Recording
"Love Story" was recorded in March 2008 at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, alongside record producer Nathan Chapman and various personnel. Chapman produced all but one song on Swift's 2006 eponymous debut album, Taylor Swift, and co-produced all songs on Fearless. Swift sang into an Avantone CV-12 multi-pattern tube microphone, manufactured by Avant Electronics. The microphone had a new old stock tube that was designed and built by country singer, record producer, and audio engineer Ray Kennedy for Chapman. Chapman had received the microphone from Kennedy as a loan, as a "try this for a while" experiment. Although he previously had tested numerous microphones on Swift, he was had not been able to find one to match her voice match perfectly. When Swift came to Chapman's home to record a radio edit for one of singles from Taylor Swift, she immediately grew fond of the microphone. "When she put on the headphones and said, 'Test,' completely unprompted, she said, 'This is my mic. I love this mic. I just wanna use this one from now on!' She had no idea what it was, just loved it, and I went along with something that felt right for her. We've been using it ever since, and it sounds great on her voice," Chapman said.
"Love Story" was recorded with Pro Tools and tracking vocals, which Swift sang live with the band. The band consisted of acoustic guitars, bass guitars, and drums. All other instruments were overdubbed by Chapman. He said, "I think there are nine acoustic guitars on that track, and I stacked several background vocals — me singing, 'Ah's'." Audio engineering was executed by Chad Carlson in Blackbird Studios' Studio D, with the usage of the API Legacy Plus equipments: Avantone CV-12, Neve 1073, and Tube-Tech CL-1B. Audio mixing done by Justin Niebank and was set in Studio F, with the usage of the console Solid State Logic 9080 K series and Genelec 1032 console. In between, overdubs were executed in Studio E by Chapman. "Love Story", along with the rest of the album, was mastered by Hank Williams at MasterMix Studios in Nashville, Tennessee. The song was mixed for mainstream airplay by Chapman. He pulled Niebank's stems into his Mac OS laptop and used Apple Logic to create the pop version. Chapman made mix tweaks and created new elements with his laptop. In order to do so, he muted the country instruments and replaced them with new elements characteristic to pop music, replacing banjo and fiddle with electric guitar. The pop version's opening beat is a Logic loop in the Ultrabeat beat generator. All the new electric guitars were done with the Amplitube Stomp I/O.
Read more about this topic: Love Story (Taylor Swift Song)
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