BREAKDOWN - Dreaming of California

BIG & RICH - California

Artist: Big & Rich

Album: Did It For The Party ( their 6th album )

Track: California

Label: Big & Rich Records / Thirsty Tigers

Producer: Big Kenny & John Rich

Engineer: Nick Brophy

Mix: Nick Brophy

Recorded: Warner Bro / Nashville

Released: 6th of March, 2017

Song Writers: John Big, Rodney Clawson

and Vicky McGehee

Tempo: 116 bpm

Key: A major

Signature: 4/4

Song Length: 3.21

Genre: Country Rock

Yes they are riding horses in Nashville

Background on the cats from Nashville

John Big wrote this song with his songwriting team (Rodney Clawson and Vicky McGehee) in 2015, John said to his team he had an idea about writing a song that was about woman following her dream and leaving everything and everyone behind to shift to California.

Tim McGraw recorded the song for his album 'Damn Country Music' after hearing a demo of it. Damn Country Music sold 255,800 albums in 2 years and the second release of the song on their album sold 38,700 copies by November the same year it was released. The song was released as a single by Big & Rich and peak on the country airplay billboard at 20 and the Hot Country songs billboard at 32. The Album which it was release from, Did It For The Party charted the Top Country Albums Billboard and peaked at 2. So this song has had a lot of success since it was heard as a demo. Both of these artists have released solo album and been in other band. John Big was the bass guitarist for Lonestar from 1992 - 1998 and then started releasing solo albums before in joined up with Big Kenny in 2002.

Big Kenny was also in a band called luvjOI before he teamed up with John Big and has also released solo albums

John Big solo Albums - Rescue Me, Underneath The Same Moon and Son of a Preacher Man

Big Kenny solo Albums - Live a Little, The Quiet Times of a Rock and Roll Farm Boy and Big Kenny Love Everybody Traveling Musical Medicine Show Mix Tape Vol, 1

Arrangement

This song to me is full of classic country, pop, rock vibes. Big & Rich do vary their instruments sounds in different song. For instances in their song Save A Horse, Ride A Cowboy They use banjos in the verses, but they still use distortion on the guitars.

For this song California it sounds like they are using 2 electric guitars, bass, drums and an organ for the verses. During the Verses they bring different instrument in and out to keep the ear interested, looking for some sound candy.

The chorus they are using a pedal steel to give it that Nashville sound and blend it with an keyboard underneath the pedal steel. The bridge is mainly bass guitar, drums and keyboard. Soft chorus Drums and keyboard samples

The song has a simple layout to keep it commercial and Radio air friendly.

I could imagine fans driving down Broadway St in Nashville, with this song playing through the radio speakers.

Nashville Broadway St above

The structure of the song seen pretty stock standard for the genre.

Intro/Verse 1/Chorus/Verse 2/Chorus/Bridge/Chorus/Repeat last line of chorus/Outro

Some thoughts on how it was constructed

Intro - Blue

Starts with Distortion on rhythm guitar and the kick drum and hi hat. The rhythm guitar is creating a rhythm riff to grab your ear as the drums are used to support the rhythm guitar. Bass guitar comes in on the 3rd bar with a run and drums do a drum roll intro the 4th bar.

Verse - Green & Red

First have of Verses (Green) are like any other commercial country song, the instrument are there to support the vocals and make it easy to listen too. Second part (Red) of the verse is great to listen to as the Lyric rhythm and melody change to give it a sense of energy before the Chorus comes in.

Chorus - Yellow

The Chorus gives the song a nice cruisey vibe about it. The Chorus sound full, where as the verses felt nicely stripped down to introduce a full sounding chorus mix. The pedal steel is brought to the front to give it the Nashville sound. (it's the dope)

Bridge - Purple

The 4 bar bridge introduces the soft Chorus by peaking at the top of its melodic structure. Once the bridge peaks, it is smoothed out by the soft chorus keyboard samples.

Outro

The outro is uses the same chords as the intro, but the chorus format of instrument mix has been carried out through to the end.

This song is a great example on how to sell a song to the public, and create a steady income from publishing and mechanical royalties. The song is simple and radio friendly,

but most of all it sounds awesome.

The spectrum analyser shows that the frequency flow is pretty good overall with the vocals and instrument.

You can see the kick drum and bass guitar from 22Hz to 200Hz being a fraction loader that the rest. The drums and bass guitar are peaking about -10dB. The snare seems to be around the 200Hz and according to the chart below, that is why the snare l'm hearing has a full sound.

Snare Frequency Chart Below

Frequency Chart for Guitar & Bass above

The guitar frequency is sitting just under the drums and bass guitar round about -25 dB. So since this song is in A Major and on root position on the second fret, l can see what is happening by using the guitar and bass frequency chart above.

The vocal frequency range for a male is 85Hz to 180Hz, so by having the vocal panning slightly is playing a big part. As l'm watching the Blue Cat's Freqanalyst bounce around, l notice that in the verses, the vocals are it peak at -20dB in the 470Hz and in the chorus it is peaking at the -20dB, sitting between 470Hz to 1kHz (1000Hz). This shows the melody is down in the verses and moves up in the chorus, give the sense of the song moving in the melodic structure way.

Headphone analyse

Listening to the song with a set headphone on, they start with a couple of guitars playing the rhythm and making it into a riff, l think the guitars are panned left and right at a 90 or more degree setting, so you hear the seperate parts they are playing. The drums kick is supporting the guitars. Bass is in the background and gradually is faded up to sit up just under the vocal for the start of the verse. The position of the bass guitar, drums and guitar seem to stay just under the vocals all the way through the song. With the bass guitar being panned slightly to the right, the kick is panned slightly to the left and the snare is centre. The guitar panned to the right has not been moved. It still sounds the same, but gain fader leave has been shifted down to allow the vocals to come in on the first verse and is bought to the same level for each verse. The other guitar in the left side is still in the same panning position, but they have pulled down the gain fader just a little more to give the vocals some more room. I think they have panned the main vocals to the left every slightly. This is really cool on how to balance the song for a listener with out disturbing the dB level. When the second vocalist comes in halfway through the first verse, he is panned to the right slightly and this will be for all the verses through, he is used to support and fill out the main vocalist sound. In the chorus they fill out the sound by increasing the gain fader on the second vocalist who is still in the same panning position from the verse. The second vocalist still sitting him under the main vocals, but you can tell they have made it tighter in volume differences. They add organ and pedal steel to the chorus. The organ is panned to the left and sitting under the pedal steel which is panned to the right and at the same time lower the guitar volumes so they don't interfering with the vocals. So now the organ and pedal steel are replacing the 2 guitar mixing position and the guitars are used to fill out the chorus but in the background and yet still a major part of the mix.. The chorus format is used the same way through the song except in the quiet chorus part after the bridge, which has been energised a little bit so that a soft chorus part can be added. In the bridge the bass is the featured instrument and when the soft chorus part comes in they use keyboard samples to soften it. Second half of the chorus is business as usual and the same way to the outro. The outré has the same instrumentation as the chorus and format. This is a fell crafted country rock song.

Nick Brophy Studio 1 (Above)

Nick Brophy helped engineer and mix the Album - Did it for The Party.

Nick Brophy has been an engineer, producer, mixer and songwriter has been involved with artist from the rock genre through to the country genre. Acts like Everclear, Garbage, Taylor Swift and many many more. I tried to find out about the studio equipment that he use to help with the Big & Rich Album Did it for The Party, but it is different to other genres. I couldn't find any real sauces. The only thing l could find is his pic of his studio 1

Is this the future we are looking at. I tried for hours to see if l could find out what software, hardware equipment he is using and if he uses a console at all during his recording process.

I don't really know what the equipment he is run there. l can see 4 VU meters so they are might be for the signal gain. It looks like a distressor with the 4 white knobs. The box to the right is probably the protools control.

I can see a couple of power amplifiers, an interface or is there 2, a batch bay, a video player and the other equipment l'm not sure of and the brain of it all, the computer. There is another 2 pieces, l can not make out.

I thought you might be interest in the credit listing for the Big & Rich Album

Did it for The Party

As you can see multiple musician, and recording personal specialist were involve in the album. Did it for The Party which the single California was released from. What was the budget again? Big &Rich earn 6 million annual.

References

Big & Rich - California. (2017, May 08). Retrieved June 05, 2019, from https://youtu.be/ulAK6KgoD-s

Nick Brophy Music. (2016). Retrieved June 06, 2019, from https://www.nickbrophy.com/Studio/1/thumbs-caption

Did It for the Party - Big & Rich | Credits. (2019). Retrieved June 06, 2019, from https://www.allmusic.com/album/did-it-for-the-party-mw0003081041/credits

Snare Eq: How To Get Phat & Punchy Snare Using Eq. (2019). Retrieved June 08, 2019, from https://talkinmusic.com/musicproduction/snare-eq-phat-punchy-snare-eq/

“What Is the Frequency of Low E on a 4 String?” TalkBass.com, 2018, www.talkbass.com/threads/what-is-the-frequency-of-low-e-on-a-4-string.6719/.

Retrieved June 08 2019