page_title: Stone Rollin'
section_title: Recording and production
hierarchical_section_title: Stone Rollin' / Recording and production
caption_attribution_description: Raphael Saadiq, American singer-songwriter.
context_page_description: Stone Rollin' is the fourth studio album by American R&B singer, songwriter, and producer Raphael Saadiq. It was released on March 25, 2011, by Columbia Records.
  Inspired by the loud, raw quality of performing in concert, Saadiq worked with recording engineer and long-time collaborator Charles Brungardt to produce a grittier, more aggressive sound than on his previous records. Most of the instruments played on the album were performed by Saadiq, including the prominently featured Mellotron keyboard. With the help of arranger Paul Riser and engineer Gerry Brown, the singer also incorporated string and orchestral arrangements to the songs.
  Stone Rollin' expands on the traditional soul music style of Saadiq's 2008 album The Way I See It by exploring rhythm and blues, rock, funk, and the blues. A widespread critical success, the record was deemed by some reviewers as Saadiq's best work while being noted for its stylistic breadth, groove-based compositions, varied subject matter, and incorporation of the Mellotron keyboard. It also became the singer's highest-charting album in the United States, reaching number 14 on the Billboard 200.
context_section_description: Saadiq recorded Stone Rollin' at Blakeslee Recording Company, his recording studio complex in Los Angeles, California. He spent approximately one year working on the album, including writing its music and lyrics. He worked on the album's production with recording engineer and long-time collaborator Charles Brungardt. The two shared an interest in collecting vintage musical gear and studying historic recording techniques, which they had applied in recording The Way I See It. However, for Stone Rollin', they sought to eschew its predecessor's Motown aesthetic for a more eclectic style, in keeping with Saadiq's other musical projects.
  According to Brungardt, the recording of the project's earlier songs, "Heart Attack", was critical in their decision for the album. The song was recorded during Saadiq's break from touring for The Way I See It and had originally featured that album's sound, with which they were not satisfied. When they revisited the song, Saadiq reconstructed the original recording after stripping track's individually recorded instrument parts, with the exception of the vocals and some of its drums. In an interview for EQ Magazine, Brungardt said of their approach, "We wanted to evolve the songs, and I wanted to evolve the engineering, as well. On The Way I See It, everything was pretty much tube pre's and tube compressors. On this one, I wanted to play around with some of the more solid-state gear".
  For the majority of the recordings, Saadiq played most of the instruments, including bass, keyboard, guitar, Mellotron, percussion, and drums, and he also layered each recorded instrumental part afterwards. Brungardt used a Neumann U 47 microphone to record each of Saadiq's instrument parts. Saadiq recorded his vocals on a dynamic microphone alone in the recording studio's control room, an approach encouraged to him earlier in his career by record producer and audio engineer Gerry Brown. According to Brungardt, "[Saadiq's] voice benefits from a dynamic mic because it tends to give him more bottom and presence. Plus dynamic mics can sound a little older when pushed".
  For several songs, Saadiq incorporated lush orchestration and strings as predominant elements. He worked on the orchestral recording with Brown and arranger Paul Riser at Ocean Way Recording's Studio B in Los Angeles, while the songs' horn parts were mostly recorded at the Blakeslee studio. Brown also worked with Saadiq on the album's tracking at Blakeslee. With the songs' guitar parts, Brungardt wanted to create additional distortion in order to produce a grittier guitar sound for the songs, a stylistic preference Saadiq and he had acquired from listening to a great deal of indie rock at the time. He applied several techniques to achieve this sound, including increasing the gain on Saadiq's Fender Twin guitar amplifier, using a software plug-in for the recordings in post-production, and re-amping Saadiq's guitar parts. In his interview for EQ Magazine, Brungardt discussed using a Massey TapeHead, one of his preferred plug-ins, in the recording process, stating "I’ll use that on a lot of things to get a little more grit. It thickens stuff up nicely if you record something that’s a little too bright. I usually go a lot for darker tones when recording and mixing".
  Some of the album's songs were recorded by Saadiq with his live band, which included drummer Lemar Carter, bassist Calvin Turner, and guitarist Rob Bacon. Bacon, who had played with Saadiq since 2002, said of their grittier approach to guitar, "I have relative pitch, as opposed to perfect pitch, so there'd be times when I'd spend 15 or 20 minutes tuning my instrument. Then he'd come in and pick up his guitar and just start playing it however it was left the day before. On one of the tracks I had to play over all this stuff that was out of tune. Raphael was like, 'That's what makes it funky!'". Musical guests such as vocalist Yukimi Nagano, keyboardist Larry Dunn, bass player Larry Graham, keyboardist Amp Fiddler, and pedal steel guitarist Robert Randolph also contributed to the album's recordin
caption: Saadiq (pictured in 2008) recorded his vocals using a dynamic microphone, due in part to its grainy sonic character.
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