Alroight bab? It’s the moment of truth; the answer to the question… can you record a full track in minimal space and budget, centered on a Chromebook and a free, online DAW?
Well, you can be sure I haven’t come this far committing to a weekly blog without being sure that it worked!
Alroight Bab: final rig run down
Throw in BandLab, and it’s like a music production equivalent to the end of Infinity War. That link is a spoiler.
Finishing Alroight Bab
Now, professional producers and engineers, and even hobbyists with the luxury of operating a more expansive setup than light audio recording could have a separate post each on editing, mixing, and mastering.
But in light audio recording, we’re sharing our space with other people, and we don’t have time to get too fancy.
Editing
Because BandLab is limited in the number tracks it can handle, I created separate mixes for each instrument section. I would bring those mixes together later. So my library in BandLab looks like this…
At this stage, I didn’t add any effects or processing: just made sure they all started and ended where they should, and that the sound between the various parts of the “micro-mix” were appropriately balanced.
Then, I exported each micro-mix as a mixdown in a wav file.
Mixing
After importing the micro-mixes into a new project to finalize the track, it looked like this.
At this stage, I heaped on some compression, using BandLab’s in-built processing for the matter.
A real producer will close his eyes and listen carefully to how sound gets adjusted as they tweak compression settings. However, a light audio recordist Googles compression settings for the various parts, and that’ll have to do.
I tried to add some long plate reverb to the vocals. It sounded mega in the mix editor, but for some reason, upon exiting the mix editor, vocals were barely audible. Daniel from BandLab said it’s a thing and they hope to improve it down the line.
With the compression in place, it was just a matter of tweaking some more levels across the track.
Mastering
It used be that you’d record your music, then have to send it somewhere else for mastering. High-end releases mostly still do that with a dedicated mastering engineer.
Cheaper studios will fire your track through some software. Home recordists could use pirate software, or in later years, upload it to a website, pay maybe $3 by PayPal, and get the mastered track sent back within an hour.
And now there’s BandLab. Where for no additional cost to the zero dollars that you’re already paying, you can have a CD quality master copy in a few seconds.
Conclusion
Well, light audio recording is definitely a thing now.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| This is so cheap: you can pick up a Chromebook for $150, monitors and studio headphones for $100 each, an audio interface for $50 or less; BandLab is free; therefore, for $400, you can have a functional home recording setup | Mixing: it’s a shame it can’t be mixed in a more holistic way; the percussion in particular got lost in the mix |
| It can only get better: Chromebooks are getting more powerful and versatile, and BandLab never stops developing; with this in mind, I’m excited for what this might become | Quality: it must be remembered, this is good enough quality to get your ideas down, get booked for shows, and maybe get played on a podcast, it won’t get you a multi-million dollar deal with a major label |
| Birmingham: Brum has a song of its very own now, and that makes me happy and proud | Screen size: I used to have a command center with two full-size monitors – it goes without saying that was more comfortable for music editing than my little Chromebook screen |
Without any further delay, it’s my pleasure to present to you… Alroight Bab.
A note on Alroight Bab
It’s occurred to me that I never wrote anything about what the song is actually about. Musicians explaining their songs on stage drags their set down, so here’s the explanation.
To summarize, it’s about my time in Birmingham, from start to finish. “Alroight bab” is how the locals greet you, where ‘bab’ is a general term of endearment.
When I was getting ready to move to NYC, I wanted a playlist of songs that started with ones about Brum, that led into ones about New York. I don’t know if you’ve checked, but there are lots of songs that are very explicitly about New York.
However, aside from the occasional reference, there isn’t a single song so explicitly about Brum. That is to say: I couldn’t find one.
Therefore, I set out to write one, and that’s not normally how I roll. I normally just sit and write waffle, but this needed to be done.
I had it in my head that I’d read that Jay-Z and Alicia Keys’ Empire State of Mind was intended as a love song to New York. And I wanted to write one for Brum. It would need the uplifting melancholy of Snow Patrol, combined with the Midlands anthems of the ordinary on The Enemy’s We Live and Die in These Towns.
I don’t know if I nailed it, but here we are.
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