Grants Work - Studio Blog

In the studio, we were required to required to record a track. The group decided to record an original song by my colleague Christina Harris.

In the second session I decided to record the drums. I requested 2 Rode NT5 condenser microphones that I placed over the drum kit. Placing them overhead will detect all the sound of the parts of the drum kit that aren't specifically mic'ed. So this means it will pick up the hi-hat, crash, ride and toms. Even though the snare and kick are mic'ed up, it will still pick sound from them. I then requested 1 Audix D6 dynamic microphone for the kick drum that I shallowly placed in the kick drum. Finally i requested 1 SM57 dynamic microphone for the snare that I holstered very close to the snare. Although the mic is placed in a way to get a good snare sound, it will also pick up the hi-hat and possibly the first tom due to they way the kit is set up.

After mounting the microphones and I connected the mics to channels 3, 4, 5, 6 through the floor box into the mixing desk and labeled them in this order (over head 1, over head 2, kick, snare). These were all grouped to out put 7-8. I made sure the faders and volume was down before turning on the phantom power for the condenser mics used as over heads. After that the faders were pushed up to zero and the gain for each channel were level'ed out. Since I cannot record myself my colleague John Sands recorded me.

In session 3 we decided to record the drums again so I did the same set up again like in session 2. In session 3, I recorded Christina's piano. 2 Rode NT5 were required to record the piano. Both were placed in the piano holstered by a mic stand. The reason why there were 2 mics was because one was used to pick up the higher half of the piano and another to pick up the lower half of the piano. These were linked to channels 1 & 2 through the floor box. So on the mixing desk, I turned on the phantom power before fading up the volume and levelling the gain. She requested to record with a metronome so I put the setting on for the click to play as it recorded. I then asked for her to play a bit to make sure the volume levels were even and once they were, we recorded her piano.

AUDIX D6

                                SM56                                                           RODE NT5