I was privileged to work with Ashley Braga on her debut album of children’s music, Ladder to the Moon. Ashley is a talented singer-songwriter and music educator with an incredible gift for melody and a beautiful voice.
Ashley wrote several original songs for the album, and put her own special twists on classic children’s song like Wheels on the Bus and Apples and Bananas.
The producer role
My job was to add interesting and whimsical instrumentation and musical parts to the songs. The songs were mostly I-IV-V chord progressions with simple melodies and a lot of repetition. I too, restricted my basslines and piano parts to perfect fourth and fifth intervals and simple motifs going up and down major scales. I also opted for simple drum parts, avoiding excessive syncopation. We added glockenspiel, tambourine, shaker, bongos, and slide whistle. Some songs featured funny sound effects and other noises.
My friend and Beige Shelter bandmate Tom contributed the bassline for Banana-nana – totally the heart of the groove, thanks Tom!
Some of the arrangements proved challenging with finding the right swing setting for quantizing other parts, and keeping parts simple and still interesting or fun.
Mixing considerations
Children’s music should be dynamic and punchy, with all the parts clearly heard. I sculpted sonic space for each instrument and voice with EQ, and held back on using too much compression. At first, I mixed it more like a rock record, then dialed back on the amounts of compression to give the songs more room to breathe.
For most of my productions, I rely more on delay than reverb to give a sense of space in a mix. For Ladder to the Moon, I hardly used any delay; reverb just seemed to fit the vibe better.
During mastering, I made a few subtle tonal adjustments to some of the songs to give the whole album a more consistent sound. I wanted to retain the dynamic quality of the mixes, so I applied limiting with hardly any gain reduction.
Final release
Ashley put the CD together with great artwork in time for the holiday season.
All in all, it was a joy working with Ashley on her debut album. You can purchase the CD here, and the album will be available on streaming services in early 2019.
