Recording - March 2015 - 50

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John McCracken
Equipment: Mac with M-Audio Keystudio 49 keyboard controller
and Focusrite Saffire Pro 40 and PreSonus Firestudio Tube interfaces, running Steinberg Cubase 6 and 7.5 with stock plug-ins
(including HALion SE standard kit for strings and all drums).
Yamaha HS7 monitors. Mics: Audio-Technica AT3035, Shure SM57
and SM81. Fender American Strat (with glass slide) through
Fender Hot Rod Deluxe amp, Martin HD28 acoustic guitar.

Music: "Smile" is a male vocal rock song. John did it all at his
home studio.
Recording: Holy Fab Four, Batman! John has delivered a pretty
spot-on homage to the lads from Liverpool here. Let's dive in and
see if he needs any "Help"!
First off, let's give John props for getting a really authentic vibe with
"Smile". Nearly all of the sound sources, as well as the string arrangements, are in the classic Beatles style-with a special hats off for the
picture-perfect slide guitar parts heard thoughout the track. The tone,
performance and choice of notes here are pure George Harrison, and
as good as any that we have heard in this genre during our tenure at
Readers' Tapes. We also dug some of the additional arrangement
"candy", including the drum fill intro, as well as the ascending bass
lines and the aforementioned George Martin-inspired faux string parts.
Now for the flip side. John tells us that his drums were derived
from the stock HALion SE virtual instrument in his Cubase software.
While we found the tom tones to be pretty satisfactory, the snare
drum has a very compressed sound through our monitors, robbing
it of the dynamic range required to help drive the track. We also felt
that the kick drum was lacking in the low frequency area; we hear
plenty of click, but insufficient thump though our speakers.
While we are on the subject of compression, we are also hearing a tad too much of it on the lead vocal. While the master engineers at Abby Road were no strangers to compression, sometimes
to an extreme, it was applied in a way that was musical rather
than leaving an artifact or smear.
Suggestions: "Tribute" style recordings can be a slippery slope,
and John has delivered the goods for the most part here. As is often
50

RECORDING March 2015

the case with one man/woman band projects, the programmed or
software drums are the weakest link in the chain. The simple fact
remains that most of these submissions come to us from folks whose
main instrument is melodic rather than rhythmic in nature. While
there is nothing wrong with the part itself, we would encourage John
to scour his software and find a snare drum sound more in keeping
with the distance-miked nature of those classic Beatles recordings,
rather than the compressed one currently in place.
As for the compression, John's performance here is not belting (in
a way that a song like "Helter Skelter" might be), therefore it is not
in need of the volume peak control that heavy compression/limiting
achieves. We suggest that he back down the ratio/threshold and
release times on the vocal compressor until the smear on the ff's, tt's
and sss's disappear. Lastly, adding a few dB of EQ in the 60-80 Hz
range would help put some body into the kick drum sound.
Summary: We can work it out!
Contact: John McCracken, jmccracken@twc.com

Christopher Hart
Equipment: iMac running PreSonus Studio One 2. Yamaha HS50M
monitors. Audio-Technica AT2020USB mic for vocals, Ibanez
AE30TP acoustic guitar through Line 6 POD XT Live. All electric guitar and bass parts programmed in Studio One 2; drum and fiddle
loops from countryloops.com.

Music: "Too Tired To Stop" is a male vocal country tune done in its
entirety by Christopher, cowritten by Hiram Sumrall.
Recording: Christopher tells us, "This is my first real attempt at a
full-on recording." Well, Christopher, welcome to the magical, frustrating, satisfying, neverending rabbit hole that has captured the rest
of us in its glorious grip!
Using a combination of live and programmed/software sounds,
Christopher has created a basic but fairly solid demo-style recording.
The lead vocal is well recorded, with no traces of artifact. The acoustic
guitar is also successful, and we give Christopher a lot of credit for his
arrangement; all the ingredients are present to design a guide track
that could become an excellent learning experience.
Aside from some obvious inconsistencies in the drum programming,
our main issues here are with the scratchy sound of the faux fiddle, along
with the placement (or should we say misplacement) of the bass guitar.
The bass seems to be placed at approximately 2 o'clock in the stereo field
rather than dead center, resulting in a major disconnect with the drum kit.
Suggestions: For a first effort Christopher has done pretty darn well.
I remember my first attempt at multi-tracking, and trust me when I say
that it was nowhere near this successful. That said, our mission statement is to aid and assist, so let's talk fix-me-ups for a bit.
Simplest first: I can't think of any example of country music where
the bass isn't dead center, married to the kick drum. If the off-center
placement was deliberate, it needs to be reconsidered, and if it was
an accident, we have to ask why. Was there a mismatch between his
monitors' volumes? Trace it back through the mix and correct it.
Practice makes perfect in building convincing drum parts. We may
not all be drummers, but solid parts are within all of our reach, especially given today's technology. It's not clear if the drum track here
was a premade loop, but Studio One 2 should have tools for programming something better.
As far as the fiddle is concerned, although the sound was derived
from software, A/Bing it with the sound of actual acoustic instruments
in this genre from commercial releases is a wonderful path toward
understanding and shaping tones. Try it, you'll like it!
Summary: Welcome to the club, Christopher!
Contact: Christopher Hart, cwhtraining@gmail.com

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Recording - March 2015

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