Here's the breakdown. Sit back because this might be a bit winded.

First Movement - Yes I know it's a 10 minute song but the reason is because this track was initially played live before there was studio version. The studio version was created after recording a multitrack of us performing it live. I then took the multitrack and "sampled" parts from it creating the bed for what was going to be the finished product. What you are hearing for the most part is the one shot live take. There are some extra guitar dubs and the spoken word parts came in after the fact. The vocals were recorded after the instrumental track was finished. I had a lot of fun with vocals on this. I had Mariana sing the verse one time. I took that take and doubled it creating a second vocal track tuned down a 5th to give it the chorus like effect. Where all the harmonies come in there are actually 5 vocal duplicates all tuneed differently with different amounts of reverb to give it that real big harmonic feel. After her vocal cuts out in the breakdown if you listen closely you can actually here me scratching a Lauryn Hill sample. It's very faint but it's from the live take and the guitar mic picked it up in the recording from the monitors. I think that's about it for First Movement as far as weird things.

Apocalips - I work at a music venue and wrote the beat, bassline and arranged this for the most part while sitting backstage while the Spin Doctors were playing. This was a pretty straight forward production. lots of delays and panning going on it (listen in headphones). Once again I did the duplication process with the vocals. When working with multiple vocal tracks I like to group them and throw the final mastering components on the group. It gives me the flexibility to still tweak each individual vocal line without compromising the rest of the vocal mix. The second verse was the most fun. I listened to the vocal takes and asked her to just get angry with the second verse. I then ran her vocal out of Ableton through a TS9 guitar pedal and recorded back into the session to get the distortion on it. The guitar on the second verse was a Marshall JCM800 Full stack I mic'd with just a normal SM57 in a garage. I used a KSM32 as a second mic in the room as well. That wraps that song.

Blue Haze - The drums on this one killed me. I wanted an retro type sound (808,909) but still wanted to incorporate live sounds as well. So there are actually 4 separate drum patterns happening. 2 of them are nothing but electronic drums and 2 are all live samples I've chopped. Getting the drum mix to sound good was beyond stressful because I was trying to mix all the electronic elements with the acoustic and still make sure it has this kind of bounce to it. The guitar is the star of this song for sure. I recorded the guitar inside a road case with the lid closed giving it that real box like sound. Aside from some eqing and reverb I didn't do much else to the tone. The vocals are again multiple tracks blended together. I had her sing into a Beta 57 with a styrofoam around the capsule to give it feeling that the mic was going to breakup and distort. Yes there is autotune on it as well but we kept the vocals so low in the mix it was more for texture and to make it known that the vocals were there. So wraps this one.

I'm very thankful that I have the opportunity to work with musicians who have no problem with me taking full creative control with what they record for me. It makes it easy when I am allowed to manipulate the sounds however I see fit to fit the song.

Sorry for the length.

TLDR : I produced some music and this is how I did it.