Production Scheme:

The goal was to create an authentic Pop Punk sound along the same vein as blink-182 or Green Day. Chris particularly wanted to emulate the sound of blink-182’s hit record “Enema of the State”; that’s where I started listening for inspiration on how to produce the sounds we wanted.

Since Sleep Driver isn’t technically a full band (it’s just Chris’s songs), overdubbing was the key production technique at play. I decided to start with tracking drums to lay down the foundation for each song. followed by Bass, Guitars, and Vocals in that order.

I opted to record the drums in a live open room. I noticed that this would allow me to get a nice room sound along with tight close-up mic’ing on the drums. While we were tracking drums, I had the them set up in Fire Station Studios’s A Room, which features a nice, large, and reflective room. I had Chris play along with the drummer to help guide through the song while still maintaining an authentic/live feel. I set Chris up in an adjacent ISO Room, routing his scratch vocal and guitar tracks to the drummer’s headphone mix. After finishing laying down the drum parts, I combed through the session to comp all drum takes together to make one cohesive drum performance. This entailed making sure the drums were played in-time along the grid accordingly to the set tempo.

While laying down the bass tracks, I had our bassist play in the control room while having the bass amp set up in the large reflective room where we tracked drums. I set it up this way more so out of curiosity/experimentation; I wanted to see if I could find a unique bass sound by blending in a room track into the sound. Unfortunately, this room mic did not positively add to the bass tone/sound, so I ultimately scrapped it during the mixing phase.

Guitars were also tracked in the large, open live room. I placed the amp & cab relatively towards the edge of the room, closely parallel to the wall facing out into the live room. I made sure to loosely isolate the amp from behind using gobos to reduce the chance of picking up any unnecessary room reflections. Chris opted to play outside in the live room instead of inside the control room, so I set that up accordingly.

Vocals were simply set up in the ISO booth. I wanted to keep the vocals as dry as possible while tracking so I can add the right amount of space/reflection while editing in the mix.

Once everything was recorded, I set to work on mixing both songs. I opted to mix the entire record in-the-box using Pro Tools in order to produce at max effectiveness and efficiency while under a strenuous time crunch. Given the nature of most rock records, a lot of processing was involved during the mix phase. I had to work quite a bit with figuring out how to make 4 sets of distorted guitars - all within the same frequency range - to stand out in the mix alongside distorted bass, drums, and vocals. This was simply a matter of EQ’ing all guitars so that each guitar part occupied its own frequency space (e.g. Rhythm GTR’s occupied 4kHz, Lead GTR’s occupied 5kHz, etc.). In terms of dynamics, I made sure that the drums and bass were well compressed (especially the drums), as is accustomed to this particular genre of rock. For vocals, I had to make sure all of the vocal parts gelled well together in the mix. This included a bit of EQ on the Lead Vocal part, as well as tuning each of the parts using Waves Tune.

Credits:

General:

• Assistant Engineers - Nathan Bambacigno & Jack Callaghan

• Photography - Claire Rybicki

‘Do You Mind?’:

Songwriters: Chris Lee, Sean Vanegas, Nic Rundell

• Chris Lee - Vocals, Guitars

• Ryan Karpienski - Bass Guitar

• Nic Rundell - Drums

‘Hourglass’:

Songwriters: Chris Lee, Michael Geary, Marco Orellana

• Chris Lee - Vocals, Guitars

• Ryan Karpienski - Bass Guitar

• Marco Orellana - Drums

Timeline of Events:

• June 22nd, 2021 - Drum Tracking Session

• July 7th, 2021 - Bass Guitar Tracking Session for “Do You Mind?”

• July 21st, 2021 - Bass Guitar Tracking Session for “Hourglass”

• March 4th - 5th, 2022 - Guitar and Vocal Tracking Session

• April 7th, 2022 - Final Stereo Mixes Complete

• April 25th, 2022- Final Dolby Atmos Mixes Complete

Gear List:

• Solid State Logic Duality SE

• API 512c (x8)

• API 3124

• Universal Audio LA-610

• Neve 5012

• Summit Audio TPA-200B

• Millenia STT-1

• Millenia HV-3C

• Tube-Tech CL-1B

• Neve Master Buss Processor

Instrument List:

• Tama Drum Kit

• Ludwig Black Magic Snare Drum (14 x 6.5 in.)

• Fender Rumble 100 Bass Amp

• Orange TH100H Amp Head

• Orange PPC412A 4x12 Amp Cabinet

• Laguna LE200 Electric Guitar

• Fender Starcaster Squire Electric Guitar

• JOYO Vintage Overdrive Pedal

Mic/Tracking List:

Drums:

1. Kick In 1 - Shure Beta 91

2. Kick In 2 - AKG D112

3. Kick Out - Neumann U87

4. Snare Top 1 - Shure SM57

5. Snare Top 2 - Beyerdynamic M 201

6. Snare Bottom - Sennheiser MD 441

7. Hi Hats - Beyerdynamic M 201

8. Rack Tom - Sennheiser MD 421

9. Rack Tom 2 - Sennheiser MD 421

10. Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD 421

11. Ride - AKG C 460 B

12. OH Center - Cascade Fathead

13. OH Left - Audio-Technica AT4050

14. OH Right - Audio-Technica AT4050

15. Room L - Royer R-122

16. Room R - Royer R-122

17. Room Floor L - Royer R-121

18. Room Floor R - Royer R-121

Bass Guitar:

1. Bass Amp - AKG D112

2. Bass DI - Neve DI

3. Room - Audio-Technica AT4050

Electric Guitar:

1. GTR 1 - Shure SM57

2. GTR 2 - Royer R-121

3. GTR 3 - Shure KSM32

4. GTR 4 - Sennheiser MD 421

5. Room - Neumann U87

6. Talkback - Shure Beta 57

Vocals:

1. Neumann U87

Production Scheme:

From the get-go of this production, I sought to create a raw, natural, roomy sound - something I felt was appropriate for any jazz record. In terms of how the record would sonically sound, I was referencing a song called “Do Walk” by Thomas Agergaard, et al. Later on, however, Roberto mentioned that one of his favorite-sounding records of all time was called ‘Moore Makes 4’ by the Ray Brown Trio. ‘Starting Out!’ contains a blend of sonic elements from both of those records.

The band was recorded live; no overdubs were made during the tracking process of this record. I decided to place the drums in an ISO Booth while the rest of the instruments played in the live room. This decision was made primarily to reduce as much amount of drum bleed as possible, but also to create a tighter drum sound, similarly to “Do Walk”. There was a slight exception with tracking guitars; I placed the guitar amp outside of the live room in one of the hallways to also reduce bleed. I wanted to focus the listeners’ attention on all of the main melodic instruments - such as the saxophones and piano - hence why I felt it was appropriate to at least keep those instruments in the live room. All who were placed in the live room were still properly isolated using gobos, with the exception of the piano. Some of the gobos had window frames, so I strategically placed the gobos in a way that would allow most of the key players to see and watch each other for cues from within their respective isolation booths (including from the ISO Room for drums).

After setting up a click track and sending them out to each player’s headphone mixes, things went relatively smoothly. The band was able to get a few takes for each of the songs we recorded during each session.

I started getting to work on mixing the tracks shortly after all songs were recorded. I also decided to mix this record in-the-box for the sake of time efficiency. Given the nature of most typical jazz records, the key for mixing this record was to not use as much dynamics processing and let the room mics take lead in sonic direction. With that being said, this record was relatively simple to mix.

Credits:

General:

• Assistant Engineers - Nathan Bambacigno, Jack Callaghan, & Christian Cortez

• Photography - Basil Housewright III

Band:

• Roberto Aponte - Soprano & Tenor Sax

• Mason Fuller - Alto & Tenor Sax

• Derek Thigpen - Upright Bass

• Blake O’Neal - Guitar

• Dayne Reliford - Piano

• Israel Yanez - Drums

Timeline of Events:

• July 17th, 2021 - First Recording Session

• February 13th, 2022 - Second Recording Session

• April 20th, 2022 - Final Stereo Mixes Complete

• April 25th, 2022 - Final Dolby Atmos Mixes Complete

Gear List:

• Solid State Logic Duality SE

• API 512c (x8)

• API 3124

• Universal Audio LA-610

• Neve 5012

• Summit Audio TPA-200B

• Millenia STT-1

• Millenia HV-3C

Mic/Tracking List:

Drums:

1. Kick Out - AKG D112

2. Snare Top 1 - Shure SM57

3. Snare Top 2 - Beyerdynamic M 201

4. Snare Bottom - Sennheiser MD 441

5. Hi Hats - Beyerdynamic M 201

6. Rack Tom - Sennheiser MD 421

7. Floor Tom - Sennheiser MD 421

8. Ride - AKG C 460 B

9. OH Center - Cascade Fathead

10. OH L- Milab VM-44

11. OH R - Milab VM-44

Atmos Mixes

Click on each corresponding link to listen to each mix in Dolby Atmos!

(NOTE: Only works using Safari web browser)

Hourglass EP:

1. Do You Mind? - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/dm/hls/master.m3u8

2. Hourglass - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/hg/hls/master.m3u8

Starting Out!:

1. Starting Out - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/so/hls/master.m3u8

2. Momo’s Pounce - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/mp/hls/master.m3u8

3. Don’t Cry - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/dc/hls/master.m3u8

4. Christina Maria - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/cm/hls/master.m3u8

5. Our Song - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/os/hls/master.m3u8

6. Reunited In The Clouds - https://firestationstudios.com/atmos/marco/rc/hls/master.m3u8

HOW TO PLAYBACK IN ATMOS:

• If using a DESKTOP:

  • These links currently only work using Safari as your web browser

  • For Macs, you can only hear back in Atmos only if you’re using macOS Monterrey. All other versions will fold down to Stereo

• If using a MOBILE DEVICE:

  • For iPhone/iPad - after opening the link - you would have to AirPlay to either AppleTV or Google Chromecast

  • Dolby Atmos playback is only available on iPhone XS and up + iPad (2018) and up

Learn more here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212182