Nebula I

Nebula - Album (2020)

Our debut album. At the moment, we though we knew quite well what we were doing but in retrospective, the process was quite chaotic and we the result wasn't that great. However, that was the best thing we were able to do back then and just because of that, I am very proud of it.

As I said in the upper note, we wrote a demo that helped us define the path we wanted to take. Here you can find that demo Mares y fronteras.

I'll try to give some insights on the production process, but it's been a long time since we made this and I don't remember all the details.

Synths and virtual instruments:

There are a lot of synth layers in all the tracks of this record. The instruments used were Alchemy (Logic Pro built-in synth) and UVI Workstation Digital Synthsation patches.

We used a technique that I consider to be part of our formula at this point. In any song where the chorus is repeated at the end of the track, a lead synth must play a melody or an arpegio. You can hear that in the end of Mares y fronteras, Agentes tangentes and Final del camino.

Drums

We couldn't afford recording acoustic drums so we recorded the MIDI performance with a friends e-drums. We used an EZDrummer 2 standard kit for the drums, but (spoiler) kick and snare were replaced when we went to mix the album in the studio.

Bass

The bass used for the recording was an LTD D-5 through a Line6 Helix patch.

The signal chain routed the hi-end of the bass DI through a Darkglass B7k emulation and the low-end through a compressor, then the sum went into an Ampeg SVT emulation with a matching cab. The Darkglass emulation had different levels of distortion according to the intensity of the parts.

We also recorded the DI, but somehow it was out of phase and we didn't really use it in the end.

Guitars

The guitars used were an Ibanez MM1-TAB and a Gibson Les Paul Studio through different Line6 Helix patches.

Rhythmic parts were double tracked and each performance was reamped through an ENGL + Mark V amps, both with matching cabs. This combo is great because the ENGL provides a beefy low-end while the Mark V has definition and high-end clarity. In retrospective, I think it would have been better to quad-track the guitars and have two performances go through the ENGL and the other two go through the Mark V.

We also recorded DIs for each performance and they were reamped through some VSTs to reinforce certain parts of the songs.

For cleaner sections, we used a Cali Texas amp with matching cab.

For solos and leads, we looked for different presets until we found one that matched the section where that lead line took place.

Vocals

Vocals were a complete mess...

We recorded some songs with a Shure SM58 and other songs with a Focusrite starter pack microphone. There was no consistency between songs and it was a pain to fix...

Furthermore, since it was the first time we were recording vocals, we weren't quite comfortable and had a lot of mistakes like going out of tune / off beat / clipping the signal.

Another noob mistake was thinking that the vocals wouldn't sound great until the final mix. That though took us to ignore the importance of doubling and adding layers of background vocals.

Mixing and mastering

We sent our raw recording to Ænima Studio for the mixing and mastering process. It was a great choice, not only for obtaining a best quality we could strive for, but to learn from all the mistakes we committed during the production.