Gimme Shelter Recording Project - Pre-Production / Session Planning

For the recording module I have been working on a recording of Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones (1969), during this I have had to plan for several recording sessions within which I will record the various audio tracks I need for the final track. For this I researched the original's audio tracks, listening through and critically listening to the deconstructed tracks referenced below. These have been very important for my project as they have given me a good sonic picture of what each layer should be based off tonally, as I am not aiming for an exact replica of the song and hoping to add some of my own originality to it the deconstructed tracks are giving me a starting point to aim for when I approach the mixing and recording of the project. There being lots of crunch to the guitars, long-tailed delay and reverb on the vocals, piercing lead guitars, thick supportive bass and punchy drums, all these I will aim for in my own version.

With the chord sequence being a fairly simple three chord lick, the session guitarists I will be working with for this project have said they will have no problem working around the chords themselves and have not needed any reference material to work off. For the drumming, as there are cues, fills and breaks in specific places to the original, I found a drum sheet for reference material for the session drummer to work with, not to strictly adhere to but to inform on where they are in the track and to provide a base rhythm to work off.

To begin with the track I listened through a deconstructed version of each layer so I knew what elements I would need to record [1] the main of course being drums, guitars, bass and vocals. I began the pre-production process by creating a scratch track in my home studio, this consisted of a drum machine track keeping the kick / snare pattern going in the original composition’s form [2] which I programmed with MIDI and a piano track to maintain some rhythm done with a DI recording signal from an XP-10 into a 6-track recorder sending via interface to the DAW Logic Pro where the scratch was finalised and exported the individual stems along with a bounce of both together.

I created two Pro tools and two Logic Pro sessions in total, the scratch being Logic Pro, there was then a Pro Tools session at 48k for recording, a Pro Tools session at 48k for Mixing on the desks and a Logic Pro session at 44k for mixing at home.