Over the last two years that has been a growing critical acclaim for this Brooklyn based band. With their talented lead singer / guitarist Adrianne Lenker and their unique approach to song arrangement, it’s easy to see why. If you haven’t already, I strongly you suggest you check out Big Thief.

This song can almost be heard as two versions of the same song. Starting with a cleanly picked acoustic guitar and Adrianne’s present vocals, the song feels almost unaccompanied. Under the surface are droning stereo organ tracks along with tack piano. I spent a lot of time trying to get the tack piano to fit in the mix with the acoustic and I ended up almost completely removing it from the mix. To my ears, it just didn’t work in the song. The acoustic guitar had two tracks; one with a mic near on the acoustic and another on an amplifier in the room. I took this chance to treat the amplified acoustic track with the Waves J37 Tape Emulation and used the wow / flutter to create some vibe on the track.

After two verses of this the song crossfades to a full band version pulsing with anticipation. Two guitars, bass and drums are brought in with upright piano and additional organ accompaniment. I ended up doing some side chain compression on the piano and organ parts, ducking down when the kick and snare hit. This allowed some room in a pretty dense mix towards the end of the song. I have been recently loving the new Little Plate from Soundtoys and used this heavily on the piano here. This songs unique arrangement allowed for some creative license in the mix and I am happy with the result.

This year, I had the honor of working on project for my dear friend Eric Zyla. Eric is a talented singer songwriting from Milwaukee and my band has played many shows with him in the past. He had heard I was starting to do more mixing, producing and mastering, and asked that my brother Jon and I work with him on this project.

We started in the spring of 2017 doing pre-production for each of the songs he had started out and we found this to be a helpful phase in the project. We were able to get acquainted with each others creative styles and started to organize each songs arrangement. As with many creative projects, we were under a time crunch but this one was unique. Eric and his wife Anna, were moving to Thailand at the end of September (Check out their travel blog here). So we really started to focus in the months of August and September to wrap up all the production. I decided to write a little about each song and share my experiences.

Alive & Well

As with all these songs, vocals were provided by Eric and drums were played by Jacob E. Miller. One of my favorite instruments is pedal steel guitar, popular in country music. I don’t play or own a pedal steel guitar, so I was able to simulate this with my slide guitar and lots of reverb. We used this to effect throughout the song but it never felt like it got in the way, just supplementing the bittersweet vibe of this tune. Eric from the start, had this great melody for the ending of the song that we decided would be great to use as a bridge solo on guitar. Of all the songs on this project, I feel like this one carries the vibe and feeling to the lyrical content of the song.

Size Me Up

This was a song we had heard Eric play over the last few years and we were shocked to find out that he never had recorded it. On this song, Eric really brought his vocal performance to the forefront. In particular, I love his vocals on the end of this song by projecting his voice to bring the last chorus alive. I recently started to get into Moog synthesizers and thought this would be a great opportunity to add this element into this song. A very heavy low note fades in during the bridge of the song, and really explodes during the last chorus. I used the amazing Arturia Mini V3 emulation for this synth sound and I was very happy with the results.

Ten More Stories

This song is about Eric’s  desire to travel and explore the world and was a great chance to use some additional instrumentation. Each song used brushes on the drums but I think they really shine on this song. The drums have great snap and body to fit well with the layered acoustic guitars of the song. I also overdubbed piano and organ for the chorus and bridge sections. Again using the Arturia V series collection, Piano V and B-3 V, respectively. I think the vibrato of the B-3 propels the chorus forward in a great way.

Here is a new mix demo I did last week. This one I really focused on a wide dynamic range in this song and it shows. The Integrated LUFS hovers around -13 for you mastering nerds out there. I have been focusing more on making mixes that work best on streaming services.

As you may know, almost all streaming services now have built in loudness control so that all songs playback at a consistent volume. This can vary by streaming service but it seems that around -13 LUFS is the current sweet spot for most of these services. More info on this click here: Streaming Loudness

I am very excited to have this artist’s music out in the world! I had the honor of mixing and mastering this release with Aldraz Qob’s mastermind Jake Rasbornik. What an amazing talent to work with!

This release has an eclectic sound, a mix of 808 drum beats, Prince-esque scorching guitar solos and the layered vocals of Bon Iver. It’s unlike anything in the Milwaukee scene right! A truly unique artist!

Looking forward to his next release already!