In The Studio: How to – Grateful

I use a MacBook Pro with Logic Pro X and a Presonus Audio Box USB interface. I also use a Blue Spark XLR microphone. I recorded the main verse guitar which is finger picking with my microphone placed about 3 feet back from the sound hole, and then I sit at an angle to avoid a lot of build up. Always listening! When mixing I kept it mono up the center as it is the basis of the song. It was rather boomy sounding so I removed a lot of 180-200z from the signal with EQ. No matter which way I mic my Guild acoustic it always has build up at 180hz. I also removed the resonance around 440 Hz.  I double tracked the acoustics and panned left and right for the chorus 4 times and applied the same type of EQ to them as needed. I programmed the drums with Logic’s Drummer feature and I mixed them to be punchy with quick release compression, as well as hi-passing every single track. I boosted 60hz on the kick drum and filtered out the boxy frequencies around 400 Hz. For the bass guitar I recorded it by DI. I applied compression as needed. I normally use a low shelf around 100 to make room for the kick while increasing the bass harmonics around 300 Hz so the bass will be audible on consumer speakers. I also copied the bass and ran it through distortion and hi-passed that up to about 300 Hz so it would add upper harmonics on the bass for audibility as well. For the palm muted electrics I Hi-passed them up to 120z and low passed them around 7000 Hz so the upper harmonics won’t interfere with the vocals and cymbals. For the vocals I use a lot of gain reduction with a low threshold but I use a low ratio, around 2:1. So that you can’t really hear the compression, but it’s there. I EQ out around 250 Hz and 800 Hz and hi pass around 120 Hz. For the vocal reverb, I divided 60,000 by the tempo and divide more to get a more even predelay. For a vocal delay I low passed it around 1k Hz for the last chorus to add more build. The background vocals were heavily compressed and eq’d to fit in. The choruses have minor distortion on the vocals to add intensity. The swell into choruses is my acoustic guitar playing a chord, just reversed.