What software and hardware do we need to produce this song? What is the instrumentation? How is the project organized?
Here is the list of everything I used to record and mix Life:
- A reasonably powerful computer
- An audio interface
- A preamp (optional if the audio interface already has decent built-in preamps)
- A vocal microphone
- A mic stand
- A pop filter
- Monitoring speakers
- Headphones
- A MIDI controller (master keyboard)
- A guitar
- A bass guitar
- All necessary cables
Each instrument track contains its own plugins. Previously, I used to create buses for every track and place the plugins on those buses, but despite the organizational logic, it made tasks more complicated and significantly slowed down the projects. I now opt for a simpler method.
Don't hesitate to create a blank template containing all the tracks and buses you need; this saves you from rebuilding everything for every new project. I describe the template I use on this page.
One last point: the song has a tempo of 75 BPM.
THE BUSES
For the drums
- Each element will have its own bus (kick, snare, hi-hat, ride, etc.), on which various sound processing plugins will be placed (EQ, compression).
- These buses will be routed to a main drum bus.
Drums
Main group buses
- Each type of instrument is routed to a main bus: the rhythm guitars (2 in this case) are routed to a "Rhythm Guitars" main bus, all synths to a "Synths" main bus, etc.
- Each of these main buses is then routed to the Master bus.
Main buses
The Master Bus
- The "main" buses for each instrument group are routed here: the rhythm guitar bus, the lead guitar bus, the synth bus, the vocal bus, the bass bus, and the drum bus.
- The mastering plugins are placed on the Master bus: a multi-band EQ and a limiter to achieve the final sound.
Master bus
Don't worry if this all seems a bit messy or complicated at first; we'll go through the details step by step—it’s not rocket science at all.
|
