Grants Final Assessment Blog

22/5/13 - The first thing we recorded guide vocals and a guide guitar. Everyone apart from the players being recorded was behind the mixing desk.The rhythm guitar was being done through a DI box so that involves getting a jack to jack lead and putting it in the DI box. Then from the DI box to the floor box, its connected through jack to XLR. The guide vocals where recorded using a Titan condenser microphone that was connected through a XLR to XLR cable to the floor box. After the guides were recorded the bass was then recorded after. The techniques used to record that were a mix of DI box and recording the amp. The DI box was set up the same way as the rhythm guitar was done and the way the amp recorded was a Audix D6 was used and connected to the floor box with use of a XLR. Christina and Shevelle recorded the guides at the same time due to timing issues.

   

     

29/5/13 - In this session  was not there due to work else where involving the musical theatre students. I was in the band for Chicago. But as from what I hear from my colleagues, is that bass was re-recorded and lead vocals, electric guitar and back up vocals where recorded. The vocals, guitar and back up vocals were recorded in sections. The bass was recorded in one take. The vocals were recorded with an Titan and the guitar was recorded with the DI box.

30/5/13 - We decided to do drums and sax because thats all was left. For equipment to mic the drum kit we used:

• 2 x SM57
• 1 x Audix D6
• 2 x Rhode NT5
• 2x Sennheiser MD 421

All of these mic were connected a with XLR to XLR and was recorded in one take. After the drums were done, the sax was recorded using a SM57. We did a few takes, then did a final. Due to time issues, I couldn't retake a final take that had a mistake in it. But that problem was later fixed in the mixing part. When all recordings were done in the studio, the use of head phones were through out. The head phones were connected through a jack cable, and the head phone amp was connected from XLR to jack.

When it came to mixing, the first thing I did was group them with colours and bus channels. I added in markers so everything was organised. The drums where grouped into bus one where a new mixer channel was made which acted as the master output for the drums. Also did the same for guitar, vocals and back up vocals. 

In the final take for the drums there was a timing issue. So I grouped the drums using the dark grey box under the "I/O" section and then pressed edit selection through group settings. After that I highlighted all the drums, pressed flex and changed the setting to rhythmic. Then shortly after the audio was scanned and able to be edited. I made a few markers where the drums where out of time and flexed the drums into place. Although playing out of time wasn't good on a professional recording level, it did benefit me in to learning a new technique when it comes to mixing and logic, especially when editing audio. After the flexing, I added EQ's/ Compressors on each individual drum channel and changed volumes to help even it out.  

I added a punchy kick effect to the kick drum, over head mic EQ's to the overheads, rim snare EQ to the snare top and bottom and tom EQ to the tom channel. I added a punchy kick EQ to the bass drum because instead of it just turning it it up, the way I wanted to make it more prominent was not just through volume but to overall get a "fatter" sound. Because this style of music played has a reggae influence, the bass drum is scarce  but when played/hit, it is loud and big sounding making its place in the song which is either the one drop, steppers pattern (kick on 1 & 30) or steppers patter (kick on all 4 aka 4 to the floor). I added a rim snare EQ to both sides of the snare because like the kick drum, it is relevant to the reggae influence with in the song. A signature lick/sound in reggae is the rim shot, and adding the rim snare EQ to the snare will help boost the higher frequencies giving that slight ring of the resonating skins/ rim. The overhead EQ's where to help focus slightly more on the cymbals. This is good especially since there was a whole 16 bars that I hit the crash on. I also do a few fills that finish with a crash. The EQ will help the cymbals sound brighter and clearer. The EQ's for the toms help make the pitches between the toms more distinctive without actually tuning them physically. I then made the a master drum channel and added an arrange track because I added panning to the the first drum fill of the song. This gave the drums a sense of space and gave it some flair. I also added a drum compressor on the master drum channel to help squeeze it before being cut of by a limiter I added which stopped it from peaking. 

For vocals I added a vocal EQ called Female Vox 1 to help boost the higher frequencies and to make them clearer. Because the vocals were already quite high pitched, I added some lower frequency so that it wasn't as piercing. Even after that, some parts of the vocals were still loud and sharp, so I then used automation in terms of volume, to even out the sharp/suddenly loud sounds. All of this stopped the vocals from peaking with out having to change much on the faders still keeping the vocals main priority in the song. For back up vocals, I added backing vocals EQ. I also added platinum reverb which added a wet echo effect making them distinguishable from the lead vocals. It also gave and effect of space and gave it some flair. Since the back up vocals were low in general, I turned them up on the channel fader making them easier to hear but still subtle. 

For guitar I turned the volume down on the master guitar channel and added a guitar amp pro. I used a preset call UK combo bright which made the guitar louder, cleaner and gave it "attitude". But since I didn't need the guitar louder, I turned the guitar down slightly on the gain of the guitar amp pro. As for Bass, I added a FET bass guitar compressor and a Bass amp. The bass amp I used was an American Stack - Top Class DI warm. This gave the bass a warm, fuller sound with out making it distort. This was relevant because in reggae, bass guitar is one of the lead instruments, so because this has a reggae influence, the bass must sound prominent enough.

Nothing got added to the sax apart from some automation. There was a riff played wrong and out of tune towards the end. So I automated it out by completely lowering the volume for that part until it was over, then brought it back up again. Apart from that, the Stereo out put arrange track was made because I added automation to that to fade the track out towards the end.