written by chris cottam

Production Notes

Here is an account of the recording and mixing process of "Everything and a Day" that Mark has asked me to write for anyone who is interested in such things. Mostly it details my own involvement with the project, and the processes we had to go through to get to where the album ended up. I hope it is of interest to some people. My apologies if it gets a bit techy. - Chris Cottam - March 20th 2004

Tracking

Everything and a Day was originally going to be released sometime in the middle of 2003. The project began before I had even joined the band as keyboard player. I found my way into the band via Marcus Duck (Bass), and we were soon playing gigs regularly in Brighton and London. Mark had already begun recording in his basement flat for a line up of songs that included popular live tracks 'Lyddia' and 'Tides of Time' that didn't make the final cut.

The recording was done on two AKAI DSP12's and one AKAI DSP16. This gave us a total of 40 separate recording tracks to work with.

AKAI DSP12

The recording began with the drums which were recorded in Mark's home studio situated in his flat. Mark utilised that well known method of using a click track whilst miming the song to keep Nick from losing his place in the song(!). Not exactly ideal conditions but those drum takes were the basis upon which the rest of the band did their playing.

We subsequently all went round to Mark's home studio to add our parts to the recordings. Ideas were often spontaneous and new parts were frequently being written in the studio as we went along. Eventually we had all recorded a part on all of the songs and Mark set to mixing them. It was a feat he had achieved with high success on his solo acoustic album 'One Way Ticket' and so he felt there was no reason why the same should not apply here. After several nights of mixing with no sleep Mark set off to a mastering session at Hiltongrove, London, in May of 2003. Within an hour it became clear to Mark that the standard of the mixes was not as good as he wanted them to be, and he cut the session short, vowing to return in "six weeks or so" to finish mastering the album after he had done some quick remixing. It was always his intention for 'Everything and a Day' to be a well produced, full band album that could sit comfortably on a music store shelf alongside any album you could care to mention. It clearly wasn't in that kind of state that day.

Dan Sherrington warming up in the studio corridoor

This is where I come in...

Knowing that I had been producing radio jingles professionally for some two years, Mark consulted me on what I thought could be done for the sound of the album. I had a good listen on his AKAI multitrack machines, and one of the main concerns I had was that I felt the sound of the drums was a bit weak due to the manner in which they had been recorded. I suggested augmenting the drums with samples on the Kick Drum and Snare Drum to give the tracks more punch. This process can be quite easily be automated on a PC so we spent a day transferring drums and samples backwards and forwards between my computer and the AKAI's in the hope that we could improve the sound. To some extent it worked. Nick thought that the sound of the drums was much improved and it certainly gave the mixes a cleaner sound, but something still wasn't right. The mixes sounded cluttered and claustophobic. I then suggested that we transfer a few of the songs into my ProTools LE system so that I could work in a familiar environment and diagnose the problems and perhaps even try a few demo mixes. Mark agreed and we set about transferring the whole of 'Everything and a Day', 'Sweet Soul', and 'If I Could Fly' onto my computer.

Marcus Duck

Transferring the songs

Transferring the songs between the AKAI and the ProTools LE system was a very time consuming process. Only two tracks could be transferred at a time, which often meant that we had to do twenty passes of a song before we could get all the data across. Due to work commitments this meant that it was difficult to transfer more than one or two songs a day. The original three tracks that we transferred took a particularly long time as we were working out the methods required for synchronisation of the two machines.

Diagnosing the problems

After we got the three songs into my system I set about trying to find out what was wrong. The first song I worked on was the title track 'Everything and a Day'. I spent some time EQing (the process whereby the sonic 'tone' of the track is worked out) and applying compressors (compressores are used on all modern recordings to give the overall sound more 'punch') to the sounds to even out the feel and crisp up the sounds. I also applied reverbs (echo) to give an enhanced sense of space to the recordings.

The results were a vast improvement but for some reason it still didn't work. I then decided to start over again building up the mixes from basic principles: Bass, Drums, Acoustic Guitar and Voice. I made sure that each of those instruments sounded as good as I could manage at the time, and when I put them together it sounded great. It was only when I began to add the rest of the parts that I realised what was wrong: We had vastly overcomplicated the songs.

nick 'the sticks' robinson

Revelations

Instead of carefully considering arrangements and whether or not each of the parts that we were laying down were actually needed we had simply played right the way through all of the songs. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but looking back I realise that it was pretty chaotic.

With this new knowledge in mind I went through the three songs I had, and deleted ANY sections or parts that I thought were unneccesary to convey the song. The change of focus from a consistantly 'full-on' band sound, to a more considered, stipped back sound was quite a revelation to Mark and I. I worked on the three songs and sent mp3 files to him containing my new rough mixes of the songs within a few weeks of doing the transfers.

The most succesful mix that week was 'Sweet Soul' which ended up on the album exactly as it was recorded originally in Mark's home studio back in the Autumn of 2002 (witht the esception of his lead vocals which were recorded in February of 2004). Off the back of those three mixes Mark asked me to mix the rest of the album. Thinking it would probably only take me a few weeks to get all of the songs mixed I agreed.

The 'Tides of Time' wait for no man, but they do appear to wait for albums...

A Few Weeks? How wrong can one man be? The quality of the sound kept getting higher as I learned and developed my own techniques for mixing the songs. This extended the project in one manner but then Mark began to throw about the idea of putting some new songs onto the album, properly recorded this time, and losing some of the others ('Lyddia', 'Never Find Peace', 'Tides of Time', 'Everybody', 'Love and Money' and a cover of the Bruce Springsteen song, 'Janey Don't You Lose Heart'). So whilst all this mixing and rearranging was going on we were back in the studio tracking several new songs ('Coming Home', 'Feelin' High' and album closer 'Dreaming Our Lifetime Away'). Some of these songs ('Hear You Calling', 'My Friend' and another Springsteen cover song entitled, 'She's The One') the band had never heard before.

Red Room Studios - January 2004

Towards the end of the project it became clear that the target we had set ourselves was not achievable using the drum sound we had. It was just too weak. So Mark decided to fork out the cash to hire a studio for a day and rerecord the drums for the whole of the album. We also recorded most of the parts for three new songs for the album : 'Feelin' High', 'Coming Home' and 'My Friend'.

This was the first time the band had been back together in six months or so and fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, everyone was on top form and in a good mood. The yoghurt incident only helped to lighten the mood even more (Inside Joke). At the end of the day the takes were all burned to CDRs for me to take home and import into my system. Upon hearing the improvement in vocal quality using a high quality mic in a proper studio, Mark returned to Red Room Studios two days later to record some new vocal takes. This led to the final mixing stages for the album.

click here for 'The Mix' history