Heavy Weather: The Production

My role on this project was to take the excellent arrangements made by Arthur Ford and work with him to turn them into a polished album ready for the world to hear. After a couple of weeks learning the material we set up in the studio and got to work.

For the bass nerds

We tracked this record with 4 basses: An Ibanez SR300, a Cort B4 fretless, a Fender Mexican Jazz and a Sandberg California fretless. The bass signal was run through a Darkglass B7ku, a Boss OC-3 and finally an MXR Bass Envelope Filter before hitting the Darkglass AO900 amp. I captured a raw DI out from the bass alongside the post DI, with cab sim, from the amp so we’d have the biggest flexibility in bass tones that we could change later without going through the process of re-tracking

For the production nerds

Both DI signals ran into my UA Apollo x4, where the Unison preamps further enhanced the tone. While we kept the raw DI as clean as possible, I ran the processed tone through either the v76 or the Neve 1084 unison preamps on the Apollo. The extra colour and warmth gained really helped give the final product life and a more definitive sound. The top end of the signal was massively important when producing four instruments with the potential to become very dense in the mix in terms of keeping clarity and the production methods used gave each instrument its own space in the mix.

For the drums on the record, we used Studios 5 and 6 at The University of Sheffield Sound Studios. Using the stock kit there enhanced by drummer Tom Featherstone’s snare, hi hat and ride, we got a very suitable drum tone for the jazz fusion record style.

I miked the kit with:

• AKG D112 on kick

• Shure SM57s on snare top and bottom

• Audio-Technica MB5K on toms

• Rode NT5 spaced pair for overheads

• Neumann KM100 on hi hats

• AKG C414s in M/S configuration for room mics

• Shure SM57 outside the room for another room texture

These ran into a Focusrite Octopre dynamic, which fed an ADAT connection to an RME Fireface UFX interface. I wanted as clean a drum recording as possible to fit the relatively unedited nature of Heavy Weather, however it would also give it greater flexibility when I took the Reaper sessions back to my studio to mix and integrate with the already recorded bass tracks.

Thanks again to Tom Featherstone for his incredible drumming on the record, you can check him out here

And also thanks to Arthur Ford for his brilliant arrangements and fantastic playing all over the record. You can check him out here