Becky Farr

Becky Farr

Its fair to say this was by far the biggest project i had undertaken so far, little did i realise this at the start. It took around 6 sessions in the mounts of may and june, with me ending up finishing the mixes on my birthday!

I met Becky on gumtree after finding an advert looking for a producer. It was a bold move but i asked if i could fit the bill and provide my services for free. She was more then interested to work with me. It was clear from the moment go that the music was not in my style of work and i would need to adapt my skills to fit. 

She arrived with handfull of ideas and pages of lyrics notated against the strangest form of sheet music i had ever seen. We recorded the basic demos in the first session with just a piano and vocal mic to capture the scratch track. It was clear that we were going to have to arrange the rest of the instrumentation from the basic piano chords. 

(2 x akg c414 spaced pair, + one on the bottom of the sound board, (ie buy her feet) sadly no recordings available for this )

The Arrangements

The One You Chose

The first song we worked on was a piece written for her brothers first dance at his wedding. So slow, drawn out, love song, ballad. (you get the idea). Being a big fan of strings (o yes the strings :) ) they where dotted around the the standard ballad song structure, with a bass guitar to reinforce the piano. Playing around with the midi keyboard i added some classical guitar to end of the song to tie it up. It was easily finished and scratched tracked in that session. 

One Half Of Me

The next song was more upbeat with a more alternative pop sound. The song was rather hard to arrange with many ideas being thrown around. Once again we used strings & bass, But added some basic drum loops and i played in some guitar parts. The song was not fully arranged to the recording sessions where the guitar parts switched from electric to acoustic.

Canvas

This was the second song to be arranged completely, and we spent much time trying out different instruments and sounds. There was a great deal of experimentation with synthesisers and other ambient sounds which didn't really fit. At the time i remember listening to Michael Jackson's earth song  and hearing how the clean guitar and horn arrangements benefited such a epic song.  I tried adding some basic horn arrangements which worked wonders and made the song really stand out. 

Free

This song is rather odd. It was left to the last minute and wasent really worked on til we had recorded the other 3 songs. Never the less it was a clear creative process to add the instrumentation. The Tremolo guitar heard on the track was actually an accident but sounded so creepy it was left in the mix. The massive reverb used on the drums just added to the ambient feel on the song.

The Recording

The main element to recoding was the piano and it was 1 of only 3 acoustic instruments on the Ep. A baby grand Yamaha piano was used for the recordings in the universities center of performing arts. For the recording i used a pair of Akg c414s in a spaced arrangement 2 feet from the piano. (Note i do have a picture of this but need to locate it :S ) Being an old squash court the room was quite lively. Sadly there was quite a lot of pedal noise located in the recording. In the future im going to try using pencil condensors very close to the sound board. The piano recording was rather quite due to the interfaces i had to use (some lambada one) It seemed to have very little pre amp gain and could not boost the signal to even -20db. (nothing compression cant sort ;) 

The vocals gave me a fair bit of trouble due to tonal nature of the singers voice. I tried using a total of 4 microphones in various postions to experiment. On the recording the mic used was a Neumman U87 with some reinforcement from a Shure SM7B. I adopted a mic technique i use all the time now. I stick the u87 in Omni and turn the capsule to 60 degrees. So that the mic is just as sensitive but the blast from the singer is spread along the diaphragm. I also tried using a earthworks Er30 placed head on and a c414 over the shoulder of the singer. The earthworks worked surprisingly well but lacked tonal character being flat response microphones and also where fairly sibilance free. The c414 over the shoulder dident have enough direct sound in the mix and would probably  have worked better in a lively room.

(picture to follow)

Nothing too special on the acoustic guitar, pointed a akg c414 in figure of 8 at the 12th fret and hoped for the best. It worked but sounded quite trebly. The reason for the figure of 8 was my breathing would be directed at the microphones dead spot.

Mixing

Being vastly logic instruments and samples there was very little nasty`s too sort out. The vocals took a fair while to prefect and needed an fair amount of compression and EQ. Theres is some automated reverb in Free between pre chorus and chorus.

Conclusion

Overall working with Becky was a great experience. Being a classically trained grade 8 pianist i felt her arrangements added that special element to the songs that many pop singer songwriters miss. I also wish i had used more of beckys voice as she could pull of harmonies well and i always like the sound of vocal polyphony.