Aesthetics of Imani Republic song titled - Give

The song titled Give was written by Philadelphia Murefu the bandleader.

The Imani Republic Band recorded a song titled 'Give' which was written by bandleader Philadephia Murefu.

The aesthetics referenced band is by Earth, Wind, and Fire.

The song - 'September', was released in 1978.

Genre - R&B, Disco, Funk and Soul.

We used Earth, Wind, and Fire (EWF) song 'September' as a reference song aesthetics because we wanted to capture an uplifting feel to Phil's Gospel song he had written and to celebrate the band's connection to their faith and their belief in Christianity.

How we recorded the song 'Give'

The recording of the Imani Republic song titled 'Give' was recorded in 2 stages. The first stage was to record all the instruments together in the recording studio, as we wanted to capture the vibe of the band.

All the vocals were done at Phil's home studio along with any other parts that needed to be overdubbed or re-recorded.

The Instrumentation for the song:

• Drums

• Bass Guitar

• Keyboards

• Guitars

The Imani Republic instruments aesthetics.

Drum's & Percussion - We were aiming for a vibe and sound that you could feel the energy and passion of the drummer.

The kick drum we were after a nice full tone. (During the mixing, we had turned all the plug-ins off as we were discussing equalization with Steph).

Snare sound was to reflect and obtain the 70s' feel and texture of the live sound recording. Crisp but mid to high tonalities were created by using equalizers. A compressor along with the room and overhead mics were used to blend in the texture of the snare sound we were after, in the drum kit sound. We also added a spring reverb plug-in to simulate the spring sound of the bottom of the snare, and to try to emulate the same sound of the reference track. The Hi-Hats, we equalized, to have a bright sound and added a little reverb to complement the snare and kick. The drum kit sound from the reference song has a rich medium to bright sound to it, so we used 10 microphones on the day to create a solid fall drum kit sound and create a similar vibe and aesthetics sound of Earth, Wind, and Fire.

The Bongo's, as we liked the natural tonality we didn't add EQ to the Bongo sound, so we placed the bongo's as part of the overall rhythmic feel, by panning it slightly to the left to give it some room in the mix. We bought up the bongos a fraction during the guitar solo so it gave a different feel about the song.

The Tambourine was used as an ambiance sound, and so we also panned the sound to the left.

Bass Guitar - We wanted to get the funk into the bass guitar so tried blending 2 tracks together and added equalizers and compressor plug-ins to the 2 tracks. However we ended up using the DI Box track with EQ, compression, and delay, as it seemed to sound better with the other instruments. We were after a mid-range funky sound and did have to do a bit of bass guitar editing to help the rhythm tightness between the bass guitar and drums.

Keyboards - We used equalizers on some of the keyboard parts, but most of the time we used the inbuilt keyboard sounds as they sounded ok without equalization, and to get the aesthetic feel. With the keyboard violin sound, we did add compression and reverb to give it a full sound. The brass parts were equalized to bring out the 'brassy' sound. It was suggested by Steph that we always us midi for the horn section, rather than recording it onto an audio track.

Guitars - The rhythm guitars sound, we added compression and equalized to give the rhythm more of a thin quality sound and added reverb so it would feel warmer as it cut through the mix easier. On the reference song, the guitar sounded high and funky and we wanted to capture that feel for their guitar.

The lead guitar - We added a little reverb to the guitarist distortion track, the guitarist recorded on the day in an attempt to give it a smoother sound

Vocals - There was a lot of hissing noise happening when the singers sang certain lyric words. The only way to get rid of some of the noise was to cut out all the continents that were creating the noise. The usual technique is to leave the main vocals and cut out the noisy continents from the supporting vocals. We also added EQ and light compression to control the dB levels in the vocal transients, (so the vocal levels came across smooth, and you could still hear the expression in the vocals).

We used Melodyne to start the process of tuning up the main vocals, we didn't line up the support vocals with the main vocals because shifting all of the support vocals to line uptight, would spoil the vibe of the song.

Animation - To make this song come alive, we did a lot of animation to bring the various instruments up and down in the dB levels of the track clips.

Conclusion on the recording - Some parts of the song that were recorded ended up being to quiet to use and when we raised the dB levels on the soft tracks, the tracks had a heap of noise interfering with the transients (which made the track limit on how l could mix them). We used the soft recordings as more of an ambiance sound in the background.

The guitar tuning on the lead guitar was way out of tune, and it really made it hard to know how to deal with the sound of the instrument. There was no reference to go by on the reference song, so we used a little reverb to try and soften the tuning tonality problem, (It still sounded out of tune, but it didn't get the harsh edge to the sound, once reverb was added).

The drum kit sound would have been a lot better if we had have recorded the bottom side of the snare drum.

Researching the reference song and how they created the tonality sounds of the instrument and vocals, a little research would have given us a better insight into the different ways of recording for the genre. We tried to compensate the bottom snare spring sound by using a reverb plug-in.

The keywords for this recording project are:

• research,

• tuning,

• quality of some of the recorded transients

• planning the recording session

• along with knowing how EWF recorded their instruments for the genre aesthetic.

All this would have made the recording go smoother in the pre-production stage.

This is a demo of Give as the song still needs more mixing.