Secrets Of The Mix Engineers: Greg Kurstin

“For the tracks on the first album, we started at Mayfair Studios in London for one day, and then did the rest at my studio in LA. But we mostly wrote the new album in makeshift studios in rented countryside cottages in England in September 2007 and the beginning of 2008. Basically I’d rented an Apogee Ensemble, a Nord Electro 2 as a MIDI controller, some speakers, a Neve 1073 preamp, an 1176 compressor, a Telecaster and a Fender Precision, and a Neumann U87 mic.

“‘The Fear’ started from the keyboard acoustic guitar intro that opens the song, which uses a patch I had made of a really primitive acoustic guitar sound from an old ’80s sample keyboard, the 360 Systems one, which is very rare and very hard to play: it was a very nerdy keyboard purchase! But I love its sounds, and I particularly like its artificial guitar sound. It was one of those situations in which I just sort of started playing a chord progression to inspire Lily, and she liked it and she came up with the verse, and I then played the chords for the chorus with a piano sound. The track emerged from there.

“Mixing is a lot of trial and error for me, and there’s not really a great logic to what I do. The same with how I lay out the session. The tracks are not grouped or named and there’s very little colour-coding. It would be good to have all the drums and all the guitars next to each other, but when recording I just look for the next available track, and I rarely change the order later on. I’m terrible! The other day someone from Apple came round, and when she looked at my Logic session, she kept asking why I did things like this or like that. Because I work so quickly it’s really important to keep a workflow going when I’m writing. Especially when working with someone like Lily I have to keep the ball rolling and the inspiration going, and I don’t have time to organise anything.

Drums: Logic EQ, Compressor, Sub Bass, Overdrive, Stereo Delay, Flanger

“‘Numb’ [track 15] is my main kick drum. ‘Jazz kit’ [9] is a ride cymbal, ‘real drums’ [23] are my cymbals, ‘SiD chip’ [30] is a little electronicky sound, like from a video game sample bank, and ‘burp 1’ [31] is claps. These sounds all come from the EXS sampler. With regards to the kick, it was mostly a question of finding the right EQ on that. It’s a kick-drum sound that I use a lot, because it seems to sort of work. I added some EQ at 90Hz and at 3350Hz, just very simple. There’s also a compressor, which is working pretty hard, squashing the sound as hard as possible, and a second EQ that adds around 83Hz, to give it some more low end.

Bass: Logic EQ, Compressor, Guitar Amp Pro, Bit Crusher, Bass Amp

“The bass was a tricky element to get right in the song. The original bass that I used while writing remains in the chorus. I wasn’t entirely happy with it, but I couldn’t top it either. It was a keyboard bass from the ES2 soft synth and it had a weird, very subby character about it that was rather muddy. I ended up printing it. Every time I tried to replace it, the track didn’t have the same vibe. I didn’t add any effects to it, but because it missed some punch, I added something underneath it. It was a last-minute thing called ‘Perfect Bass’, an ES2 saw-wave bass with the highs filtered out. It doubles the kick drum, and it’s in the 220Hz range. These two basses worked well together. I also played a Fender Precision, recorded straight into the computer, and you can hear that in the verses. There’s no low end, it’s more like a guitar sound. I put the Guitar Amp plug-in on it, to simulate an amp feel, and a compressor, and a Bit Crusher, which added some digital-like distortion. There’s also a ‘low-endy’ bass in the verse on track 22; strangely it’s called ‘Celeste Baby’. That has the Bass Amp plug-in, compression and two EQs.”

Vocals: Universal Audio 1176, Logic Pitch Correction, Exciter, Tape Delay, Gain, EQ, Space Designer, Vocoder

“I recorded Lily’s voice with the Neuman U87, going through the Neve 1073 and then an 1176. Most of her vocals were recorded in the cottages where we wrote, which is the reason that there’s so much volume automation on her vocal track; on 52/53 is the vocal double, which is muted; and 54-71 are alternate vocal tracks that are also muted. The rooms often had stone walls and were really live and echoey, and every little background sound could be heard, so I had to do a lot of automation between words. Yeah, there are a lot of plug-ins on the vocal track! I automated the Pitch Correction, occasionally nudging a note that bugged me. It’s not there all the time. The EQ adds some top end and takes off some sub frequencies, to clean up the track. The compressor works just like a regular vocal compressor, just keeping the vocal level in check a little bit, but nothing major. I had never ever used the Exciter before, but when I was messing around with the vocal, I liked what it did, even though I’m not entirely sure what, and I left it on. The Tape Delay is just a very subtle delay that I also filtered to make it sound dark. The Gain is there just for level adjustment, and the additional EQ adds yet more top end, and was something I added as a last-minute thing.”

Guitars: Logic Guitar Amp Pro, EQ, Auto Filter

“There are several guitar parts. The first one you hear, from the 360 Systems, is on track 2, and then there’s a counterpart to that, which happens a little later. Track 72 is the main acoustic guitar part, which I printed. All acoustic guitars are played on a keyboard, but I also played a real electric guitar, a Telecaster, which is on 75. The initial guitar on track 2 has a Guitar Amp Pro plug-in to simulate the character of a guitar amplifier, and a sample delay, which I use a bit like a surround plug-in. Using very short delay times of just a few milliseconds tricks your ears into thinking that the guitar is larger than it is. I use that plug-in a lot. Track 72 also has the Guitar Amp Pro plug-in, here used for the spring delay setting. I love spring reverbs, and I often use the Guitar Amp Pro for that. The first EQ plug-in on 72 just rolls off some of the sub frequencies that were muddying the sound up a bit; the next EQ is pretty extreme, adding a lot of top around 9.7kHz and rolling of more of the bottom. The Auto Filter just took off some of the very high top end, filtering out some of the noise that I was getting. The rest of the EQs were added during mixing, just giving a bit of brightness. The Telecaster again has the Guitar Amp Pro plug-in, to simulate an amp sound, and some compression to keep the level steady, and a couple of delays.”

Keyboards: Logic Compressor, EQ, Bit Crusher, Tremolo, Auto Filter, Guitar Amp Pro, Tape Delay, Vocoder, Flanger

“The main keyboards are the ‘360 Piano’ [track 16], the ‘360 clav’ [10], both from the 360 Systems keyboard, the ‘bass lil fuzz’ [27], which is a single-oscillator sound that’s very prominent in the choruses, and the ‘warm Rhodes’ [8 & 37], which is a sine wave-like, spacey sound. The compressor on the ‘360 piano’ squashes it, so it bursts more out of the speakers; I love compression and am definitely guilty of regularly over-compressing! The EQ on the piano took off a lot of the bottom end and added at 3.9kHz to make it cut through more. Again, there’s the sample delay, with the ultra-short delays to make it sound fatter and like it’s out of phase. The ‘360 clavinet’ has a Bit Crusher plug-in to dirty up the sound with digital distortion. It works a bit like the Lo-fi plug-in in Pro Tools: you can lower the amount of bits and it makes it sound very digital. The Tremolo plug-in is set to 8th notes, so you get this rhythmic, pulsing thing, and the compressor, again, squashes quite a bit. There’s an Auto Filter on the ‘warm Rhodes’ that effectively works like a low-pass filter, like you would have on a Moog synth. On track 37 I also have Guitar Amp Pro, this time for the simulated amp sound, and Tape Delay, which has an LFO function that sounds like a warble, a bit like a Memory Man delay pedal. I love that pedal and just purchased three to stock up in case they stop making them. The ‘bass lil fuzz’ is a swirling sound that has a Vocoder plug-in on it like a slow LFO opening and closing, and a Flanger plug-in adding more of a swirly effect. The tape delay is there to create a reverby effect.”

Strings: Logic EQ, Sample Delay, Space Designer, Flanger, Vocoder, Limiter, Tape Delay

“The strings are all electronic, the main one being the ‘VI Trmolo FF’ [12], which is a pretty loud and washy viola string patch, and then there are the swirly sounds, ‘CHMB 3 VLNS’, on tracks 27 and 35. The first channel EQ on track 12 takes off low end and the second one dips at 275Hz. There’s a Sample Delay to, again, fatten up the sound and confuse its exact placing. Bus 1 goes to the Space Designer reverb plug-in. For me, using plug-ins is a way of programming sounds, and you can see a good example on tracks 27 and 35, which have Flanger, Vocoder, Limiter, EQ, Tape Delay and the Space Designer.”

Mix bus: Logic Multipressor

“Finally, I mixed back into Logic, and put the stereo mix through a Multipressor, Logic’s multi-band compressor. Mastering people probably hate me for it, but I really like what it does, and I put it over most of my stereo mixes. Once the mixes were approved by Lily and the record company, I sent the mastering engineer the 24-bit files.”  0