Angel

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For the Identity album, I wanted to start small and end huge, with complexity and volume building over time. To do this, I felt the first song had to be elemental and essential. What better way to convey this than with the most fundamental musical instrument: the human voice? That song would become “Angel”.

When I first started sketching the piece out, I sat at my keyboard with a notebook and a pencil. No complicated samples, just my voice and a simple piano sound. I needed to figure out the chords, the melody, and how the verses would shift from minor to major. That piano sketch became the blueprint for everything that followed.

I originally intended to sing all the vocal parts myself – four voices, stacked and blended. I created a lead sheet and rehearsed the main vocal with piano daily. But as my self‑imposed recording deadline approached, I realized that I was running out of time. I had never actually tried singing the other parts, and I wasn’t confident that I could get the blend and consistency I wanted in the time I had left. I needed a better solution.

Then I discovered Mervyn Warren’s Choir library (Spitfire Audio) during a Black Friday sale. That changed everything. Suddenly, I had a real‑sounding ensemble that could support my lead vocal without overpowering it. I ended up using the choir throughout the entire piece, from start to finish – introducing different sections of the choir at key points (bridge, final chorus) but always keeping a choral presence underneath.

Once I had a rough mix together, hearing everything blend together, I knew this was going to work as the opener to the album that I had originally imagined. Mixing and mastering this piece was pretty straightforward as there weren’t too many tracks and everything was sounding really good with some minimal processing.

Special Recording Notes

  • Lead vocal: Recorded in Logic at 24bit/96kHz.
  • No external processing during recording – captured dry to leave flexibility for later.

Special Mix Prep Notes (Post‑Tracking, Pre‑Mixing)

  • Clip gain: Adjusted every vocal region to around -18 dB RMS before any processing.
  • Melodyne: Used for both pitch correction and the sibilant tool – far superior to FlexPitch.
  • Hardware Voxbox: Ran the lead vocal through my Manley Voxbox as a hardware insert. Settings:
    • Input: 1:00, Gain: 48, HPF: 80Hz
    • Compressor: Threshold 12:00, Attack Fast, Release Medium Fast (“Classic LA2A”)
    • De‑esser: LIMIT 10:1, Threshold 9:00
    • EQ: Low Peak 100Hz +2dB, Mid Dip 300Hz –9.75dB, Hi Peak 20kHz +11.5dB

Special Mixing Notes

  • Choir: Mervyn Warren Choir, programmed via MIDI and rendered as audio, placed on its own fader groups. Created submasters for each choir section (e.g., soprano, alto, tenor, bass) and wrote automation to build dynamics across the song’s sections (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, outro).
  • Lead vocal chain: After the hardware insert, I set up two sends: one for parallel compression using a Fairchild 660, and another to a dedicated instance of Black Box using the “Airy Vocal” preset for some “dirt”. I blended both in with the main vocal track.
  • Reverb:
    • Lexicon 480L with the “Dialog 2” setting on one send.
    • Air Studios Reverb Essentials with the “Cathedral Strings” setting on another send, used during the climax.
  • Blackbox: Added to master bus with the “16 Mix Bus 1” preset – gave the whole track a subtle, warm glue.

Special Mastering Notes

  • Target LUFS: Aimed for -15 to -16 LUFS (intimate, natural, breath).
  • Ozone settings:
    • EQ: Made small adjustments – +0.8 dB on high shelf @ 10.5 kHz
    • Imager: Mid‑side mode – 0‑70Hz = 0.0, 70Hz‑2.8kHz = 24.1, 2.8kHz‑5.0kHz = 41.8
    • Maximizer: IRC IV “Modern”, threshold -6.5 dB, ceiling -5.0 dB, Character 2.60
  • Dither: POW‑r #2 when converting from 24‑bit to 16‑bit.

Here’s the lead sheet for Angel:

Angel Lead SheetDownload

Identity is now available on all streaming platforms (such as Spotify), or you can also listen to it on Bandcamp.