Love it when a song comes together ✨
Over the last week or so, I've really been struggling to envision a mix for one of the songs on the new album. "All the Pretty Wolves" was the only song I didn't have a fully mixed demo for when I pitched this album to my producer John, so I've been working hard on getting that together before we start diving in on the mixes in February.
I think the biggest issue with the mix has been establishing a sense of scale. Writing and playing the song for piano, the only difference between large and small moments is how many keys you play, and how loudly you play them... When a song gets translated into a bigger more developed iteration (with synths and percussion etc...)- the challenge becomes making sure that the new song retains the contour and flow of the old version. For a long time, this song felt stuck in the "small" place. Everything I tried to add to it felt wrong and foreign... The piano version has always had a lot of dynamic range. There are moments of literal whisper over a deep low rumble, and other moments of very loud, strong, bold chords...
My first instinct was to try to run a few synths through the whole thing, and follow interesting moments in the melody and chord progression... but I wasn't sold on any of my early attempts. I think, ultimately, the synths felt too consistent, and quickly faded into the background and became easy to ignore. The lines I tried to bring out with the synth felt boring and dull to me as well- either too obvious (making things feel cliche) or too strange and out of character (pulling attention away from the structure that makes the song work).
The percussion I added felt wholly un-earned. The chord progression is locked-in with the melody in some pivotal moments (giving no indication what the underlying rhythm should be), and every percussion voice I experimented with felt super out of place against the more delicate rumbling and plunking of the piano. The sudden jolting percussiveness of my drum parts stuck out way too much and didn't feel at all at home with the piano alone.
I contemplated just leaving it as a solo piano song after all... I had practiced and written the song extensively while playing and singing together- so much so that there were moments that I couldn't play correctly without also singing. And consequently, when I tried to recored the piano track for a mix, I made lots of mistakes in both technical performance and structure... I felt like I was constantly fighting against what I heard without vocal and trying to remember how it fit rhythmically and dynamically with the vocal... As I started to realize all this, I really considered doing a version where the piano and vocal were baked together in one take... but that would be a nightmare to produce with my current setup, and it's not something I have a lot of experience doing. On top of that, it just didn't feel right for the album- and I could tell there was A TON of potential in the song for a bigger mix if I could pull it off...
Earlier this week I went back and started a new project file for the song from scratch. I committed to singing along with the piano as I played it, and just didn't mic the vocal. I was sick of all my scratch tracks having a different structure, and I needed something I could work with more confidently. Yes, the vocal leaks through to the piano mics, but maybe that's not such a big deal 🤷♂️ If it bothers me later I can always re-take it.
Yesterday I sat down and thought about what I'm doing on piano to fill the interstitial spaces, and I realized the song is constantly swaying with these broad arpeggios under the chords when they linger... So I plotted out some arpeggiating tracks for the synth to play and experimented with putting them under the chorus with some heavy reverb to send them further back in space. That felt like it was on the right track. With this slightly more fleshed out chorus going, I took another stab at percussion. It still felt a bit out of place, but things were a little more robust now and it wasn't as jarring as before.
I dawned on me that the piano I've been trying to 'follow' should simply be the centerpiece. Rather than trying to cover it up and mirror it's ideas, I could just use the piano track for more than just scaffolding. The only problem was the sound... In the developing sonic space, the predictable voice of a piano just didn't sit right with me. As a listener I get exicted by unique sounds and unexpected sonic moments. So I started toying with my my piano tracks. I ended up running two parallel tracks with some very aggressive pitch tuning- one, an octave up, and the other, also an octave up... but 'worse'... using a plugin that struggled to identify a tonal center and instead introduced a strange drone underneath everything. I found that I could automate the pitch of that drone and play it like a bit of a synth (retaining the character and dynamics of the piano running parallel) and that process sounded very strange, expansive and exciting under the chorus. Once I had an interesting sound happening in my piano tracks, I went back in and exercised necessary restraint and moderation- cutting the more outlandish sounds in/out of moments when they felt more/less useful to the overall flow- accentuating the contour and creating even more contrast.
Once I had done that, I started to realize exactly where the moments of energy were, and what the flow looked like in the daw. Cutting in/out the parallel tracks revealed to me all the moments where I can push/pull harder and introduce more complexity without overwhelming the delicate and quiet moments.
I think this song is finally on the right track. I'm excited to continue to develop it from here!