To begin with, I EQ’d each drum to add warmth to them and to bring out different parts of the drum kit. To do this I brightened up the overheads slightly so that the cymbals could be heard. I played around with the kick drum a lot, but found it hard to choose what to do with it so ultimately decided to use a preset called ‘Vintage Kick’, and slightly tweak the settings. I put a gate on the floor tom in order to get rid of any spill from the other drums, and completely deleted the rack tom because nothing was played on it. I also boosted the high end on the room microphone. I then compressed bass guitar (both the DI and microphone) to avoid any peaks. When EQing them, I cut off the bottom end of the microphone recording in order to just get the mid and high frequencies. For the DI I reduced the mid-range and high frequencies, and reduced the low frequencies a tiny bit, just to stop the song being too boomy. When compressing the guitars, I compressed one and then copied that compressor over to the others. One guitar had to be compressed slightly more in order to stop it peaking. I used a High Pass Filter on all of the guitars in an attempt to get rid of a lot of the lower frequencies, and boosted the mid and high frequencies. For the overdubbed guitar I also cut off the low frequencies and brightened the mid and high frequencies a lot, in order to be able to differentiate between the guitar parts. I compressed the vocals to even out the velocity of each note, and also manually automated some words in order to keep them at roughly the same level. I also edited the track by cutting out any mouth sounds between words, and got rid of heavy breathing, leaving in some more natural breathes. I played around with the 7-band EQ to add warmth to the vocals. For the backing vocals I boosted the low-mid frequencies and slightly raised the high-end. For the guitar solo I used all three microphones, and compressed the condenser and dynamic. I EQ’d them by boosting the mid-high range and added a HPF to get rid of any rumble. I also added delay to one of the guitar’s to make the solo different and to add a different sound to the song. I compressed the piano quite heavily in order to even out the note velocity, which jumped around before compression. I added EQ to lessen the low-mid frequencies and slightly boosted the mid-high frequencies. I made the piano slightly louder during the guitar solo, because it was getting drowned out. I created one Aux track for reverb. I only used one because I felt as though the song only needed a short reverb, and no track needed a separate Aux track with a longer reverb. I also put a fade out on the master fader toward the end of the track rather than having it continue at the same level all the way through. I made the piano part quite low in the mix, with the drums quite loud because they carry the song along. I didn’t want the guitars too loud because there are so many of them that they add to the timbre of the song without having to have them high in the mix. As I have said, the vocals were automated in an attempt to make them sound constant throughout the song, and I tried to make it so that they blend in with the mix rather than sitting on top of it. The bass is quite quiet, but still audible – I didn’t want too much bass in the song.

This week we produced a monitor mix. For this we did a small amount of editing in order to make sure that the recordings flowed. We also roughly balanced the mix, making sure that each drum was at a good level, and then doing the same for the other instruments. We made sure to put the keyboard low in the mix, and panned made sure that the guitars and drums were panned correctly.

This week we recorded any extra parts that we needed. For us that included backing vocals, a keyboard part and the guitar solo. To record the backing vocals, we used an AKG C414 (as we did with the main vocals), and set the polar pattern to omni-directional. We did this because we had three people singing the backing vocals at once, so setting the microphone to pick up less of a direct sound would pick up the three vocalists more. It was my job to talk to be in control of the talkback microphone this week, meaning I would be talking to the people that were recording. We didn’t have enough headphones for all three vocalists, so it was hard to communicate via the talkback intercom. All-in-all the recording went well, and the vocalists managed to hit the correct pitch.

When recording the keyboard, we had to attempt to remember back to our first assessment in order to try and use the patch-bay. We used two jack leads to set the keyboard up as a stereo input, and had to turn the piano volume up high with a low gain on the desk, in order to prevent a buzzing sound that occurred when they gain was high. It is likely that the piano will be low in the mix, and will just be there to add to the overall timbre of the song.

We also recorded the guitar solo which Danny had written. We had a high gain on the amplifier, and used a Shure SM57 and an Electro Voice RE20 to mic up the amplifier. We also used an AKG C414 as a room microphone. The gain on the desk had to be turned up to full on all three tracks as the sound source was relatively quiet. We also re-recorded the overdubbed guitar that is in the track because we didn’t like the first recording of it. We added more distortion to it and tuned the guitar to Drop D, rather than Drop C.

On Monday we recorded the vocals for our song. Before recording, we first talked about the problems that we may encounter when recording the vocals, and how we can prevent them. Some things that we talked about included: Plosives, which can be avoided by using a pop-shield; sibilance, which can be avoided by using certain microphones and by placing the microphone off-axis; and also, the Close Proximity Effect, which is caused when the sound source is close to the microphone and creates louder low frequencies. We also spoke about potential problems with performance, the vocalist needs to ensure that they deliver a performance with enough emotion, intelligibility and at the correct pitch. It is also important to make sure that the vocalist is comfortable.

We spent quite a while deciding which microphone we wanted to use. We set up an Electro Voice RE20 (a large diaphragm dynamic microphone with a flat frequency response, no proximity effect, and can roll off low frequencies – which we used. We put the pop-shield close to the microphone.), a Shure SM57 (a small diaphragm dynamic microphone with a strong proximity effect, reduces low frequencies and peaks high frequencies which could cause sibilance. We placed the pop-shield 10cm away from the microphone to reduce proximity effect.) and finally, an AKG C414 (a large diaphragm condenser microphone, which has lots of detail. Cardioid polar pattern was use and a bass roll off of 160 Hz. The pop-shield was placed 15cm away from the microphone.).

We got Panashé to sing into each microphone so that we could decide which one to use. We pretty much ruled out the SM57, and initially decided to go with the RE20. However, we then got Panashé to sing whilst playing the track, and decided that the 414 sounded better because it sat in the track more. After the first take we realised that the microphone made Panashé’s voice sound slightly nasally, so we tilted the microphone downward slightly for the second take in an attempt to cancel out this effect. Overall the vocal recording went OK, however the pitch problem is rather annoying, and it is harder to edit a piece of music if you don’t like parts of it!

Today we recorded our guitar tracks. We had a lot to get through. To record our guitar we used a Vox modelling amplifier, which has a smaller speaker, giving it more of a sort of intense sound. It was set to “UK Metal” distortion with no bass, some treble and middle, and a high gain.

Shure SM57s

My job (along with Sam) this week was to set up the microphones to record the guitar. Sam and I set up two Shure SM57s to capture the full sound of the amplifier. We put one in the middle of the amplifier, and one toward the edge of the speaker inside the amplifier. Both microphones were very close to the grate of the amplifier. We also set up an sE2200a II (a large diaphragm condenser microphone) to use as a room microphone, and set the polar pattern to omni-directional.

After setting the microphones up, we got our guitarist (Danny) to play along to the track in order to roughly place the guitars at the correct level in the mix. One thing that I noticed immediately was that the guitar sound had a lot of bass to it which I didn’t like, and in order to rectify this I will probably put a High Pass Filter on the guitars to get rid of at least a bit of the bass.

On the desk we used EQ to cut out any low frequencies below 50Hz. We then recorded our first guitar part which went well enough with only a few minor mistakes. Because the rhythm guitar is so repetitive, it is possible to copy a part from another section of the song and paste it into the part which was played wrong. We then panned the part that we had recorded hard-left, and set up a new track for the double-tracked guitar that we were going to record next. We panned this to the right and then recorded it. Finally we recorded a separate guitar part which comes in and out throughout the song, and placed it in the middle of the mix. In order to be able to differentiate between the rhythm guitar and overdubbed guitar, I will probably EQ the overdubbed guitar quite a bit, otherwise it just sounds like one big mess.