www.MarkTAW.com/recording/Production/ColdplayParachutes.html (printable version)

I like the production values

I just finished reading an interview with Ken Nelson, the co-producer and engineered the album Parachutes by Coldplay (available on Capitol Records). See the sidebar for a link to the interview.

A lot of what he says makes sense to me. Try to get the best live performance and capture it, and you can really hear a lot of that on this album. It has a classic feel - a real band played these songs and not a computer. Things groove, they speed up, slow down, they have dynamics that haven't been squeezed out by compression (a-la Linkin Park and others) to the point where instruments are either on or off.

In my headphones the soundstage is a little confusing. The drums sound like they're in two rooms. A relatively small room that they were recorded in, but then somehow projected out into a stadium. The vocals are up front, but again in a stadium like you're on stage with the band hearing them directly, and then getting the echo off of the stadium walls. They have a closed room sound, except when they have an outdoor sound.

The soundstage

I think it captures well the "look at the stars" feel of an open meadow with reverb bouncing off of distant nothing. You would get a close up sound from the instruments, and the reverb from the mountains and ponds in the distance, but I still can't place them in space.

Yeah ok, a lot of this would be fixed if I listened to it through my speakers, I would have more reference to where they are located in space - they'd be located somewhere in my living room. =)

Interesting anomolies, notes on the recording

At some points on the high hat (I forget in which song) you can really hear the gate closing off at the end of the note, it doesn't taper it just ends. Towards the end of We Never Change I heard a voice speaking. The fact that this kind of stuff is on the album is great. They recorded backup vocals in the control room, left scratch acoustic guitar tracks even though the original vocals bled through on to them. The recording process was organic, and it shows through on the album.

The mix

The drums are really tastefully done. I know most drummers would say they're too low in the mix, but I like them where they are. The kick is solid, even if it has some of that 70's boxiness that started with Stevie Wonder. The snare sound is excellent as well as the snare work, which isn't prominent but plays an important role in the song.

The bass is mostly percieved rather than being heard. There are songs and places where it stands out a lot more, but it does a lot to move the songs sonically without intruding. Again, if I was the bass player I'd probably want them to turn it up, but in this case, I'd be wrong.

The vocals and the guitars really stand out, and that's what you're drawn to in the songs. Acoustic guitar is used mostly as a pad and to define the harmonic shape of the songs, and the lead guitar stays out a lot during the verses and comes in to accept the choruses playing melodic thirds and fifths.

While the guitars get panned a lot (which I like, put the acoustic in one channel and the electric in the other, etc.) the vocals are up front and center, and more than anything else really ground the songs. Usually it's the drums that ground the songs, but here it's often the acoustic guitar and vocals.

If you think of it in terms of visuals, Chris (the singer & acoustic guitar player) is front and center in the spotlight. The drums and bass are usually in the back supporting the vocals, and the lead guitar floats around in space. Spies is a good example of this. There's a cool bass/drum riff that's without vocals that almost replaces the chorus where the bass and drums are really prominent, and then they fall back for the verses where the vocals and lead guitar really jump out.

Too bright

I find the guitars and vocals to be a bit bright. While I love the bass & drum tones, the heavy handed mixing of the guitars and vocals and relative lack of lows in either make for a fairly harsh mix, and I couldn't really imagine giving this an extended listen for that fact.

As a contrast, the Red Hot Chili Peppers / Blood Sugar Sex Magic is a lot more mellow (mix wise not music wise!). Nothing has quite the crystaline highs as Parachutes which actually seems to be missing from BSSM, but it's a lot easier on the ears. All of the instruments are given similar treatment in terms of volume (the drums are in a different club altogether from the rest of the band, but that's another story).

Summary

It's great to hear a good band do their thing and have the production process be really transparent. The fact that the producer tried to get a great vibe live and just capture it really shows through on the recording. The soundstage is a little confusing, but very few recordings have a cohesive sound stage, and admittedly my headphones are notorious for not giving a good soundstage. The bass and drums are well controlled volume and tone wise really doing their job moving the song along without being intrusive. The guitar and vocals, on the other hand are extra loud and have a lot of extra high frequency content with very little low frequency content making for a rather grating listening experience.

Message Board: http://www.marktaw.com/forum/list.php?f=1

page first created on Monday, April 08, 2002

this site and it's contents copyright Mark Wieczorek