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Most Recent Recording The Story Behind The Song: The Making Of "Cold Rain" First, The Song: "Cold Rain" (c) Hestyn And now. . . The Story: While judging for the House of Blues Warped Tour Battle of the Bands recently, I discovered a band called "Hestyn." (I don't hand out adjectives like rare, outstanding and the best band I've seen in the last 20 years, but these all describe "Hestyn.") I wasn't the only one who thought so - "Hestyn" won First Place. After their show, I handed their manager Josh Munz my card. I received a call from Josh the next day. I asked Josh if he could bring the band to California Sound Studios so I could meet the band and hear them play in the studio. They came, they played and they conquered. We all got along well and Josh and the band asked if I could produce and engineer their next recording. I chose their song "Cold Rain" and scheduled a session. I told them to be prepared. They rehearsed that song 8 hours a day for a week before their session. I used the "Old School" approach in recording the band; I had them play together as a band - which meant the lead singer, who also plays guitar, had to bring his guitar with him in the vocal booth. I placed the guitar amps in separate locations in the studio - one in Studio G and the other in the Studio K. I had the drummer count down the song and once they started playing, I turned the click track off. I wanted to enhance their recording only with the sound of an acoustic guitar and added distorted guitar tracks in the second and third chorus. But the performance you hear is the band playing live in the studio, from start to finish. My job was to make them feel comfortable, inspired and to capture their sound correctly. The quality of their musicianship, their songs and their collective sound brought to mind the icons of Rock and Roll; such as Led Zeppelin, Boston, Kansas, Nirvana, etc. So my strategy was to take the time to prepare for the session with enough attention to detail to allow the band to get on with the creative process, unencumbered by technical matters. I carefully chose and placed the location of each player and each microphone. We kept the atmosphere fun but productive. I helped the band with a few suggestions here and there on how to approach the feel of the song. The band played 6 takes of the song, one right after the other. They chose take 6 as the best one of the night. I agreed. In mixing and mastering "Cold Rain," I was going for a timeless track, not dated by any particular sound or mixing tricks. I did minimal editing and post-production; allowing the magic and integrity of the performance to shine through. I wanted only to appropriately "frame" their "painting" - not dip into the pallete. No Auto-Tune was used on this track. For those technically inclined, I approached the mixing with parallel compression on vocals, guitars and bass and used a tiered sidechain compression technique I've developed over the years, to give the recording a live performance feel. I mastered the recording using Cubase 6 and Izotope Ozone 4, employing the use of mid-side technology for precise imaging, eq'ing and overall slight compression. I hope you like the result. I consider this project an honor to be a part of and I thank Josh Munz, "Hestyn's" manager, for calling me and hiring me to record the band. |
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