Let Em In
For my Large Ensemble Project I am doing is a cover of Paul McCartney and Wings "Let Em In" from their 1976 album "Wings At The Speed of Sound." It is the opening track of the album and the second single from their album. This cover project I am going through is figure out what kind of instruments go together in my playing style than the original (Well almost similar). So here is the information of recording the song and put it all together.
Instruments, Gear, and Recording
Upon my gear choices with the makings of my large ensemble project, I have 9 pictures taken of what instruments I used, mics, and plugins. The first pic is the vibraphone. Which this is the instrument for the opening chord of the song. I recorded this through my phone and messed up the first take, and restart for the second take was the best opening. I have to use the pedal to provide reverb while having an hard mallet to play on it. In my opinion, it sounded the same as the original recording. The second and third pic are the drums and plugins for recording the basic track using the drums and provide proof sound surround the area. I have four mics for the drums: One for the Overheads which only has one mic (sE X1 A); One for the Hi-Hat (AKG C1000s); One for the Snare (Shure SM57); And One for the kick drum (Electro-Voice RE320); All of them connected to Snake B and all of the plugins are connected to Audient and provide phantom power. The fourth pic is the bass guitar along side with the Roland Jazz Chorus Amp which is where I recorded bass guitar for the song by myself and the mic I choose is the Electro-Voice RE320. The fifth pic shows the Plugin to dbx and have to use phantom power. (Note I truly connected one of the four inputs by mistake and had a brain fart forgetting to connect input 5.) The sixth pic shows here that the song does to have a bit of marching to it. I even included one of the Vulcan Marching Band's Snares to record plus the Low-Tom to record overdubs for percussion. I did them one at a time, first the snare, then the low-tom. The mics I chose for the snare and the low-tom is the AKG C1000S for Snare and the Shure SM58 for the low-tom. I even put drum rolls on the Tom to play a roll from piano to forte. And so as the seventh pic where I connect the plugins to Audient as well. And the 8th and 9th pic, I recorded my lead vocal with the Shure SM58 and recorded it only one take. The plug in is only on Audient with phantom power. And finally, there is no guitar for the song just a nice drum, bass, and overdubs percussion to do the job well done. For the horns and piano, I found a website that has the full score in MIDI which is free and literally throughout the project I have been working on trying to find the right path until help was needed and found what I needed. The only thing I have to use is the piano, the trombone solo, saxes (alto and tenor), flute, and mute trumpet and using the Xpands plus a lot of AUX inputs to send the MIDI tracks to the inputs to include Instrument plugins. Knowing I realized something was off, I once got back into my session to finish up editing MIDI tracks, I noticed that my audio tracks were deleted because I had the same session with the audio tracks and I deleted it replacing with the new saved session and realized the audio tracks for the drums, bass, and percussion were deleted. I knew I was kinda shocked about it but knowing that it would not be a big deal because I have to re-record the same way as it used to be and keep time with the tempo as well.
Mixing and Post-Production
After creating the tracks one by one for the project to fit everything in one place, the mixing session had begun in the tracking room where I recorded my tracks and everything else. Everything on each track does have to put an EQ plugin. So for the Vibraphone intro, there Is no other plugin to include because mentioned earlier that the vibes have a reverb pedal and sounds very vibe to me to use in the intro. Bass guitar includes a Lo-Fi plugin to hear a nice bass sound cleaner to add a little funk to it. For the drums and overdubs percussion, I create two basic folders to put the drums and percussion tracks to provide space and see the full detail with the full name as well. For Snare on the drums, I included a True Reverb plugin to have a nice echo snare bounce off the wall. For Kick, I include the D3 CL to hear the kick drum more to provide. For the Marching Snare, I used the AIR Reverb to provide because I wanted to have a nice echo. For the low-tom, I used the stereo width plugin to gain stage the sound of the floor tom a little more. Both of the drums for overdubbing can have nice important marching sound back in the late 1700s. Near the end of the song, I provide a master fader and what I did was in the Outro Section, I master fade out with only 24 seconds left of the song goes about 18 seconds and fades back in to end the song at normal volume which is also has the same concept from the original recording itself ending with two notes. For the MIDI tracks have to be in AUX input to provide plugins to bring the project to life. Knowing the piano is stereo and hearing it a little too high I have to use the Xpand piano to adjust the volume that provide the other instruments to hear as well.
References
For my point of view, creating a cover of Let Em In understanding that this year has been 50 years since the song that came out as a single and appearing as the first track of the Wings At The Speed of Sound album. I know this song was easy for me to do which is good but the only thing I'm not proud of is adding the piano and horns together in the beginning. But I finally managed to find the full score on MIDI for free and delete MIDI tracks that I recorded on my own and use the MIDI tracks to be used for the piano, horns, and the flute to provide. But furthermore, I am proud of what I did in my point of view but its just what it is but in the end, finding MIDI tracks and provide editing for the full score and have the right tempo helped me to make this project more clearly as I expected (Also, I included a screenshot of the band themselves which originally on the back cover of the album to look more impressive to celebrate the song and the album together.)