00:00:23 - So, yeah, let's do the chorus pass,
and then we'll do
a couple of full takes and...
00:00:29 - Cool, okay. So you want to punch
the chorus first?
- Yeah, that will warm me up anyway.
- Awesome.
00:00:52 - All right, partner.
- Let's do it.
00:01:06 - Does that feel good?
- Easy, buddy.
00:01:09 - All right!
- That's good, yeah.
00:01:13 - Let's give it a whirl.
00:01:14 - Hey buddy.
- Hey buddy, let's do it!
So it's just intro, choruses,
and then we'll come back.
00:01:19 - Yeah, and give me a second, I'll just
have to play with the levels a little bit.
00:01:23 - That's fine.
- Let's try the first chorus.
00:01:25 - It's a little warm up anyway.
00:02:18 - Do you mind taking, like, a half-step
back? Then we'll try that again.
00:02:21 - Should I sing... because right now
what I'm singing...
00:02:23 I can either sing that, or I can sing...
00:02:31 - Like, in the middle.
- Let's try the middle.
00:02:33 - I think that might be the move.
All right.
00:03:26 - I think that blends great in that range.
- Yeah.
00:03:29 - Cool. Let's just do it one more time
because I adjusted a few things.
00:03:32 - Cool. You want to do it from the intro?
- Oh, yeah, yeah. You got it.
00:04:49 - I thought that felt great.
- Yeah! Next one.
00:05:14 - Do you want to try the lead vocal?
- Let's do it.
00:06:36 - Eli, I changed a couple things
and you're on it now.
00:06:39 - Let's take it from the top.
- All right.
00:06:41 - I will say one thing,
on the live vocal take
you kind of did
the first verse a little bit...
00:06:46 you didn't let loose so much on the
first verse and that was kind of hip.
00:06:49 - Yeah.
- First pre-chorus too. Here we go.
00:11:33 - That's it! I'm done.
- That was a great take!
- Yeah, that's it.
00:11:37 - I think that's it.
- Yeah, come on in.
00:11:38 - It felt great to me.
- Come on in.
00:11:40 Eli just did the first vocal take
and it was it.
00:11:42 Once we got the levels, he just sang
his heart out and we got the one.
00:11:46 But Eli is a very dynamic singer
so there's two things here that I would
say that on most sessions
I would change immediately, and that is
how close he was singing to the RCA.
00:11:55 That's a ribbon microphone, so you get...
00:11:58 - Sorry, buddy!
- You're fine. When you get that close...
00:12:00 if you noticed, I had the mic
a little bit higher and angled.
00:12:03 When you have it higher
and angled, like I said,
it helps with the plosives
and with the 'esses',
and it makes the microphone
a little bit brighter.
00:12:10 Eli knows how to work
a microphone really well
and a 77 is a ribbon,
so when you get really close
it emphasizes the low end.
00:12:17 It works great for Eli's voice.
00:12:19 Like when we talked about
all the Al Green records,
when he sang really upon it
it helps with the higher stuff,
the falsetto stuff,
it thickens it up.
00:12:27 If you have a deep voice
it can make you kind of woofy
and you would move the microphone
back to address it.
00:12:33 At first I thought it was too close
when Eli was upon it,
but it sounded great hearing it
in the track, so I didn't change it.
00:12:38 And the second thing is
I've worked with Eli before so I know
he can go from here to here vocally.
00:12:45 As I mentioned before,
we both love the old soul records
and one of the great things
about those soul records
is when Aretha got up there, or Otis,
it would distort a little bit.
00:12:54 And as long as it's a very
musical distortion
and not like a digital distortion
I think it adds to the song,
and in this particular song it adds to it.
00:13:02 And it's kind of what we
both want anyway,
so I purposely ran the mic hot
knowing that when he gets up there...
00:13:09 I'm running the preamp hot
so when he gets up there
it gives it that kind of
old-school overloading.
00:13:17 That's part of why I picked the pre
and why I picked the compressor,
because I knew that musically
it would saturate in a way I like.
00:13:23 - From a singer's perspective,
for me at least, when you hear it back
in the headphones
it makes you feel like you're doing
your job right.
00:13:30 - Yeah, yeah.
- Because when you're quiet
- you want to feel the presence.
- Yeah.
00:13:34 - But you don't want it
to be freaking out,
and when you dig in you want to feel
yourself digging in.
00:13:39 - Yeah.
00:13:40 - So, at least for me as a singer,
I like to hear
that I'm, you know, causing that.
00:13:46 - Yeah.
- It is feedback for me
from a vocalist's perspective.
00:13:51 - Awesome, yeah. And if we
were doing an Eli jazz record
- or a bluegrass record...
- I wouldn't do that.
00:13:56 - He would be off the mic and...
- Maybe bluegrass, I don't know.
00:13:59 But for what we're going for
and for what our...
00:14:04 our templates from before
that we love so much,
that was what was awesome,
when the mic distorted...
00:14:10 or the preamp, I should say,
distorted a little bit going in.
00:14:13 So that's why you didn't see me
scrambling and changing channels,
and freaking out and telling Eli,
"We got to punch something."
Because A, I knew he would be into it too,
and like he said, he was feeding off
and that's why he... hearing that
in his headphones the way he did,
that's why he would dig in during certain
moments, so we'd know what it was doing.
00:14:31 - Absolutely.
- It's kind of like
when you give the singer that
while they're singing...
00:14:35 when Elvis got the slapback echo
he would play off that, that's how
he'd do those "baby, baby."
He would do it because he knew
he could hear the slapback feed,
enough of it in.
00:14:44 When you give the artist that kind of...
00:14:46 as long as it's what they want
in the headphones
and you give them that kind of playground
they'll do things they want to do.
00:14:52 If it was just a dry vocal,
a clean vocal, you know...
00:14:55 - Well, and not only that.
I mean, I think that
you obviously saw from the get-go that
I was invested in this particular take,
so stopping me would have been
a poor choice, I think.
00:15:04 - Yeah, even if the distortion was bad.
- Yeah.
00:15:07 - You don't stop it while he's going.
00:15:09 And then you address it afterwards when
he hears it back or something like that.
00:15:12 You never want to stop it
if they're into it,
so that's a big part of it.
00:15:17 - Cool! Let's hear what we did.
- Let's check it out.
00:17:46 - Wow!
- So good.
00:17:48 - We must use reverb for that.
- Oh yeah, yeah.
00:17:56 - I think the first verse
is a little shaky, but...
00:18:00 - In my head I was, like...
maybe that's the original take
because there's something about
that original take.
00:18:05 - I agree.
00:18:22 - In these choruses...
00:18:24 those guys are going to be upfront,
and I'm going to be in the corner.
00:18:27 - Way in the back, yeah.
- Yeah.
00:19:55 - Pretty.
00:20:04 - I'm a big fan of...
00:20:07 - ...all the quartet stuff.
- Yeah.
00:20:09 - There's always two leads,
like the guy at the beginning
who sets the story up,
and then the guy at the end
who does the freak-outs.
00:20:15 - And I like to be both those guys!
- Yeah, yeah.
00:20:25 - I mean, I think between them we have it.
- Yeah.
00:20:28 - What do you think?
- I think...
00:20:30 to me it's maybe just the original
live take on the first verse,
- and maybe the pre-chorus. We'll see.
- Yeah.
00:20:36 - And then this new take
from verse two definitely.
00:20:38 - It's kind of how I feel. I mean,
maybe there is a couple of things
in the first take, but if you want to...
00:20:42 I don't know if you want to
comp it now, or later.
00:20:45 - Let's do it real quick.
- Want to just do it?
- I just want to slide this in there.
- Yeah, try to slide that in.
00:20:52 - There's something from that live take...
- Yeah, I liked...
00:20:55 There were a lot of parts
from that live take that I did like.
00:20:58 I wasn't, like, planning
to get rid of all of it.
00:21:02 This is how we do our vocal comps.
00:21:05 - Unified team.
00:21:07 - No, I mean, it's like...
00:21:09 I hate the...
00:21:10 like, focusing on every word or syllable.
00:21:13 I would so much rather
just sing a bunch of takes
and cut them up. I mean,
I'd rather get a full take if you can.
00:21:18 - Yeah.
- That's the goal, right?
I mean, it's obviously
a different approach than...
00:21:24 - than making pop records or whatever.
- Yeah, yeah.
00:21:26 - And we're not going to tune anything.
00:21:28 - There is a...
00:21:29 there's a consciousness thing too.
Like, for me,
you sing differently
when you sing live with a band.
00:21:34 - Sure.
- And so it's finding...
00:21:36 like that first verse he did live with
the band, there's something that's like
softer and really relaxed about it
that really speaks
to the first verse, I think.
00:21:45 And then it's cool that he does...
like when we talked about the quartet,
there are kind of two voices:
there's the plaintiff Eli
- and then there's the...
- Right, right.
00:21:53 - ...the driven Eli.
And so it's cool that...
00:21:55 we're talking about the form of the guitar
and so they get cinematic
as the song goes.
00:21:59 He just sang a take
that he and I were super-excited about,
and he said, "I think that was it."
So, you know,
I think you really got to listen
to the artist instead of...
00:22:11 like, I kind of knew in my head
that the first verse
from the original take was better,
but he was just so excited
and you can't go,
"Well, let's do the first
verse again," or...
00:22:20 To me it's like,
let him come in and listen,
and he'll hear it himself too.
00:22:24 And it's better for him
to hear it and think,
"I think I can do
that first verse better,"
instead of squashing the positivity
that was just there
- and go, "Do that first verse."
- Yeah, absolutely.
00:22:33 - And so there are different...
00:22:36 and it's different with every singer.
00:22:38 So you got to find out
how each vocalist likes to work
and what they're comfortable with,
and work around that
as opposed to your scheduled...
00:22:44 "No, we must comp this first verse
and then comp..."
So I think you really have to change
your workflow to the artist and...
00:22:50 Because I've worked with Eli before and we
figured it out pretty quickly, on day one,
on the last album, and we knew
how to handle this one too.
00:22:56 But everyone works differently,
and I think as a producer or engineer
you have to be kind of...
00:23:02 like play it all, you have to kind of mold
yourself to their workflow.
00:23:05 There are times when you need to step in
and push an artist, or not,
but you really got to figure out
what makes them get the best vocal takes
and work that way, as opposed to, like,
having a set way of doing things.
00:23:15 So that's how we work with Eli.
00:23:17 - But then again, I also appreciate you
pushing me to sing live with the band.
00:23:21 And play guitar, which sometimes
I necessarily wouldn't have done,
like on the last record.
There were a bunch of songs
for which we used both the guitar
and the live vocals.
00:23:30 - Yeah, yeah.
00:23:31 - Because they were good enough,
because like you said,
it's a different thing playing
with everybody together in the room.
00:23:36 And we can always come back
and redo the vocal or redo the guitar.
00:23:39 - Yeah, yeah.
- So there's no reason not to do it.
00:23:41 - There's nothing to be precious
about in the studio.
00:24:09 What we were just discussing was,
we put the verse one and chorus one
from the live take in,
we put it on the new comp.
So right now the comp basically
is just the live take
from the intro to chorus one,
and then from verse two out
is the first take you just sang,
and we love that.
00:24:27 There's something relaxed
about that early vocal,
but starting on verse two
it's cool how he kind of digs in more
and it builds. So, like we said,
the song builds.
00:24:35 And there's a moment we both loved
from the live take that we remembered...
00:24:39 - A vocal ad-lib.
- A vocal ad-lib on the live take
that we're going to just put
into this new comp,
and I think we've got the comp
at this point.
00:24:46 - Yeah, I think that'll be it.
00:24:47 - There's things that... you know,
we both just go completely off of feel,
and there's things that you remember
instinctually from the take.
00:24:56 When you're doing a take
you remember it in your fingers,
you remember it in your mind,
like, "I messed up there."
Even though the engineer
might say it's great,
you have to go back and listen
because in your fingers
you thought you messed up.
00:25:08 It's the same vocally, so there's things
he's remembering we...
00:25:11 when you don't hear them,
that's something you got to put in there
because we miss it. So we'll find that
one little vocal ad-lib and pop it in.
00:25:17 And I think we got the comp
and the song at this point.
00:25:20 - I think that will be it.
00:25:21 - So we'll find it real quick. I'll play
back the live take on this chorus
and we'll find the ad-lib.
00:25:46 That's our puppy.
00:25:48 So I'm just going to drag
this down to our new comp.
00:25:52 - And we'll listen.
- I imagine a little puppy, sitting well.
00:26:14 - Is it too much falsetto stuff in a row?
- Yeah, let's see if we slide
what was here on the live take
and see if we have too many...
00:26:37 - Awesome!
- Great! I think we got it.
00:26:40 - Yeah, buddy.
- So we'll go to "That's Love."
- Want to listen down one more time?
- Yeah.
00:26:44 - And do a little...
00:26:45 I want to just get a sense
of the background vocals
and how they'll sit in the chorus.
00:26:51 - You want to boost them up there?
- Yeah, and then...
00:26:54 Do you want to mess just a little bit with
the background vocals on the second verse?
I just want to make sure
they're going to work.
00:27:01 - Yeah, at least muting that first one,
maybe. Let's see.
00:27:04 - I don't know, the "coming back to me"?
- The "coming back to me."
- I kind of like it.
00:27:08 I feel they just need to be,
like, super-wet.
00:27:11 - That's easy.
- Just that.
00:27:33 - It's better already.
- Nice.
00:27:41 - I think that's great.
00:27:46 - Yeah, I'll ride the reverbs up on them.
- Cool.
00:27:49 All right, let's just check it out.
00:28:03 - Just this one?
- Both faders.
00:28:29 - There it is.
- That was awesome!
- Yeah!
- So, I'm cool with all of that.
00:28:35 And we have some mix notes.
00:28:36 - Yeah, some mix things, but I mean,
I think as far as tracking goes we're...
00:28:40 - So what I would like to do
is just print a rough mix
and we'll have you do the fade again,
and that way when we mix it
we can make sure it's this but better.
00:28:48 - Ride the fade, yeah.
- Instead of...
00:28:50 Because once we switch to another room
we will lose the...
00:28:53 - Yeah, yeah, sure.
- ...thing.
00:28:56 So I'm going to patch in
and print a rough mix.
00:29:19 17-18.
00:29:57 What I'm doing right now,
what I patched in is...
00:29:59 I had the chambers,
chamber A, chamber C,
and the stereo plate
on the monitor mix on the board
so I can quickly do Aux Sends
and build a reverb chain.
00:30:09 We finished this song,
we think we are in a great spot
where we don't need any more overdubs,
we love the vocal,
so it's ready to mix.
00:30:16 It's in a really great place right now,
I love how wet the vocal is,
I love kind of where we built it.
00:30:22 Obviously it needs some rides
and just some little things.
00:30:25 When I mix I don't like to just
pull the faders down and start at zero,
I want to start kind of how I remember it,
so a lot of times I'll build the mix
In The Box as I'm going.
00:30:34 This I kept on the board because we had
it going really good and sounding great,
so what I'm doing is I'm printing
a rough mix on Pro Tools,
which I didn't label because I'm silly.
00:30:44 But I'm printing a rough mix of exactly
how it is sitting right now.
00:30:47 I also patched in the chambers
and the plates
in some Pro Tools channels
so I can print them.
00:30:52 I've got access to them in the mix room,
but the way they're happening
right now is awesome
and you never know when a plate goes down
or a chamber goes down or whatever.
00:31:01 So just printing it as it is now
is pretty cool
because if it stays just like it was
I'll be pretty happy,
and tomorrow I can use the printed track
or I can put it in Input
and keep messing with it.
00:31:12 So I just have a habit of printing
everything as I go just so I have it
and I have a memory of where we loved it.
00:31:18 We loved it at this moment
so my mix should be this times two,
it should be a little bit better,
but this will remind me
of where we left it at
so I don't screw it up, hopefully.
00:31:30 And also, Eli is going to do a fade-out.
00:31:32 And on our last record
Eli did all the fades
because he likes to do the fades,
so I'll have him do the fades in this
so when I do the final mix,
if he's not here, I can do
the fades just like he liked.
00:31:42 - Oh! And then Pro Tools screws up.
- Except Pro Tools says "No."
- Pro Tools can't even print a track.
00:31:47 Damn it.
00:32:33 - What if we do it for real?
We'll get both tracks
at the same time, equally.
00:32:38 - You do the right, I do the left.
00:32:41 - Awesome!
- All right.
00:32:44 How long is that, by the way?
- Let me print, I'm just going to print
the reverbs until the end just in case.
00:32:50 And then I'll tell you,
I'll tell you.
00:33:08 - Harold!
- I wish that man was my grandfather.
- Yeah, he's so good.
Matt Ross-Spang is a Multi award-winning engineer, mixer, and producer. His first brush with greatness began at only 14 years old when he received 2 hours of studio time at Sun Studios in Memphis, TN, for his birthday.
He went on to intern at Sun Studios when he was 16 and learned what it meant to bring recording back to its roots. Matt now operates out of the newly renovated Studio B at Sam Phillips Recording in Memphis, TN, which he now calls “Southern Groove.”
Among the many incredible entries in his discography, Ross-Spang was hired in 2016 by Sony Records to mix 18 previously unreleased songs by Elvis Presley from his historic 1976 sessions from the Jungle Room at Graceland.
Known for his unique taste and ability to preserve old school recording techniques and bring them into today’s music, Matt Ross-Spang has worked with some of the world’s most cherished artists from the most legendary studios in recording history.
