The Art of Producing - Part 1

The art of producing a record requires knowledge of music, mastering the technical aspects of the recording process, and an ability to work with people.

This is the first of a three-part series about producing. In this episode, I talk about the role of the producer, using a typical album project for Corrie Lynn Green as an example. Not all productions will follow this example, since there are many different styles of music, different artists and musicians, that you may encounter.

My approach to producing and recording is not typical in many ways. I point this out in the episode, and encourage people to find what works best for them.

By the way, "My Take On Music Recording" is now carried by YouTube Podcasts. Just like any podcast provider, this is audio only. You can find it on YouTube by searching for "Fearn" under "Podcasts." All 94 episodes to date are available, and each new one will be added.

The dozens of other podcast providers will continue, of course.

email: dwfearn@dwfearn.com
www.youtube.com/c/DWFearn
https://dwfearn.com/

Transcript

Episode 94           Producing – Part 1                                            August 11, 2024

 I’m Doug Fearn and this is My Take on Music Recording

 Before I begin this episode on producing, I wanted to tell you about a new podcast provider. YouTube Podcasts now carries “My Take on Music Recording.” All 93 episodes are now available, and each new one will added. Of course, all the previous podcast providers will continue as always.

You can access my podcast by going to YouTube, clicking on ‘podcasts,’ and search for Fearn. You will see a link that will take you to all the episodes.

There is no video content. It’s just like any other podcast provider.

 This is the first of three episodes on the role of the producer.

There are many ways to approach recording a song or an album. The most basic way is to simply set up a mic and record. For some types of music, that might be the optimum method.

An artist may rely on an engineer to simply capture his or her vision. That’s valid, too.

If there is a producer involved, they may have influence on every aspect of the recording, from finding the artist, choosing the song or songs, picking the musicians and studio, and paying for everything and handling the logistics of making it all happen.

Some producers write or co-write the songs. They may play on the tracks.

Other producers are not even present during the sessions, while others oversee every aspect of the recording.

In other words, there is a wide range of approaches to peoducing a recording. All of them can be successful – or not, depending on the situation.

I have been making records for over 50 years, and I have been involved with that entire range of methods. The way I approach the job as producer varies depending on the artist and music.

Today, I am going to talk about my approach to making albums with one particular artist, Corrie Lynn Green. You have heard Corrie on a couple of podcasts in the past. You may have heard her music.

The approach I take to producing Corrie is different from what it might be with other artists. Here is how this collaboration works.

I first heard Corrie on a YouTube video she made, using a recording done at a local studio where she won a few hours of recording time in a contest. A mutual friend suggested that I listen to it.

Right away I knew I wanted to help make her songs into what I thought they could be.

This was during Covid so we did not get together in person for about 10 months. But we talked about what we might do during that lockdown period.

Corrie had no recording experience except for those few hours in the studio. But she is very smart and easily understood the process as soon as I started explaining it when she finally got to my studio.

After a couple of sessions with just her and another player, it was time to put together a group of musicians to back her up in the studio. Corrie plays banjo. She occasionally played gigs with some local players. She lives in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and her musical background is with Bluegrass.

But she listened to many different genres while growing up. She still does. She attends many concerts and festivals, both as a performer and as an attendee. Those various influences are evident in her songwriting.

She starting playing banjo when she was 14, but did not start writing songs until a couple of decades later, in 2019.

My challenge was to find players in my area that could provide the proper backing for her songs. When I first heard her, I immediately thought of Catelyn Monaco as a harmony singer. And Cate’s husband, Adam, is an excellent mandolin player that I had worked with a few times over the years. Adam suggested he could play guitar, and recommended Peter Oswald who plays cello with Adam on some gigs.

That formed the core of the studio players. And they have played on every song since the beginning.

To that, I added John O’Reilly Jr on drums. I had worked with John on various projects over the years and I knew he could play in a way that was compatible with acoustic instruments in the same room. I could have put the drums in a booth, but I prefer the better collaboration of everyone playing together. John makes his living adding drum tracks for other people, or session work. He is great at what he does.

I’ll get back to the Corrie sessions shortly, but first let me explain what I do technically, and why.

My approach to recording in general is not mainstream. Many of the things I do trace back to the techniques used in the 1950s and 1960s. But I am not stuck in the past. Almost all the recording I do is in the DSD format, which is a very high-resolution digital format that captures more of an analog sound than conventional PCM digital.

Basically, I use whatever technology and technique that best suits the music, and my sense of what it should sound like.

The first music recording I made was in 1964, when I was in high school. The equipment was simple, but professional. The players were not professional. I quickly learned how to make the instruments and voices sound like what I wanted them to sound like. I had a sound in my head, which was based on my experience growing up hearing a symphony orchestra in a great concert hall. The sound I developed 60 years ago is still basically what I want today. The tools are better, the equipment is better, and I work with much better musicians today. But my idea of what things should sound like has not changed.

I don’t record like most people do these days. My productions can be very full sounding, and yet I rarely use more than 20 tracks total. And many of those tracks are stereo. I always record stereo on two mono tracks so I can better manipulate the sound later.

I use only one stereo mic on the drums, at least for most of the sessions I do. There are times when multiple mics are the way to go, but whenever possible, I prefer the cohesive sound of a single-point pickup.

I also use ribbon mics on around 90% of the instruments and voices.

When I was dissatisfied with the sound of the equipment I was using, I decided to design my own mic preamps, equalizers, and compressors, which my company manufactures. The products I designed are the only pieces of equipment in my studio, except for a couple of reverb units and the converters. Except for the converters, all the audio goes through vacuum tube equipment. For some of the other gear needed in the studio, like monitor controllers and headphone amps, I designed and built what I needed.

That gives me the sound I have always wanted.

Another deviation from standard contemporary practice is that I never record with a click track. I never have, and probably never will. A click makes sense for some types of music where a constant tempo is needed. But the music I record tends to breathe in tempo, as felt by the players listening to the way a singer-songwriter like Corrie performs. Also, Corrie tends to throw in the occasional 5 or 7 beats in a 4/4 song, or go from 6/8 to 4/4.

I know it is possible to tempo map all that, but I don’t do that. It’s just easier to get the right people in the room and let them feel how the song should work.

I rarely make edits in the music. I go back to the days of splicing magnetic tape, so I know how to do it. For a while in the 1970s and 80s, I was hired to edit a lot of music for major record labels in New York, either on the 2-inch 24-track master or on the quarter- or half-inch mix.

Editing is much easier in digital recording, but I still avoid doing that, mainly because I prefer the organic quality of a take that is complete from beginning to end.

That said, I still have to do the occasional edit when an otherwise great take has some imperfection that is obvious enough to require repair. But I do not edit multiple takes together to make a final, perfect version. I think the music can suffer from that. I actually like some imperfection in the performance. It shows that real people made the music.

I rarely do punch-ins. I want a solid performance from beginning to end. That is driven to some extent by the DSD format, which makes punch-ins difficult to incorporate into the final version.

I might, on occasion, use an alternate vocal take here and there, to get the best performance, but that is not my preference.

I almost never use any plugins. I have the outboard gear I need, and it fits my style perfectly. The one exception is that I sometimes use a digital plug-in limiter on the mix bus, just to catch those occasional peaks that would otherwise reduce the overall level of the song. I can switch the limiter in and out and there is no change in loudness. It just captures those peaks every once in a while.

I do like a bit of compression on the mix bus, depending on the song. It’s not much, but it does tend to make the mix sound more cohesive. At most, there is about 2 to 3dB of compression on peaks. Most of the time the compressor is not doing much at all.

As a result, my mixes are not dense and loud like most contemporary recordings. I check the loudness, and try to keep my mixes as loud as the music permits. I never go over -14dB LUFS, and some songs are a few dB quieter. But since I like to use as much dynamic range as the music had as it was being performed, some sections of a song might be -11dB LUFS. But overall, the loudness is no higher than -14. That may not sound as competitive as most mixes today, but I want to do what serves the music best.

Some songs will be uniformly naturally loud from beginning to end. Others might benefit from having a loudness of -16 or -18. I use the loudness measurement as a guideline, but my ears tell me what is best.

I don’t use much compression when tracking. I usually have a small amount of compression on a lead vocal track, depending on the artist. Some songs have a wide vocal dynamic range, and a few dBs of compression can help keep the low parts audible. Sometimes I use more compression, but it is rare.

Often the best solution is to automate the vocal level in the mix. When done well, that solves many problems when excessive compression does not. As always, it depends on the music.

The only equalization I use when cutting tracks is on vocals with a ribbon mic. The proximity effect of a ribbon, or condenser mic can be a problem. I know how my ribbon mics sound and I know I will not regret the 4dB of low-frequency roll-off I add while recording.

Otherwise, I use mic selection and placement to achieve the sound I want. I am fortunate to have a mic collection that permits me to get the sound I need almost all the time, without any eq.

However, I do use a bit of eq on the mix bus, after the compressor. It is usually set to a gentle roll-off below around 40Hz. Since the equipment I designed is flat down to at least 20Hz, this roll-off keeps sub-sonic energy out of the final product.

And, since I use mostly ribbon mics, I usually add 2 to 4dB of low-Q boost around 10kHz to keep the mix appropriately bright enough.

And I apply a gentle roll-off of a few dB at 28Khz help preserve the quality of the music when converted to mp3 or other low-resolution format. That roll-off is also beneficial when the song is converted to a PCM digital format, especially for CDs.

As I said, my approach is not typical. I don’t expect other people to follow my procedures, but I am always interested in learning what other people whose work I admire do. We should all develop the style and techniques that work best for each of us. We don’t want to all do the same thing. That would be boring.

These days I am fortunate that I can work only with the people that I want to work with, and record them the way I want to make them sound.

I ran a commercial studio for a couple of decades and I had clients that ranged from top artists and producers to people who were wasting their money in the studio. Much of that work was bad for my brain and I am thankful that I no longer have to endure that.

When digital recording became practical and sounded good, I quickly make the transition from tape. As much as I like the classic sound of tape, I prefer the cleaner sound of good digital systems, and the unique features it provides.

Getting back to producing Corrie’s music, I should say that I am unlikely to take the same approach with other people I am recording. Corrie is a producer’s dream because she is very open to suggestion and she is willing to try anything. She is easy to work with because she quickly understands how something I might suggest is likely to improve the song. She has a lot of trust in my judgement and we have never disagreed about any of the decisions I have made.

As she gains more experience, she is hearing things more deeply and making good suggestions. That’s great, because I expect she will have a long musical career and will probably still be making music after I am no longer able to record her.

We usually only record one song per session. And we only record about six sessions per year. Corrie has her own business, plus a family to take care of, so her opportunities to make the trip from rural Virginia to rural Pennsylvania are limited. We need to make the most of two or three days we have each time.

The players, too, are busy, working musicians. I have to schedule them about two months ahead, and finding a date that works for seven or eight people can be challenging. Our usual crew on the session includes guitar, cello, drums, and either an electric or additional acoustic guitar part. And I have one or two assistant engineers.

I prefer to do my own engineering at the session. It’s just easier for me to do it that way. But I rely on Ian Alexander, my assistant for over 35 years, to handle mic setup, headphones, and general studio arrangement. Ian is very good at that and I do not have to spend much time on that aspect of the session.

A day or two before the session, I make up a spreadsheet that shows Ian which mics I want to use on each instrument, plus the mic line. And, for me, the mic preamp and any processing plus the track or tracks I am going to assign that instrument to.

That may change, but it gives us a good starting point.

Also, on the day prior, I do all the patching. My studio has almost no equipment permanently connected. I prefer the flexibility of patching. But it is complex and requires significant concentration to avoid an error. I always test everything the day before the session. I connect a mic to each mic line in the studio and make sure it is getting to the right input on the DAW.

I also check the headphone feed.

I set up as much of the studio as I can, realizing that there needs to be room for load-in of all the instruments. I have chairs and music stands roughly in place.

But I do not set up any mics, except in the vocal booth. My studio is small, but this applies even to huge rooms: it is better to keep mic stands, mics, headphones, etc. out of the way until people are in place. Fortunately, I have Ian and sometimes another assistant to get things set up as conditions allow.

I don’t want to be distracted by the technicalities during this time, because I need to focus on the music and the musicians at this stage of the session.

A week or two before the session, I send all the players a demo of the song, along with a chord and lyric sheet. That demo may be a recording we did in the studio, or it might be one that Corrie recorded at home, on her phone. That gives the musicians a chance to listen to the song and start to develop ideas.

Corrie’s songs are sometimes rhythmically unusual. John, the drummer, figures out the idiosyncrasies and is ready to explain it to the other musicians.

I print the chord sheet so everyone has a copy at the session.

Once everyone arrives at the studio and we spend a few minutes of socializing, Corrie will play the song on banjo, guitar, or piano. At this point, either Corrie or I, or both of us, will explain what the song is about and the mood we need to convey. Even with great musicians, I find this to be valuable to get everyone in the right frame of mind for the story in the song. And all of Corrie’s songs are stories.

I may also talk about aspects of the song that I want to be sure to capture. I might even have ideas about the parts I hear on various instruments. But mostly I let the players work out their own parts, which are usually better than what I had in mind anyway.

Occasionally, though, we head off in the wrong direction. It is vital for me to pull everyone back into how the song should feel. Working with good people makes this easy. But without it, we could end up with a track that is not what we envisioned.

We learned this lesson on one song where Corrie was not playing any instrument on the recording. Her playing and singing are usually enough to pull everyone together. But in this case, the song got away from us. Although it was a superb track they gave us, we realized later that it was not right for the song. From that we learned that we have to be sure the basic tracks are exactly what we want. Hopefully, we won’t make that mistake again.

For that song, we went back to the studio demo we made with Corrie singing and playing piano. It was never intended to be anything but a demo, but it did have exactly the right feel. We decided to use that track and build on that, which gave us a great song after a few overdubs.

By the way, we decided to have Corrie write a new song for that great track we didn’t use. Time will tell if that will work, but I am optimistic that the fine job everyone did will not go to waste.

The chord sheet also has the tempo indicated. We may deviate from that slightly as we refine the arrangement, but it is a good starting point. John uses a metronome app on his phone to check the tempo before each take. He is absolutely steady in tempo, so all takes are exactly the same.

That does not mean we have a constant tempo in all parts of the song. Just like a symphony orchestra varies the tempo as led by the conductor as he feels the music, John guides us through the song with just the right feel.

We usually spend an hour or more figuring out the arrangement. The musicians have been on around 30 of Corrie’s songs at this point, so they have excellent ideas of how to back her up. Sometimes, however, someone has an idea that takes us in the wrong direction, or maybe just isn’t as good as where we were a few minutes earlier. It is my job to keep things heading towards the goal and not get side-tracked by something that sounds cool but doesn’t fit.

Fortunately, with the great players we use this is never a problem. Everyone is cooperative and never has a problem with modifying their part as directed.

Of course, I am not dictating every nuance. I try to focus on the big picture and let the musicians work out the details. In this regard, everyone has ideas, most of which are great. I am willing to try anything they suggest, even if I don’t think it will work. Usually, they come up with amazing parts and I just have to admire their skill. Corrie has ideas, too, which everyone takes seriously. It is her song, after all.

In the end, my role as producer is to encourage the right solutions, help guide is back on track when needed, and have the goal of the song always the focus. This approach has worked well for us.

It would be difficult for me to do this effectively if I had to worry about setting up mics and equipment. My brain does not have the bandwidth to do both simultaneously.

The arranging phase is done with everyone sitting closely together, often on the floor. John usually refrains from playing much during this phase, so the drums do not overpower the acoustic instruments and make it hard to hear. But at some point, we need to add the drums into the process. This will change things yet again, but John always understands what the song needs, so it is never a problem.

There are lots of other details that get addressed during this process, but you get the idea.

Once we have the arrangement nailed down, we get everyone into place and the mics set up. This is pretty quick since Ian usually has everything staged and ready for fine-tuning. Corrie goes to the vocal booth.

Ideally, I would prefer that she stay in the studio. But she has a powerful voice and the banjo is a loud instrument. I don’t want any hint of vocal or banjo bleed into the basic tracks.

Everyone has years of studio experience, so having her out of sight is not a problem.

I have pre-set the levels where I know they should be for the instrument and mic in use, but once they start playing in position, I can fine tune the levels. I know that they will be 5 to 10dB louder once we start recording, so I adjust accordingly.

Now we are ready to run down the song for real. I always record this first run-through, or at least part of it, so everyone can hear it. Sometimes we listen to that and sometimes we don’t.

Usually there is some slight discomfort among the players who have a lot to keep in mind at this point. The song is not etched into their minds yet. Still, the early takes sound very good. Corrie, too needs to adjust to the new arrangement, which might be very different from what she is used to during the songwriting process or when performing.

I can tell when everyone is settled in and comfortable. Now it is time to get the best take.

At this point, they have played the song maybe a dozen times, although during the arrangement stage it is seldom from start to finish. Once they are relaxed and don’t have to think about the technicalities of their part, we start getting better and better takes.

It is almost a given that we will use the third of fourth take at this point. Everyone knows when we have reached that point. No one really wants to go for another take. Occasionally I will request it, if I think there is still room for improvement. Sometimes there is but usually not.

We will listen to the track to make sure we didn’t miss anything.

And then everyone starts packing up and heading for their next gig. Sometimes one or more musicians will stay to do an overdub or two.

We will record Corrie’s vocal the next day, or sometimes on the evening of the session. She can sing all day long and still sound great.

I record the reference vocal and banjo or guitar, but I have never used them.

That’s it for the basic tracks. I will make a reference mix for Corrie and I to listen to.

There are almost always going to be additional overdubs. Typically, that is harmony or background vocals, and maybe a violin/fiddle part or two.

For most of Corrie’s songs, that is all we need. Her songs need to be open-sounding. That might not be the case for other artists.

I send a reference mix to the background singers and string players, and anyone else that I need to add parts. And then it’s time to find a date for them to come in. With Cate Monaco and Julia Finegan, the background singers, that is often a month or more in the future, since their schedules are packed.

By the way, all of the musicians live in Philadelphia, for very close to it. My studio is about 25 miles west of the city, in farmland.

The overdubbing sessions usually go pretty quickly. Everyone is well-prepared and has parts ready to go.

Michael Salsburg is our primary violinist. He has many years of studio and performing experience in genres from big band to Bluegrass to rock. He is often in and out of the studio in less than an hour.

Tom Spiker is a versatile guitarist that fits in perfectly with Corrie’s songs. He is usually playing on the tracking session, either on electric bass, electric guitar of some sort, or acoustic guitar. Often, he plays several parts on the song, and I schedule him in for an overdub session.

After each overdub session, I make a reference mix to send to Corrie so she can hear what was added. Ideally, she would be there for those sessions, but that had never been possible.

From the inception of the song until the final mix, Corrie and I talk about the progress on the phone at least weekly, with text or email exchanges in between. I understand her music and what it needs, so it is an easy and comfortable process. She often has very good ideas, which we use. Sometimes I have ideas that are a bit off-the-wall, but she trusts my judgement.

In the next installment, I will describe mic’ing and processing for this project.

Thanks for listening and commenting. Your feedback is always valuable to me. You can reach me at dwfearn@dwfearn.com

This is My Take on Music Recording. I’m Doug Fearn. See you next time.