David Duckworth, Savannah Musician & Producer

Music Production Process

Before the singer or instrumentalist comes to the studio:
Most songs have a steady tempo throughout the song, and most feature a vocalist or a player as the center of attention, with instrumental accompaniment in support. For that reason, David feels that it is important to have the singer's voice or player's riff as part of the production as early as possible in the process.


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When David produces a song, he provides a roughly-produced monitor track for his vocalist/player to sing/play to. This track consists of a steady beat of accompaniment that the vocalist/player can easily follow, and the accompaniment must be of reasonable production quality to assure the artistic comfort of the vocalist/player. If an acoustic guitar strumming is being recorded early in the project, then usually only bass and drums/percussion tracks will provide the accompaniment in the player's monitor. For vocalists and horn players, it is necessary to include more involved accompaniment (e.g., a piano), so that the vocalist/player can have a strong pitch reference. These monitor tracks are produced as MIDI sequences, and are mixed to an audio track which will be heard by the vocalist/player as he/she sings/plays into the microphone.

Recording a singer:
Whenever a vocalist sings, he/she wears headphones and sings into a single microphone, possibly shielded by the pop screen (which filters out harsh consonants from closely-placed mics). The recording room must be quiet, so that the only noise that is picked up by the microphone is the singer's voice. The vocalist is given a private mixer, so that he/she can mix the monitor level, the microphone return level, and the microphone reverb level to his/her liking, independent of the recording levels. Although the vocalist may hear luscious reverb as he/she sings, the recording of the voice will be completely dry. The adding of reverb in the production process is postponed, since tracks of dry sounds are more easily manipulated.

All recordings are made to a hard disk as a sound clip in Cakewalk. A picture of the wave form of the recording is immediately available. Should the vocalist make a mistake, the unwanted portion of the recording can be deleted, and the singer can be punched in at the appropriate time. The singer usually sings and is recorded before the punch-in point, and David then edits the clips later to create a seamless track. David is a packrat by nature, and tends to keep all takes of all tracks. The current Cakewalk software allows for 256 tracks, and many takes can be stored in each track. After the recording session, David immediately backs up all the recordings of each song to large bundle files, which are then backed up to a recordable CD-ROM. Although David has never lost data written to a CD-R, he has other artist friends who have; thus, he always makes a second copy of all important data (such as a recording session).

Postproduction:
After all the instrumentalists and/or vocalists have been recorded, the real work begins: postproduction.

Pitch correction: David must make sure the vocal track is in perfect pitch. There are several ways to do this, and David uses both ways. Cool Edit has a pitch bending feature which allows notes or parts of notes to be increased or decreased by any pitch increment. Autotune is faster and easier to use, but less accurate: it automatically rounds each note to the nearest pitch. David typically uses both.
Level correction: Secondly, David must make sure that each note syllable is sung at a reasonable level of volume. Sometimes a vocalist will get excited in a session and belt a note out at a level well above the rest of the take. Not wanting to discourage such artistry in a recording session, David will make sure that such "hot" clips are toned down in level. Likewise, those tender moments when a vocalist becomes quiet or backs away from a microphone must be addressed by increasing the level accordingly.
EQ correction: Thirdly, David must make sure that the EQ (Equalization) is reasonable. This step is usually postponed until more of the instruments have been added in the production.
Reverb: Finally, reverb (reverberation) is added. Even when a dry sound is desired, some reverb is required. Reverb is usually the last thing added to the voice, and it must follow level correction.
Background vocals: Since background vocals can be an important part of a recording, they are usually recorded after the main vocalist (although certain circumstances, such as a gospel vamp, would have them recorded before the main vocalist). They go through the same steps as the single vocal, and sometimes get enhanced digitally to simulate a larger chorus.
Instrumentation: David will add as many instruments to the production as he feels necessary to maintain artistic integrity, and to enhance the focal point of the music (usually a singer or horn player). This usually involves MIDI instrument, played on an electronic keyboard, but it also may include real instruments recorded into a microphone.
MIDI Instrumentation Using Cakewalk: David plays his electronic keyboard to record MIDI sequences into a file using Cakewalk.

When David is satisfied with the mix of audio (processed singers and players) and MIDI (synthesizer sequences), he mixes all of the MIDI tracks to a pair of audio tracks (right and left speakers). He then mixes the audio files and exports them from the Cakewalk software to a pre-mastered external file.

Digital Mastering: David uses Cool Edit to master the final wave file. One of the procedures done to the audio file during mastering is Normalization, wherein the Volume of the file is increased by the maximum factor that will keep all sounds within the mandatory 16-bit bandwidth.
CD-Audio: David uses Ahead Nero to make a master CD, which can be played on a consumer CD player. This CD can be a Normal CD, which puts 2 seconds of silence between each track, or a Disc-at-Once CD, wherein each track seamlessly segues to the next.