Producing “Take It Off My Back” by Swim Club

Take It Off My Back was recorded as part of a songwriter’s camp with LA indie music collective Swim Club. It’s my favorite release by Swim Club, in large part because the fast-moving process enabled the creation of some unique and unusual sounds. I’m a sucker for weird drums, unconventional instrumentation, and strange recording techniques, and this song has all of those. Generally, the recording process unfolded in four parts: recording the instrumental, writing the lyrics and melodies, recording the vocals tracks, and arranging the final song.

Recording The Instrumental:

I had most of the instrumental ready when the songwriters came in to work on this track. Ben Greenberg and I had recorded the bulk of the instrumental the day before. Some instrumentals take a long time to come together, but on this one it took no time to lay down the bones. I recorded the drum groove with a Teenage Engineering Pocket Operator while the rest of the group took cold plunges outside, and I played synths with Finkel’s vintage omnichord. Ben came in not long after and recorded the guitars. He had a great chain - a rubber bridge acoustic from Old Style Guitars that he plugged into a Milkman Sound ‘The Amp’ pedal. I dialed in tones with a UAD Twinfinity. Anjelo Alonte plugged his violin into a pedalboard and an amp, and we played with chorus and vibrato tones before recording them. The violins here sound toy-like, almost like a toy casio synth rather than a real wooden violin.

Writing The Lyrics:

When the writers came in, I had this story ready:

On New Year’s Day some year’s ago, standing on a cliffside overlooking a beach in Peru, I felt a yearslong depression lift. There were fireworks over the Pacific, their reflections scattered over a wave that never seemed to break, and standing there in a group of people I felt a heavy weight disappear from my life. It felt like the end of a long journey, the moment when you finally arrive at your destination after 14 hours on a Greyhound and your friend meets you at the bus station. It felt like the moment your friend takes your bags from you, and you can finally move your shoulders again. All of a sudden you realize how much you have been carrying with you, because it is gone. I’ve never felt anything like it before or since.

I wanted to write a song about that feeling.

With that story in mind, the following songwriters came together to work on the song - 

TaRhea Ray, DorothyK, Nabiyah Be, Aaron Kennedy, Anjelo Alonte, Meredith Adelaide, Matty Bedrosian, Ben Greenberg, and myself.

Each of us seemed to take the lead writing a verse here, or mixing two together until we found the lines that worked best together. One person would write a full verse and bring it to the group, who would pick at it until it sounded just right. Matty wrote one of my favorite lines here - “am I dreaming, am I drowning?”

Recording The Vocals:

Once the writing was done, we recorded the verses with two ribbon mics, Beyerdynamic M160s placed towards the sides of a couch that all of us either sat on or stood around. The voices blended together like few other things I’ve heard. Each voice is distinct and audible, but a smooth blend at the same time. Later, working through the mix, I couldn’t believe the perfect mix of clarity and smearing we got from these two room mics. They have a lovely dark tone. We used a different mic for the chorus, a Neumann TLM103 up close to the vocalists. This mic is brighter and more open sounding. Using this bright close mic here made the vocals pop like a chorus should, even though the instrumental does not change significantly.

Arranging The Final Song:

At the end of the night, most of the group left without a full song recorded. The verses were done, but the choruses had yet to come together. With all but a few people left in the room, I wrote and recorded the chorus vocals, unsure of whether or not they would really work. We gave each other a nod, as if to say, “we’ll revisit this,” and most of us went home. I recorded bass late into the night. The next day, Meredith layered her harmonies on top of my vocals, and the song was close to a wrap.

The final part took the longest. With all of the pieces recorded, I took the session home with me, and began the arrangement process. I recorded no new parts, but started moving pieces around, dropping out drums here, dropping out bass there, adding in a few beats before the second chorus, working to blend the multiple verse takes into one choral section. I arranged the strings in the final chorus and made the ending sections feel a little more like the ending credits for a film.

Takeaways:

This song did not take much work in the mixing process. Most of the work that took place in post production was in additional arranging. Creative recording techniques can go a long way towards making a song sound finished on the way in. Much of that comes down to decision making. In the moment, it’s important to decide how you want each piece of the arrangement to sound, and as you make those decisions, you make them relative to each other. For instance, if you decide that you want a very dark guitar, then when you record strings or percussion, there is room for those sounds in the higher registers. It’s important not just to find space for each sound in the mixing stage, but up-front in the recording and arranging process as well. It will make your life much easier as you go along.