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Kemi Akinbileje
Engineering the Record II
May 7, 2014
Sound Alike Final Write Up
Michael McCoy

The last three recording sessions we held we largely successful. After already capturing
great sounds for the drums, bass and vocals, we moved on to the violins, guitar and horns.
When listening to the track on a basic level, all these instrumental parts appeared to be rather
simple. However, we met a few bumps on the road towards our final project.
Firstly, it turned out there was a slight error in the transcription we used. As small as the
mistake was, it still very noticeable in our recording. In the original recording, the violinists play a
note at the start of the chorus that is held for two counts, and then three sixteenth notes follow it.
However, our violinists were playing all of the notes as sixteenth note, which changed the entire
sound of that one section. During comping and mixing, we were forced to sit down and use
elastic audio to manipulate the violin waveforms so that the notes were all played for the correct
length of time. For the most part this worked, but generally, there wasnt much of a difference.
At this point in the process we couldnt do too much about the production except for fine tuning
and small adjustments. So we accepted our fault and kept moving. I realized that one of the
reasons why we hadnt noticed this difference during the session is because we largely muted
the reference tracks while recording, so all we heard was the violins which appears helpful in
the moment. But had we turned up all the other instruments, we wouldve been able to catch the
mistake while the violinists were still in the session and fix the mistake. Lesson: listen carefully
and holistically.
Its easier said than done. Even the task of listening carefully became a bumpy road. In
the mix for Camera Obscuras French Navy, there is very clearly a guitar being played. After
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further analysis one can observe that there are two guitar partsone panned to the right, the
other to the left. These guitars are so well buried into the mix, to the extent that our guitarist
came in and was able to play one part, but we spent over an hour JUST LISTENING to the track
to pick out the second part. The second guitar part contained a lot of noodling and just picking
the strings. For a while during the session, I was nervous that our guitarist might not hear or hit
all of the correct notes and just get lazy and start playing whatever he thought sounded okay
rather than strive to achieve what was really on the original. In the future, I think it would be a
good idea to stress to musicians that they should REALLY listen to the track before they come
in, or even book an edit suite and host strictly a listening session with them so you can pick out
their parts together.
The last two things we were recorded was brass section. This section was the hardest to
find, and in addition one of the players was the hardest to work with. One of the girls who played
during the session came in with a horrendous attitude, and even expressed multiple attempts to
take control of the session. This taught me patience when dealing with clients and still being
able to get a job done despite distractions.
During the mixing process, we spent a lot of time listening to the original. We added the
basics that we knew wed need: compression, reverb, etc. But when it really got down to the
core of what we needed it all came down to the EQ. Towards the ending of our last mixing
session, I began to had my doubts. In the two hours wed spent crafting the sound, we played
the original against ours so many times and they still sounded nothing alike. In fact, I suggested
that there was something missing from our mix. Like perhaps we left out an instrument or two in
our analysis. The original song just felt so much more full and bright. It was almost enveloped by
a wall of sound it felt like. So we kept working and we decided to spend some magic on the EQ.
Low and behold, that was the answer to our problems. By the time wed tweaked the EQ on
nearly every track, the songs when switched back and forth, were nearly indecipherable as to
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which was which. The last small effect we added was chorusing for the background vocals,
which I took care of some of the emptiness Id felt in certain parts of the song.
I am very pleased with our end product. Its maybe not exactly the original, but I feel as if
we came pretty close. This was a great experience and a great project to do. It gave us an end
goal instead of blindly chasing a random finish line with no real direction. I cant wait to move
forward in my production and engineering skills using the knowledge I know now: the hell of a
difference that EQ can make.