Introduction
Stick Up Brains here with another sneak peek into the colourful metaverse of all that is Stick Up.
We have been working on a new song with the fabulous @ambrosechappel, and this is your opportunity to see how the Stick Up Magic is created. Please comment and ask questions; we love to chat about music, hive, life, anything really!
This song, the foundation of which was laid by @ambrosechappel, made us think of those wonderful Rod Temperton productions. If you don't know him as a writer and producer here is his wikipedia page, he has worked on so many great songs (Yes you do know at least one of them 😜)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Temperton
The Song
You can find it on soundcloud here:
https://soundcloud.com/stick-up-boys/do-what-i-want-sneak-peek-premaster?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing
Please leave a comment on anything you like or think we should change.
The Set up
Photos from Cubase 10.5:
Here you can see the drums in orange, the bass in yellow (verse and chorus on separate tracks as they were eq'd slightly differently). The synths are green and the guitar is blue. You should be able to make out the volume automation on the guitar, which I used to duck it out in the choruses when the vocal is going.
Here you can see the 30-odd vocal tracks. Pretty standard for us.
And lastly all the saxophone parts:
Drums (in orange)
Pretty straight set up on this one with a bouncy four on the floor and cheeky off beat hats!
Bass (in yellow)
An absolute smasher of a bass line by Ambrose here. I just did a bit of subtractive eq on it to make a little room for the kick and snare.
Synths (in greens and purples)
These were all provided by Ambrose. I did a fair bit of re-arranging and some tidy-up eq to help everything sit better in the mix.
Guitar (in blue)
Another part from Ambrose here and it is very cool. This was a little tricky to mix as the gate on the recording was a little heavy-handed, but it sits nicely in the pocket once everything gets going. I used a bit of reverb and chorus to push the guitar back a little. I find this combination often works better than chorus or reverb on their own.
Vocals (in pink)
The lead vocal is from the one and only Front (@stickupboys), with backing vocals courtesy of the angelic Driver(@stickupfilm), who has a disconcerting habit of singing opera whilst we flee from our latest escapade in the Stick Up Van.
The processing on the vocals was fairly standard, with a fairly hefty dose of reverb on Driver's backing vocals. Unusually I had to a bit of midrange subtractive eq on the lead vocal, perhaps Front's voice was little hoarse from shouting at Driver to slow down...
Sax (in orange)
We are lucky enough to get the wonderful Charlotte Glasson in the studio from time to time. She is an amazingly talented sax and brass player. We just sing or play something to her and she makes it come to life in about 5 minutes. A truly excellent musician. We love you Charlotte!
My mixing highlight
The big hitters on this tune are the sax parts, and that cheeky driving bass from Ambrose. Neither of these parts needed much at the mixing stage to make them work.
As always, the better the recording, the easier the mixing!
Very happy to hear any thoughts or comments about the mix and dicuss equipment.
Big up all the music on Hive!
Stick Up Brains
Check out more about us and follow us everywhere.....https://linktr.ee/StickUpBoys
