunchiness of the song
and kept a dancy rhythm, with short bursts of crash hits. This is what makes the song work well with fast paced editing. I intended the song
to have a nice groove to it, something that you can dance to, and something
that is warm and can create a nice atmosphere in a room, i think i achieved
this.
Here is a screenshot of the Fl Studio work space for Purple Epidemic
