Lyr: Production notes

Keeping in mind that this was an almost noisy album, with full of sounds, automations, evolving atmospheres and experimental/industrial sample based percussions, I had to be very careful about the way I was going to mix it and finally master it. In fact I had to keep both the clarity and the noise feeling that there had to be present in the album. So with some way, I had to add clarity both at the noise elements and the clean parts of the tracks. Every track had to be mixed in mind with this simple rule. So there will have to be a combination of soft equalizing (using Logic Linear Phase EQ and FabFilter ProQ) and noisy plugins like Effectrix and Geometer. Bass I also had to keep the bass at a reasonable level, keeping the punch and sub frequencies at a level that would be best fit for this kind of music. So, I did two things. I used Logic SubBass to add bass where I thought would be good and I tamed it in the end at the mastering chain using Waves C1 Compressor. This was a tricky thing to do. The only thing in the end that would do the job was using this compressor as a limiter, but only up to 120 hz. Since I used that at the mastering chain I had to be very careful about the final output result of C1. So, I used a high ratio of 50:1, an attack of 70ms and a release of 1ms. That really did what I had in mind. High That was more easy to do. I didn't wanted to adjust the high frequencies level at the mastering so I had to be extremely careful for what I should do at the high frequencies of each track. Not using Eq gain more than 3db and cutting the bass to promote the high frequencies really did what I was hoping for. The last thing that I wanted to add was high frequency clarity with the Limiting that we will see at the Mastering section. Mixing As I said before, I had to keep in mind the simple rule about the clean and noisy parts so, all the mixing had been done with that. Also I had to decide the Kick, snare, glitch parts, pads and sfx levels from the beginning so I had to be sure to mix all the tracks with the same principles. By finishing the first 3 tracks I saw that I had to do with a hybrid-like kind of music. What I kept in mind was that somehow I had to mix, except the tracks, this awkward kind of musical marriage, noise, ambient, glitch, African rhythms and experimental elements all together in order for the final stage to sound as a concept album, because that was the main idea. Lyr Lyr was a concept album about the Lyra constellation. Secondly, this was the first album of the artist so I had to create a distinct final sound that would be Lyrs sound for future releases.

Mastering That was the best part of the whole production story. As every album that I had mastered, and so with this one, I had to find, or better to visualize from the beginning the final sound. I wanted to sound as much as analog as it could be done, so I used two emulations of analog hardware that seemed to fit for this idea. First one was the Pultec EQ from UAD-1. That really did something and I could hear it only by adding the plugin to the master chain without changing anything. The second plugin was Waves Kramer MPX. It's a tape emulation and I figured out the sound that I wanted within two hours. Compressing was made with Waves CLA-2A, a stereo emulation of the legendary Teletronix LA-2A. It was exactly what I had in mind. I couldn't adjust attach and decay time but the sound was fat with the necessary analog clarity. The limiting had been done using the beloved Voxengo Elephant. What I wanted to achieve was to make the final mold using the Mode Editor by changing Limiter Knee, Trans Time and Trans Shape. That also game me the harshness and high frequency clarity that I wanted to achieve from the beginning.