Over lockdown, my band Chameleon Lady was approached by community organisation ‘One Dalkeith’ to produce 16 videos around a minute and a half in length to release each week to keep spirits high during the toughest parts of lockdown. We had to say yes as we all felt that spending a couple hours a week doing something more creative than sitting on the sofa eating snacks and binging Netflix would be a better use of our time creatively and to allow the bands social presence to grow.
Naivety led me to think that we would be able to pick the song, record the parts, mix the audio and put the videos together within a few hours, however reality set in very quickly as to how long I personally would have to set aside each week to make sure everything was done to a certain standard and released in time. After the first couple of videos I decided it was no longer viable for me to put the videos together as well as mixing the audio, so I delegated the putting together of the videos to either Caitlin, Tom, or whoever was free that week. This allowed me to focus solely on the audio of the videos.
As we were all recording our parts individually in our own homes, we decided to try just using iPhones as the means of recording both sound and visual. I already knew it was possible to get semi decent sounding audio from vocals as we had done a few vocal covers using iPhones such as this cover of Take My Hand by Skerryvore found below.
We were sceptical of whether the quality would be up to scratch for our instruments. After spending a couple of hours working on the sound in ProTools I was able to produce something that was useable for this project we were set using iPhones for vocals, keys, guitars and fiddle, with a one mic set up for drums and a DI bass.
I found that after the first couple of videos were done, the time spent to mix each track dramatically dropped. This is partly because I had gotten used to the harsh frequencies that the iPhone would accent, and it just became an automatic process to filter out the low and super high frequencies. There was still a bit of time needed to be spent to make the mix as clear as possible without any strange artefacts that would normally be caused by clipping.
Each song was slightly different with regards to what effects were used (depending on what style the song was) however the Bear Claws by The Academic cover we did was a fairly simple one so I will use this cover and ProTools project as an example as to what processing I was using.
Lead Vocals
I started with a low cut up to 175Hz and then a slight cut to 517Hz. This was to get rid of the low rumble and boxiness. I then did a high cut to 11KHz. I normally wouldn’t cut the super highs in vocals, but I felt it was necessary as iPhones don’t capture these frequencies terribly well.
To complete the chain, I added a simple Waves CLA-2A compressor that is compressing moderately, saturation through the SoundToys Decapitator plug-in, and a simple delay.
I then used my vocal trick to thicken the vocal by sending the dry signal to 4 different pitch busses, each of which is affecting the pitch by multiples of 3 each time. The first one is -3 cent left, plus 3 cent right, the second one is -6 cent right, plus 6 left, the third -9 left, plus 9 right and finally the fourth is -12 right, and plus 12 left. This means the pitch difference is even in the left and right ear. I slowly add these to the mix to make the vocal sound a lot thicker. There is finally a simple reverb.
Backing Vocals
The backing vocals had to be cut from the fiddle track and then similar processes went on. Another low cut up to 287Hz this time and a high cut to 14KHz. This was to stop the vocals from clashing as there was no panning in any of these videos as the target demographic was people watching quickly on a phone or laptop. There was then a similar compressor and saturator with some reverb.
Fiddle
The fiddle track has similar cuts to the vocal tracks and a slightly stronger compressor to help the quieter notes stand out. I then put a multi-band compressor to squash the sound a little bit more to push it out front ahead of the organ and guitar. Finally, there is a delay and reverb finishing of the channel strip.
Organ
The hammond has the same high and low cuts with a cut at 11KHz this time. It then has some light compression and saturation, some reverb and some chorus.
Guitar
The guitars were split into 4 different tracks. The original guitar had a bit of dirt from the amp. I EQ’d them all the same with a low and high cut and then a slight high boost and mid cut. I compressed all but the delayed guitar with a CLA-2A compressor and the delayed guitar with a BF-76 because I preferred the way the plucks would be accented with the slightly brighter compressor. I then saturated the same three guitars compressed by the CLA-2A with a decapitator. The final guitar was a lot more saturated than the other two. The delayed guitar has a large delay on it (duh). All of the guitars went through the same simple reverb, while the first and last guitars went through a chorus to make them sound thicker.
Drums
I found the drums the hardest to mix as I only used one condenser microphone to capture the sound. I found the best mic placement was about 5 meters away, low to the ground, closer to the hi hat and facing the bass drum. This allowed the kick to not be overpowered by the cymbals. In the channel strip I used OTT first of all to tone down the cymbals and boost the kick drum so there was a nice thick kick. The snare punched through surprisingly well. I then saturated them slightly to make them sound rawer and more alive. The whole drum signal was parallel compressed by a CLA-2A because of its warm sound. After some playing around, I found the drums sounded much better when they had limited processing.
Bass
The bass was DI’d, so it was definitely the best raw sounding instrument out of them all. I removed some of the clickiness with a high cut and boosted around 60Hz to give some low end to the track.
I compressed heavily using CLA-2A to even out all of the notes and lightly saturated to add some high-end sparkle. I then used Radiator to warm up the body of the track.
Master
On the master track I kept it super simple with a tiny bit of multi-band compression, a bit of stereo spread, and some limiting.
I found that with these videos, the key was to keep them as simple as possible in order to save time, but also to produce the best sounding material. I had to realise that I was working with mainly iPhone quality videos, so I couldn’t expect it to sound as sonically good as something produced in a studio would sound.
Overall it was a great experience and it allowed me to practice working within a time limit with other guidelines affecting how I could work. If it wasn’t for lockdown, I would have suggested recording these videos through good microphones spending time to make it sound perfect, however I don’t think they would have necessarily sounded any better.
You can check out all of the videos we did on the Chameleon Lady YouTube Channel.
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