METHOD 1 – Ensemble

It took us only one session to record the ensemble, using room 109 to its fullest extent, with a quartet featuring a bassist, guitarist, drummer, and saxophonist. This room proved to be a lapse in judgment, as we lacked space for the whole quartet, having to maintain comfort and safety very cautiously. Because of this, I decided to handle most of the cable management, reducing the risk of wires pulling and getting damaged, or someone falling over and getting hurt. As space was already an issue, another problem we had to solve carefully was spill, as we decided to use Gobos. Obviously this stretches the space problem more, however we and the musicians decided it would be worthwhile, as long as we weren’t restricting them in any way. This ended up helping massively with spill.

Another issue we ran into in this room was the lack of a mixing desk. Although we felt limited (especially in terms of metering), we managed to balance volumes during rehearsal runs we gave the band. This benefited all of us, however, as while we were balancing levels, the band were getting a well-needed practice. We managed to get a good recording without clipping.

We recorded bass through a D.I., delivering a clean signal while limiting spill. We utilised Glyn John’s technique, using an SM57 on the snare, Oktava MK-012 as overheads, and an AKG D112 on the kick. These are all very standard picks for mic’ing a drum kit, good for keeping it simple. We only used a Sennheiser MD241 and an SM57 as we felt as though we didn’t need anything more than that. For the saxophone, we used a single SM57, positioned parallel to and close to the instrument to take advantage of the proximity effect. This brought out more rich low-end, which benefited the overall sound.

This is how the amp looked.

Seeing as arranging the room in the safest, most comfortable, and most optimal way was going to be one of our biggest challenges, Milo sketched up a room plan,

Most of the post-recording production we did was level balancing and panning. We carefully adjusted volumes until we thought it was okay. Once we had finished this, we panned everything as standard as we could. We preferred to pan the kit to the audience’s perspective, lightly adjusting everything until it seemed natural, except for the overheads, which we hard panned in opposite directions. We left the rest of the instruments centred. The only tonal shaping we got came from the saxophone’s mic placement, giving us some nice low end through the proximity effect.

Another big issue we faced was time and organisational skills. Seeing as this room is so small, we had to plan the room in the most optimal way, whilst saving as much time as we could to alleviate pressure on the musicians. One big benefit to this was that once we had levels sorted, it only took 2 takes from the musicians to have really nice full takes. This ended up saving us a lot of time.

Notwithstanding the restraints of room 109, examples being a lack of a mixing desk and live room space, we managed to successfully capture a multi-track recording, with clear balance, and few inconsistencies. We made some constructive choices, such as the microphone type, and placement for the saxophone, or the use of Gobos to deliberately reduce spill. This also taught us the importance of planning and preparation, highlighting the importance of room choice, prior knowledge of band, pre-production, etc. This also highlighted the importance of adaptability and resilience in a recording environment, showing how critical it is to maintain the vibe and mood, despite potential issues.

Method 2 – Overdub

For the overdub production, we decided to bring in multiple artists to record a cover of ‘Message In A Bottle’ by The Police. We chose this song as it is a rock classic, with fun parts for all of the instruments, while not being so difficult we couldn’t recreate it. In pre-production, we started by splitting the stems from the original track, giving each instrument a perfect backing track, as though they were playing alongside the band. This gave us the opportunity to take any part out we needed for each player. We also added markers throughout in order to make sifting through the song much easier. Once we had the backing track structured, we were ready to start adding parts, and recorded bass. This was a good base layer for us, giving us a good idea of the rhythm the for the rest of the performers. We recorded the bass through D.I., however, running it through an outboard saturation, giving it some extra warmth, and that nice tube sound. For the arrangement, we took about 4 bars we liked for each section (intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge, outro) and copy and pasted throughout. This gave us consistent performances through the whole song. My main role in this session was on the computer, arranging pre-production

After we had the bass, we brought in a guitarist. We mic’ed the amp with an SM57 and a Sennheiser MD421, standard choices for a guitar, and got good results. We altered the guitarist’s tone. We gave it some flanger, and distortion, while keeping mainly mids and highs on the amp. This closely replicated the tone in the original song. The guitarist recorded many takes, and I comped the guitar in a similar way to how I comped the bass. In this same session, we recorded vocals. we used the WARM audio WA-CX24, as we wanted an authentic but strong mic sound. This mic is a replica of very famous tube condensers, that were very popular during the time the original song was recorded. Once the singer had recorded harmonies, and the lead guitarist had finished his harmonies and leads, we were ready to finish the session, leaving only drums.

In the next session, we recorded drums. We used all the mics in the drum mic pack: a kick mic in and out, a hat mic, snare bottom and top mics, two overheads, a room mic, and a floor tom. This was a very complex setup, and sounded very wide and intricate. Once the drummer had many takes, I once again comped the tracks into a consistent performance; however, much of my role in this session was cabling and mic’ing. One issue we faced with the drums was performance issues. The drummer was not performing on the kit optimally, leaving the snare sounding baggy and quiet compared to the hi-hat. However, once we spoke to him and explained the problem, it was quickly resolved.

The session after this was supposed to be the mix and upload session, however we had realised that the files had become corrupt, and we’d need to record drums, guitar, and vocals.

Despite this setback, we booked a room 109 2 days after we found out, and re-recorded the drums. We decided to use ORTF for the overheads this time, as Ihad seen great results with this technique. For this, we placed the mics at a 110-degree angle to mimic the human ear. Aside from this, we tried to keep the setup the same (minus the room mics due to lack of space), still including a hat mic, a kick in and out, a snare top and bottom, and a floor tom mic. Unfortunately, I was not there for the vocal and guitar re-record sessions as I had gone home for holidays while one of my classmates had stayed.

The mixing process was bare once again, as we weren’t allowed to apply effects (EQ, compression, limiting, gating etc.), we stuck to just leveling and panning again, sticking to the script, and closely following what we had done for the ensemble, panning the drums slightly for realism, hard panning the overheads, and leaving the other instruments. However, we ended up coming out with a very clear and clean balance.

A considerable benefit of this process was learning that the performer should be prepared for the session. Comparing the entire production process for this assignment with personal projects from college clearly shows how significant a difference it makes when the musician is ready to come into the room and play. I felt that we had sufficient time left over for other tasks in the sessions we had planned to record.

This project really outlined some crucial issues, that seem fairly common in these scenarios. The main 2 issues were organisation, and time management. However the main difficulty of this was the 2 coming together. Because of the loss of project, we only had one week to re-record half of the song, comp it, and mix it, leaving us lots of unnecessary stress. In the future, we will need to make sure all of our files are backed up.

Despite the challenges we’ve faced, its helped me learn a lot, and we came out with 2 solid recordings.