Production Diary Three. T.Y.C - Over & Over

T.Y.C - Over & Over.
This track isn't really a dark type of track it is only a little bit. This is actually more of an old school type of track. This instrumental was also made for my mixtape 'The Keys'. The rapper T.Y.C is a rapper from London. I sent him this instrumental so he could produce this track. This track is called Bring Back The Old School the concept of this track is about his memories and the past (1996) times.

Equipment

The mic that was used for the vocals was the Audio Technica 2020. The advantages are its cheap. It Doesn't pick up much noise. Also It has decent quality. There's not really many advantages, Disadvantages when recording singers who are quite loud and at a close proximity the mic distorts a lot. It doesnt pick up lows well makes the vocal sound hallow it has a built in high end boost which can sometimes ruin the vocals. Comparing this to the C414, I would probably use the C414 only because the quality out of C414 is so much better, if you have a loud singer it wouldn't damage the microphone or cause any harm upon the mix however the Audio Technica has a build in high end boost which is not really good.

I used the M-Audio Midi keyboard for this production, as everything is midi and there is no live Instruments contained in this track.

The making of the Instrumental

The main elements of this track are the samples and the vocals.

I used a sample called 'Feel the fire' and chopped it up, then took away the parts I didn't like. One of the parts I used sounds like strings being chopped while the other one is a guitar. The instrumental is quite repetitive since it's an old school type of track. I used a 'Stereo Delay' on the sample to cause an echo effect but you can't hear it that much, I also used Reverb on it as well.
In the chorus I reversed a certain part of the vocal and added a pitch shifter, to change the pitch. I did this because I want the sample to be that recognisable, I also added the 'feel the fire' sample into the chorus as well but it's also pitched.

The drums I used were the drums from the logic library, I EQ'ed one drum as the punch kick and then I layered the same kick but this time I made the kick have more bass. So I could have a punchy kick and a bass kick separate. But I did add distortion onto the bass kick as a bus. These kicks were also compressed but they weren't compressed that much and I did use the same circuit type as the one on my other track 'Uriel - You'.

The bass of the track is also there except it isn't that loud, it's a simple bass played with about 2/3 notes. I got the bass instrument from the Logic library kit also.

Mixing.
When I mixed the Instrumental I turned everything low and mixed each instrument differently, I made the samples and the drum beat to stand out more, since it's the main elements of the instrumental.

Mixing the Vocals.
Although the vocals were mixed, I didn't mix it alone, my other friend producer recorded the vocals first and mixed a bit of it first as well. Then he sent it over to me to finish mixing and mastering it. When I mixed the vocals I EQ'ed it so I took some of the high end off and raised 1.5dB to 250 Hz, I then added a bit of air around 1.5k Hz to 2.5dB. But since it's a rapper there wasn't that much to do, since the frequencies of his voice wasn't that hard to mix. For the chorus (of the track) I added a plug in called the chorus which doubled the vocal and made it a bit more stereo.

Mastering.
When I was mastering I could hear that kicks (The bass kick) was clashing with vocal a bit, so I Eq'ed the bass kick around 70-80 Hz to -5.0 dB, this whipped off the bass kick a bit but not much, which sounded really nice. Afterwards I compressed it by adding a multi pressor to balance the mix out, for the kicks, snare and the vocals they all needed to be balanced.
I sent a bus for the distortion the drive wasn't up that much it was raised to about 5.5 dB and the frequency was around 900 Hz.
Afterward I added the finishing touch the 'adaptive limiter'! This turned up the whole mix, I raised the input scale to about 5.4dB and the gain to 5.5 dB. Luckily nothing didn't distorted!