Foundation (ZFSBB)
By zirafa on April 17, 2022 8:32 pm
This is a special one...a collaboration that took place at Soapbox with Brendan on cello and a couple chicago house heads / djs. I started out by recording some keyboard (yamaha reface fs), and then drums (4 mics: little blondie for overhead, 421 on snare, 421 on kick, and a homemade 10" subkick mic.
I took a stab at a rough structure, making loops of the keyboards and drums and then the house heads (Fabian, Sonny, and Beto) came in with lots of ideas on the arrangement and how to time changes to keep things interesting (something I've always struggled to figure out with 32-bar type dance tracks). Towards the end there are lots of loop variations, which DJs can use to extend certain sections or could even be sampled to create remixes.
Brendan came through and did a couple beautiful through-composed takes on cello which added a unique texture to what would otherwise be a very bass heavy track.
Lastly, I recorded the bassline through the 0-coast, which at a couple spots was so loud that it rattled my back wall (a good sign?). I find it really hard to mix sub bass, but did my best to balance things so it would hopefully sound best on big speakers, while also not blowing out the ears of headphone listeners.
(Does anybody have any tips on how to mix/engineer dance tracks?)
Overall this was a very fun track to make, and I have to give special thanks to my collaborators who taught me a lot. Hopefully we can do it again soon.
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