Joe Henry

​

Song: Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag by James Brown 

Instruments: 

Drums and Guitar - Dakota Cook 

Trumpet - Ethan Zawacki 

Vocals, Keys, and Keys Bass - Joe Henry 

 

Introduction: 

For the longest time I’ve wanted to record this song. I’ve sung it before and even did it for one of my juries. I knew I needed to assemble some good instrumentalists to pull off such a difficult song though. For the trumpet, I got my friend Ethan to play. I met him at CCAC and now he’s in the commercial music program at Seton Hill. He’s insanely talented. I got Dakota to do guitar and drums because he’s also the goat. Lastly, I knew that I wanted to sing, so I did that along with keys and a keys bassline 

 

Setting Up in 107: 

Setting up was a long process. I recorded half of the instruments in 107 and the other half in the blue room. The first day, I set up guitar, trumpet, and drums in 107 and tracked in the tracking room. For the drums, I used an E906 for the hat, a SM58 for the snare, and, of course, a D112 for the kick. In a drum tutorial for the song, only these parts of the kit were used so that’s why I only did them. After, I plugged them into Snake A. Then, I decided to go with the pinnacle ribbon mix for the trumpet because I thought it really highlighted the brightness but also brought out some warmth. Lastly, I mic’d the electric. I decided to go with amp-mic and di pairing, which has never failed me. For the amp, I went with the sennheiser and marshall amp. It added a lot of depth to the sound. Dakota played guitar and drums. He added a distortion pedal that gave the guitar a more gritty sound that worked well with the bluesy feel of the song. 

 

Tracking:

I first created the tracks and named and colored them accordingly in the session. I then patched everything in the tracking room. I patched the trumpet into the pre mpa II, the guitar to the dbx, and the drums to the audient. I originally was going to connect the pinnacle mic to the ribbon pre but for some reason I wasn’t getting signal out of it. After that, I set up two behringers for Dakota and Ethan and connected them, but I wasn't getting signal there either at first because the first two inputs in 107 don’t work for some reason. I connected the two cadd5 cables to inputs 3 and 4 and then it finally worked (see image 9). I also added a click for them in the beginning since the song starts very abruptly.  Finally, they recorded. They both killed it. It took them a total of four takes. They decided to add trumpet and guitar harmonies which sounded dope. 

 

Setting Up and Recording in Blue Room:

I recorded my vocals and keys in the blue room a few days later. I first played the keys and went with the vintage JB setting because I thought it paired well with the vintage blues feel of song. I wasn’t able to get a bass player so I played a bass setting on the keys to simulate a bassline. I went with my favorite amp, the fender acoustic, and DI box combo and then plugged it into the snake. I knew immediately that I wanted to add some richness and sweetness to my vocals so I decided to go with the AKG c414, which is one of my favorite mics. It took a while and I did a bunch of takes. I chose a couple that I really liked and added them to the main playlist. My vocals were input 1 and the keys were input 2.

 

Post-production: 

I used volume automation on the keys and guitars on the certain spots on the song where they sounded more amplified. I didn’t use elastic audio because I didn’t think it needed it. Timing wise I thought everything was pretty in-sync. I trimmed the clips at the very end of the session and added fades to everything except for the vocals in the beginning. I also panned the instruments in different directions to create a more immersive sound. 

 

For the vocals, I used the EQ-7-band and the VEQ4 for the eq. I decided to go with the Jack Joseph PuigChild 660 for the EQ. Corey showed me this plug-in and it made such a drastic difference. I was shocked to see how it gave the vocals so much more presence.  For compression, I used the Dyn3 Compressor/limiter along with the de-esser. The Dyn3 is pretty reliable. It gets the job done. I also lowered the attack a little bit. The de-esser helped a lot because I always accentuate my consonants. I created reverb and delay sends. For the reverb, I used the studio reverb, which I used in the past and have always liked. I used the Pro MDB on it for the first time. This also made such a huge difference and allowed me to target different frequency areas and control the depth and threshold. For the delay, I used the BBD plug-in. It’s pretty simple - just a few knobs like feedback, delay, and depth. I set the delay value to around 120. For the drums, I just used the EQ-7 Band and highlighted the sweet spots of each one - the lows for the kick, the mids for the snare, and the highs for the hat. I also added this to the keys to highlight mid-high frequencies of the main keys and low frequencies of the bass keys. Lastly, I added the REQ 6 band to the guitar and trumpet along with the Dyn3 on the trumpet to lower the threshold and attack. 

 

After adding all of these effects, I just played around with the fader levels and panning until I felt like the sound was balanced. 

 

Reflection:

Overall, this project was super fun but stressful at times, especially during the first session with the three of us. This was the biggest recording I have ever done by myself. I’ve always loved this song and wanted to do a recording of it. I feel like I’ve learned so much from people like Corey and Dakota who have been doing this longer than I have. I’m thankful for them. While I spent weeks recording and mixing this, it was worth it in the end listening to all that we accomplished together.