Page 2: Inside Track: Haim 'I've Been Down'

Drums & Bass

Batmanglij: "There's quite a bit of editing on the drum tracks, because we love drums that have a combination of natural and unnatural. So we preserved Danielle's feel, but we also cut things up to add a quality that's hip hop influenced. It makes it sound like a loop of an old soul record that has been chopped up. We were also arranging the drum part. While recording drums we asked Danielle to do one take of fills, and we later created a drum performance using these fills."

Rechtshaid adds: "The drums were recorded very simple. Most of the drum sound comes from the one RCA 44. There's also a Neumann FET 47 on the kick, and an STC 4033. They gave us a bit more low end. But 95 percent of the sound came from the RCA 44, which has a very Rostam move on it, in that he dipped 6.45kHz. He is very sensitive to what he calls harsh frequencies."

Batmanglij: "When working on 'Summer Girl' I used the Waves Sound Shifter plug-in to pitch the drums down 4-5 semitones, and that added quite a bit of grit. I did it again with the drums on this song, pitch-shifting the drums up two semitones. I was just experimenting to see how the ring of the snare sat in the mix. Also, pitch-shifting makes things sound more sampled, of course. I sent this to Ariel, and the next time I got the session back, he'd replaced the Sound Shifter with the Serato Sample plug‑in, doing the same pitch-shifting, but with a different sound.

Drum bus processing on 'I've Been Down' included FabFilter's Pro‑Q 3, PSP's Vintage Warmer, Waves' Chandler TG12345 emulation and Oeksound's Soothe.

"The drum bus has the FabFilter Pro‑Q 3 dipping around 200Hz, the Waves TG12345 for compression and EQ, the PSP Vintage Warmer and the Oeksound Soothe. The Rolling Stones were a touchstone for us in this song, and the Vintage Warmer is on a semi-driven tape setting adding saturation. Because the drums were compressed heavily, and also because of the pitch-shifting, we got some unlistenable harsh frequencies, which were taken out by the Soothe."

Next, Batmanglij recalls the bass recording: "There's a Fender Jazz in the bridge, and the rest of the song has a Hofner bass. They were both recorded using the Tonecraft DI."

"We used the FabFilter Pro‑C 2 compressor and the Pro Tools Air Distortion on it. It is very simple," adds Rechtshaid. "We did not do much fancy stuff like parallel compression and stuff like that. It is great for certain things, but not for this song. This song was emoting immediately, and it was about not losing that."

The DI'd bass enjoyed a simple signal chain comprising just a FabFilter compressor and Pro Tools' Air Distortion plug‑in.

Wurli

Arturia's Wurli plug‑in provided the electric piano sound.Batmanglij: "We wanted to have the sound of an old Wurlitzer, recorded to tape in a dusty studio. It enters in the bridge. I rarely do this, but I created a Pro Tools track preset in a different session, and then used it here on the Wurli track. The Wurli V2 plug-in is made by Arturia, and they achieve the sound with synthesis, as opposed to sampling, and it sounds very real to me. None of the pedals are used, but the reverb is activated.

"Then there's the Aberrant DSP Sketch Cassette, a plug‑in made by two young guys in upstate New York. It just cost $20, and I think it is one of the best plug‑ins that has ever been made! It adds a very vintage vibe, and has something called NR Comp, which is a very aggressive multiband compressor that really changes the sound. After that there are the Goodhertz Vulf Compressor, and the Goodhertz Wow Control for yet more wow and flutter. All this was about retracing the steps of an old or sampled recording. In the old days people recorded to tape and then they had to bounce tracks down to other tapes, and when you do that you are having tons of different wow and flutter enter the signal. My goal here was to recreate that situation."

Saxophone

The saxophone was heavily processed, as Batmanglij explains: "Yes, there are a lot of plug-ins on the sax! It was recorded with the Sony C800, and played by Henry Solomon, who has a new sound that was integral to this album. There are a Pro‑Q 3 and a Waves RCompressor and the Avid EQ3 7-band doing a low-cut, and the Soothe to take out harshness. But the main plug-ins are the Soundtoys Little AlterBoy, the Altiverb, and the UAD Helios. I love formant shifting the saxophone. The formant shifting from the Little AlterBoy makes it sound more sampled, again, and also much darker. I am also using the distortion that is built in the Alter Boy.

The saxophone was heavily processed, with multiple EQs, delay, formant shifting and a convolution reverb using an impulse response captured by Batmanglij at his own studio.

"The UAD Helios EQ changes the sound quite dramatically. The most fascinating plug-in on the sax comes after that and is the Altiverb, because it uses a sample that I made myself at Vox, by putting my Dynaudio BM5s in the live room there, and recording the impulse response. That is part of how that saxophone sounds so alive. I am already recording the sax from about three feet away, and then adding more room with the Altiverb. Finally, there's the Slate Digital Repeater set to an 8th-note delay, just a touch to bring it into the realm of the Rolling Stones in the '80s."

Acoustic Guitar

Batmanglij: "I recorded my acoustic guitar with the two microphones that I normally have on my piano, an upright Steinway K52. The mics were about two and a half feet apart from each other, and both facing the acoustic guitar. By not having the mics so close to the guitar you get a lot of room sound. Trying to get more room sound has always been my approach to recording acoustic instruments. I added the Waves Q10, using a preset that I made to get rid of the low mids."

The acoustic guitar was treated with some EQ and a dose of Sketch Cassette.Rechtshaid adds: "When Rostam and I were doing Modern Vampires In The City, we were obsessed with the UAD ATR102 plug-in, because it is adding EQ, compression, modulation and distortion. During the making of this album, Rostam got the Sketch Cassette plug-in, and we first used it on the acoustic guitar. We were going for Keith Richards' acoustic guitar sound in the Stones' 'Street Fighting Man'. That plug‑in gave us the essence that we were looking for. It's great."

Vocals

"Danielle's vocals were recorded with the Sony 800, and a Neve 1073LB and my 1176AE, black with the blue stripe," Batmanglij explains. "There's not much on the lead vocals, other than the Waves Q10 EQ, the UAD 1176AE in the verses and Waves CLA‑76, and then a send to a nonlinear reverb. The nonlin is the main feature on the vocal sound. I am a big fan of using the nonlinear on vocals just to give a little bit of a 3D quality. The version that I like the best is the Altiverb AMS RMX16 nonlin. I have the real unit, but I also like the way that Altiverb version sounds.

"There's a different vocal sound in the bridge. The plug-ins are again the Waves Q2, taking out everything below 60Hz and dipping around 250Hz; the CLA76; and then there's an echo panned all the way to the right, coming from the UAD EP-34 Tape Echo. The dry vocal is in the centre. More space is added with a send to a chamber reverb aux, which uses the Cello Studio in Altiverb. We also had a send to the Ocean Way aux for the chant in the bridge. That aux has the UAD Ocean Way Studios plug-in, as well as the Cranesong Phoenix II, and the Massey L2007 limiter for more loudness. The idea is to make the chant sound like a handful of people singing in a room, even though they were recorded individually."

Master Bus

Batmanglij: "The UAD SSL G-Series Bus Compressor is grabbing a few peaks. The iZotope Ozone 9 is not doing very much, mostly just dynamic EQ, taming some frequencies that had built up, and allowing us to have a loud recording that isn't harsh. The Waves L2 Maximizer is the final plug-in, and you either like it or you don't like it. I tend to like it!

Mix processing comprised the UAD SSL Bus Compressor, iZotope's Ozone, and the Waves L2 Maximizer.

"As we mentioned, the touchstone with this song was the Rolling Stones, and in the bridge I was thinking of Phil Spector, but updated. That is always floating around in the back of my mind during the making of the entire album: how do we make something that touches on those older recording techniques and effects, and also make it sound modern and competitive? Strict recreation is less inspiring to me; I want the recordings that I am a part of to sound of a new era."