Project Chris

Project Background

The beauty of working with a number of different artists on their music projects is that each project will be different in terms of requirements and skills required to bring the project to fruition.

Chris contacted me via The Songwriters united forum which I set up some time ago. He asked if I would be able to mix and produce his song "I Love You Etc".

As well as mixing and producing the track, there was also an additional requirement to add orchestration and backing vocals. He had already recorded a rough demo track as a reference.

Planning

The first step in this project was to get acquainted with the song and get Chris to send me the individual WAV files which are basically the individual instrument tracks.

This kind of remote working is a lot easier these days as it's relatively easy to share files via the wide availability of cloud based storage solutions such as Google drive and Onedrive.

Chris had recorded some vocal tracks for this song but was aiming to get a female vocalist to record the lead vocals at a later stage, but we agreed that I would start work on the mix before we had the female vocals.

My first task was to load all of the files that Chris had sent to me into my Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). My preferred DAW is Reaper as I have been using it for around 10 years and have a good working knowledge of how it works. However, although it's possible to load files from other DAW's into Reaper, it's also useful to have a working knowledge of the other commonly used DAW's.

During my time at University, I now have experience with the following DAW's as well as Reaper

• Logic Pro
• Pro Tools
• Ableton Live

Once I had loaded all the files into Reaper, there is an amount of work involved to ascertain what is on each track. Customers will generally send all of the recorded audio, some of this might be partial takes or takes where mistakes were made. Although it's possible to fix the majority of mistakes, it is much more preferable to work with well recorded and organised  audio tracks.

Good labelling of tracks is also important. My job becomes a lot more difficult if tracks are named "Audio 1", "Audio 2" etc instead of "Guitar", "Bass", "Lead Vocals"

Chris's tracks were well organised but there was some duplication of backing vocals that took some time to sort out. In this respect, it makes sense to quote for a project once the initial audio stems have been received and evaluated.

Chris had also taken time to write me notes on what each track was and also indicated how he wanted the mix to "feel", which is very important information to have when delivering customer requirements.

Recording

Once I had all of Chris's audio stems loaded up into the DAW, I looked at what additional parts would enhance the song. I added the following:-

• Backing vocals to complement Chris's original backing vocals
• A string section using a VSTi (BBC Symphony Orchestra Virtual Instrument)
• Bass Guitar

Of course, communication with the customer is very important and after I recorded each part, I liaised with Chris to make sure that he was happy with the progress and I was able to make any minor adjustments as required.

As I have worked with Chris on a couple of projects in the past he knows how I work and gives me more or less a free reign to do what I want to do, but I feel that it's still important to keep the communications channel open as it's his song, not mine and I want to make that song shine.

Mixing

Once I had finished the recording of the additional parts I started to work on the mix. This generally starts off with getting an initial balance. I focus initially on the drums and then move onto the bass, as getting the drums and bass to knit together is the essence of the "groove" to the song.

I then start to bring in other instruments. In this case, it was a number of acoustic guitar parts and the orchestrated string parts.

Finally, I introduce the vocal parts, starting with the backing vocals and ensuring that they sit in the mix and then the lead vocals.

Vocalists generally feel uncomfortable hearing their own voice. This is know as the self voice confrontation effect where the brain acts negatively when the voice it hears is not the one that it expects.

(Kimura, M., & Yotsumoto, Y. ,2018)

Chris was keen to get the female vocalist to record her parts and he managed to send me the recordings around a week later.

The female vocals were recorded very professionally so they fitted into the mix with only small adjustments required. 

Although the lead vocal recordings were of a very good quality and professionally recorded there were certain things that I had to address before I could fit them into the mix. Some of the vocal tracks were duplicated and also some of the vocal tracks had effects applied to them (Wet) while others had no effects applied (Dry). This provides a dilemma for the producer as if I receive a track that is for example drenched with reverb (or indeed any effect), I am unable to remove the effect in the mix. With dry tracks, I am able to apply effects and achieve a better blend to the mix. In this case, I used the dry tracks and applied the same reverb on the lead vocals and backing vocals to achieve this blend.

The challenge for the vocals mix was to ensure that the lead vocals and both mine and Chris's backing vocals sounded like they had all been recorded in the same space and blended together well. I concentrated on panning / eq / compression to achieve this.

The following video demonstrates me working on the mix of the track.

Project completed - January 2026

Reflection

I always really enjoy working on projects with Chris. Firstly as I love the songs that he writes and secondly as he is easy to work with. We always have good project communication and manage to inject a bit of humour into our communications which adds to building a customer relationship.

With any mix / production project there is invariably work to do in organising the recording stems, evaluating and enhancing them.

Chris's music is heavily influenced by 1960's pop styles which are some of my favourites too so again, that makes things a lot more enjoyable when I am working with a genre that I love.

Although I really liked Chris's original vocals as he has his own unique style, the female vocals certainly added a different dimension to the final production.

I have found that a lot of vocalists are unhappy with their own vocals but I think that there is something unique an wonderful when a writer performs their own vocals on a song.

Chris was very happy and appreciative with the outcome and we have some future projects lined up to work on.