Home Studio Helpline: Production Techniques

With some fancy software, groovy instruments, vocals, plenty of Kiwi ingenuity and a healthy dollop of skill it has never been easier to produce a commercially viable recording at home.

In this issue we will look at some of the various techniques that can be utilised to record and produce a song nowadays.

We're fortunate to have the producers of K'Lee, Ariana Tikao, Ardijah and Oakley Grenell giving us insights about production of some of their songs. A big thank you to these people, their producers etc, who helped with the info.

We'll start with Ryan Monga telling us about the production methods used for the recent remake of Ardijah's Silly Love Songs. Ryan fondly recalls the days when they first got the recording bug. Using an old double headed tape machine, putting one part down first, (usually a drum machine), then playing a bass part to that (usually funky), then swapping over the tapes... then playing keyboards to the recorded drums and bass... and so on.

"With no overdub facility each take was on the fly – this meant no mistakes! Thinking back, this gave the music a more natural feel and also improved our playing. After all the instruments were recorded the lead vocals (Betty-Anne) would go on top to complete the track. It wasn't rocket science, but it worked and it got us our first record deal.

"With the single Silly Love Songs, at the time I was using Atari C-Labs MIDI systems and had just crossed over to Cubase. Doing the different versions like Poly-Funk, Disco Daze and Slo Jamm with sax, wasn't too much trouble because of the MIDI time signature. We were able to keep most of the recorded tracks and just replace the grooves underneath, of course using a few cool loops and stuff. These days it's pretty much the same except Pro Tools is a lot easier to handle than the ol' tape deck! I start with the MIDI clock and metronome to make sure everything that goes in afterwards will be in perfect time. After that it's experimentation, cut and paste, you name it, it's all tried. But the bottom line is my gut feeling; if the music moves me or turns me on, then I'm on the right track! Keep on funkin' y'all."

Simon Holloway from Beaver Studios tells the story of Broken Wings the old classic remade by K'Lee with Matty J Ruys. This song had a personal relevance to K'Lee and as her first single they thought it would be the perfect opportunity to reinvent the tune for a new generation with a fresh and phatt new sound that could launch K'Lee's vocal talents.

"The original demo was loaded into Pro Tools (from Logic) to see what we needed to keep or dump. The original beat made way for a new, more soul based loop Matt conjured up, which was cut, spliced and edited in Pro Tools to form the base of the track's fat loping groove.

"Justyn Pilbrow was called in to jam on the changes on a DI'ed precision bass through Sans Amp. A few phrases were later identified and stitched together to create a line that was never actually 'played'. The key was to get the bass deeply hummin', and the Waves Maxx bass plug-in along with the McDSP Compressor Bank and EQ via a Drawmer 1961 did just this!

"This fat rhythm section sound gave K'Lee the inspiration to lay down her vocal with just a tad of compression into Pro Tools. No other live parts were recorded and we kept Matt's and K'Lee's bv's and the Chinese violin part from the original demo. The lead vocal was carefully multi-tracked, comped, auto-tuned and manually levelled using Pro-Tools automation before going out to some nice outboard treatment and then back into Pro Tools before mixing. The key ingredient was keeping the feel of every element working together and complimentary to one another. Although the gear is good, it is still a case of using your ear, not the gear."

E Hoa (translated as My Friend) is a waiata from Ariana Tikao's 'Whaea' album produced last year by Ariana and myself. Much of the inspiration that influenced the album came from studying past phases of Maori music. Pounamu had previously recorded the track E Hoa on their album 'Mihi', so elements from this recording were incorporated into the new version. We 'lifted' the purerehau (bullroarer), which morphs into the sound of a kereru (wood pigeon) flying through the bush, and stretched it to fit the new tempo, and also used that as an introductory element as per the original version. Some snippets of the original vocal theme featuring Jacquie Hanham and Ariana were also given the same sort of treatment and made into a wee 'ghostly radio type voice' using Pitch n' Time and Waves EQ plug-ins.