'Head & Heart'
As well as mixing and mastering 'Head & Heart', Kevin Grainger also mixed and mastered Joel Corry's 'Lonely', a number-four hit in the UK in the beginning of the year. Corry is a DJ and producer, and produced 'Head & Heart' with Kolidescopes and New Levels. Corry's songs are positioned halfway between dance and pop, and required more work on the vocals than typical dance hits would normally require.
'Head & Heart' — Written by Joel Corry, Lewis Thompson, Neave Applebaum, Ajay Owen, Robert Harvey, John Courtidis, Daniel Dare, Alisha Brown, Uzoechi Emenike & Leo Kalyan. Produced by Joel Corry, New Levels & Kolidescopes"There was no brief with 'Head & Heart'. Joel just said to me, 'Do your thing.' He knows what he wants, he's a great producer and he works with a good team, so his songs come to me in a pretty good state. With 'Lonely' I changed the kick, but in 'Head & Heart' the kick was great. It needed some work, but I didn't need to swap anything. The main thing that needed addressing was that the song was quite 2D, quite flat. It needed life. A lot of things come in sounding quite flat. Funnily enough, when I load the stems the session often sounds better than the rough, because they don't have bad limiting on them, that often flattens the song way too much.
"So with 'Head & Heart' it was a matter of getting more depth into it, making it less linear, and also making sure that the bits that are supposed to hit hard actually do hit hard. I used the UAD Thermionic Culture Vulture plug‑in a lot, because I think it makes stuff sound amazingly 3D. It just gives this great depth to things, I use it on many different things. But a lot of what I did was just EQ and adjusting levels. Getting things to sit more up front that need to be up front, and pushing things back and out that need less focus. That also adds depth. And in general giving it some attitude and vibe; plus making sure the bom-bom-bom hook was really happening."
Filling Up
The Ableton mix session for 'Head & Heart' contains, says Grainger, "in addition to drums and bass, a piano, a synth arpeggio towards the end of the song, some high strings, and a pad in the middle eight. And then there are quite a few vocals. So there's not a lot of music.
Kevin Grainger mixes exclusively in Ableton Live. This screen shows the mix session for 'Head & Heart'. Download the ZIP file for a larger, detailed view of this screenshot.
inside-track-1020-joel-corry-abletonscreen.jpg.zip
"The drums consist of kick, claps, percussion effects, hi-hats and something called tops, which is a loop that has what I call a garage snare, a little flick between the 4 and the 1, and I wanted that louder to improve the groove, and really push into the beat. So I went through that stem and copied that snare to an adjacent track, EQ'ed it, and then mixed that back in with the loop to bring that snare forwards. I'm a big fan of chopping things up rather than having tons of automation. If I want to treat something differently, I put it on another track. It's a speed thing, getting things to where I want them as quickly as possible.
"There also are various different drum fills in the track, which I treated differently, depending on what part of the song they appeared in. I wanted brighter fills going into the drop, so I added a reverb to these fills and added top end, and they are more subdued fills in other parts of the song. Again, it's a matter of creating movement, light and shade, more dynamics, into parts that are essentially linear."
Drums
"I treated the kick in this song with a load of EQ from the FabFilter Pro‑Q 2, which is my favourite EQ. I have not gone for the Q3 yet — the Q2 works, so why change it? I took out some 148Hz as the snare was a bit knocky, and added some 67Hz for more weight, and I also mono'd the bass below 126Hz. There also was a bit-crushy sound in the top end that made it sound a bit plastic-like, so I got rid of that as well. I varied these EQs in places. It was a good kick, all it needed was some changing between sections, rather than any big sculpting.
"The garage-y snare is two snares in each bar, and I did not want them at the same volume, so I used the Ableton Gainer utility to make sure one is 6dB louder. Again, just to help get some movement in the track. On these extra hits I have a Pro‑Q 2 pushing 364Hz and taking out some 2kHz. I put all six drums tracks in a group, which then became a track in its own right. That gets a bit of love from a Chandler EQ, to give it some midrange weight."
The UAD Chandler EQ plug‑in was used to add weight to the drum bus.
Music
Wavesfactory's Trackspacer plug‑in was used to stop the kick drum and bass 'fighting' in the low end."There are three bass parts. I automated the gain of the low mids through different sections on one bass, again using the Pro‑Q 2, used a Waves widener on another bass part, and had nothing on the third bass.
The three bass tracks are then combined in a group, on which I did some level changes, and added a UAD Manley Massive Passive EQ, adding some nice low mids and some 4kHz for some more bite, and a Sonnox Oxford Inflator for some saturation.
The bass group was side-chained to the kick with the Trackspacer, affecting only bass frequencies below 220Hz, so you're not hearing the side-chaining, I'm just creating space. Most of the other music tracks were just a matter of riding levels, though I have a Thermionic Culture Vulture and a Chandler on the piano, adding some weight, bite and depth. The piano supports the bom-bom-bom hook, so was really important to support that part, not dominate."
Vocals
"I chopped up the lead vocal track and then treated each section differently. I do a lot of gain riding in the [Live] Clip View, and colour-code that: dark blue means I turned it up, and pink means I turned it down. It is gives me a nice visual cue. MNEK processed his vocal himself before sending them over. He had SoundToys Microshift on them and also some reverb. The producers then processed them further, and this led to some phase issues. So I went back to some of MNEK's original vocals, which are on track 30. I kept them pretty dry, because they sounded great.
"Mainly I did a lot of EQ on MNEK's lead vocals, adding weight in the low mids, and also because it sounded like they were comped from different takes, so I needed to make sure the vocals sounded consistent. I did this all with the Pro‑Q 2. I also manually de-ess vocals, using automation on specific syllables. I kept some of the delays and reverb the producers had added, which were in a vocal effects track at the bottom of the session, in yellow. The main vocal group got the Thermionic again, because it adds such lovely tone and depth."
Getting the vocal right involved chopping it up and applying gain to the different clips, as well as processing with Grainger's beloved Thermionic Culture Vulture plug‑in.
Mastering
"I had the [Sound Theory] Gullfoss on the master bus. Seeb introduced me to that plug‑in, which is like a weird constantly-changing dynamic EQ. It's not doing much, it's just set to 20 percent, but it just pulls out a few things that it feels should not be there, and pushes a few other frequencies that I felt it should! It just adds some extra detail to a mix. I also have a Pro‑Q 2 in M‑S, adding a little bit in the super high end and some 364Hz to the sides of the mix. There's also an SSL compressor plug‑in, but it's really doing very, very little. After that everything went through my mastering chain.
"I could do this in this case, because this song did not need to be super loud. I find that the more open a song is, the more the nice analogue stuff works. If someone is absolutely obsessed with loudness, the nuances that the outboard gear brings to the table are just wiped out by the level. You have to automate the release of limiters and just squeeze every little bit out of things. You end up needing a totally different release on the drop part of the song to the release on a breakdown, and changing releases on various limiters throughout the song, and you just can't do that with the hardware. So when the end result is very level driven I keep it all in the box.
"If I am going for the crazy level, my limiters for the most part, but not always, are the FabFilter Pro‑L 2 and the iZotope Ozone 4. I have Ozone 5, 6, 8 and 9, but I still prefer 4. All I use is the Maximizer. I like that I can change what they call Character for different parts of the song. So I go for a balance between the L2 and the Ozone, and sometimes there is an Oxford Inflator stuck in between the two of them, and sometimes even a [Dada Life] Sausage Fattener. Whatever works.
"I know a lot of mixers complain about needing to compete with the volume of the rough, but I don't play that game. It is an absolute mug's game trying to do a nice mix and needing to be louder than somebody's demo. If I think a demo is 2dB too loud, the first thing I do is knock their demo back 2dB. Because of my mastering background I can have that conversation with people. 'Head & Heart' isn't the loudest song in the world, purely because it does not need to be the loudest song in the world."
It's one of many refreshing opinions Grainger holds, and 'Head & Heart' sounds refreshingly natural and dynamic. Here's to more big hits coming out of Grainger's hands