MPR4C001R-001 25100996 Production Log Book 1
Task 2: Production Log Book
Method 1 – Live Band/Ensemble Capture
Pre-Production.
For this aspect of the portfolio, we worked to find a band that would have natural chemistry, as our aim is to catch their performance. The more the band is confident in their ability to play together, the better the performance captured. For this first method, we chose to request that the band prepare two songs of their choice, which ended up being ‘Can’t we be Friends’, written by Kay Swift and Paul James, and ‘Polkadots and Moonbeams’ by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke.
We ran a ‘mock recording’ where we set up microphones similar to the final recording, figured out how we wanted to go about recording the group and what our main issues were.
One of these issues is that our first session had no room microphones, so we added a Rode K2 to the submitted session, located nearby the vocalist in the room in a ‘figure 8’ polar pattern. This room mic was meant to catch as balanced of a room sound as possible without biasing the drums.
Recording.
An aspect of this recording which is important to the overall result is whether the vocalist is isolated or not. In this instance, the vocalist preferred to be in the room with the musicians, so we accommodated for this and instead put the bass amp in the vocal booth as to reject the high energy frequencies of the bass. This would help reduce the bleed in all of the mics, especially the kick and the room mics, allowing for more control in post. If too much low or sub range was captured by the room mic, it would disrupt the balance of the bass in the stereo field too. For this reason, we also placed the room mic 6 feet above the ground.
Our room setup was limited due to the nature of room 104. We were unable to move the piano to anywhere that would majorly result In less bleed and the same could be said for the drum kit. This affected the vocal recording, as we had to adjust the singer to be closer to the microphone, resulting in slightly less clarity and more proximity effect, but we limited rejection in this way. We also kept the vocalist as far as possible from the drums as to avoid that bleed. Having the vocalist isolated would have been best for the recording, but not for the performance.
The drummer brought a variety of items which we used to good effect on this session. For example, we used a makeshift snare mute with a piece of fabric fastened to the snare drum which removed some off the resonance. Beading was also used to help the ride resonate more.
| Input | Instrument | Microphone |
| 1 | Kick | Sontronics DM-1B |
| 2 | Kick | Shure SM58 |
| 4 | Snare Top | Beyerdynamic M201 |
| 4 | Snare Top | AKG C451-B |
| 5 | Snare Bottom | Shure SM57 |
| 6 | Overhead Left | Neumann KM184 |
| 7 | Overhead Right | Neumann KM184 |
| 8 | Bass | LoFreq Sub-Kick |
| 9 | Bass | Sennheiser MD421 |
| 10 | Piano L | AKG C451-B |
| 11 | Piano R | AKG C451-B |
| 12 | Vocal | Electrovoice RE-20 |
| 13 | Room Mic | Rode K2 |
Mixing.
The mixing process was mostly about the values of the music itself. I prepared to mix by listening to a playlist of the great jazz players and studying how they balance their instruments and what characteristics they achieve from their instruments in the context of the tune. I enjoy the bass energy of tracks like ‘Alone Together’ by Chet Baker, as well as the pronounced bass in a lot of the Charles Mingus works, like the track ‘Fables of Faubus’, so it felt right to use the MD421 to boost the clarity and blend in the LoFreq Sub-Kick to taste.
This idea was applied to most instruments. I would keep one initial source as the body of the instrument and add the other microphones as a way of primitively EQing the recording. Yo can see this in the following image of our mix for ‘Polkadots and Moonbeams’, where I used the sound of the drum overheads as the predominant sound of the kit and added certain sounds of the close mics to the pair. It made the process almost like EQing a guitar amplifier, with the bass, middle and trebles which I could control to taste.
I used the same methodology on ‘Can’t We be Friends’
I used the same methodology on ‘Can’t We Be Friends’, displayed below.
The panning for the mix was done with limited use of eyes and more on controlling the pan knob and listening to where each instrument fit. The framework, however, was Overheads far left and right respectively, with the bass guitar, kick, snare and vocal completely central. we really dislike the stereo panning on John Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ album and steered clear of panning in that style.
Method 2 – Overdub Production
Pre-Production.
This project encountered problems which changed the final result. The band we had organised to record with us have vocalists, but they were in Belgium during the recording process and pre production, so we opted to turn the song into an instrumental track, a change which worked in this scenario. Our 4 tracks ended up being Lead Guitar, Rhythm Guitar, Bass and Drums. When attending rehearsals for the band we all envisioned a large chorus and the song resolving with this large final chorus and outro.
Recording.
The guitars on this track were paramount, and we wanted to get a ‘wall of sound’ effect that contributes to the event of this song: the final chorus. To create the distortion we used the multi effects pedal’s emulations of overdrive circuits and separated the full chords into perfect 4ths, 5ths and octaves. This allowed us to pan the guitar in multiple different directions and removed intermodulation distortion.
We used a similar foundation for microphone choice to the jazz sessions, opting for Neumann KM184 condensers for the overheads and using the Sub-Kick on bass, but changed things up by adding a designated room mic for both the rhythm guitar and the drums. This worked in-line with the multi-effects pedal the guitar used on all of the guitar tracks by collectively adding ambience without the help of any plugins. Below is a list of all of the channels and their respective microphone choices, as well as notes about how they have been utilised and positioned.
| Input | Instrument | Microphone | Notes |
| 1 | Kick | Audix D6 | Pointing at beater internally. |
| 2 | Snare Top | SM57 | Approx. 75 degrees, near rim |
| 3 | Snare Bottom | SM57 | 45 degrees, same place as other mic but mirrored underside.. |
| 4 | Hi-Hat | AKG C451-B | |
| 5 | Overhead L | Neumann KM184 | Further from kit to create illusion of wider recording space |
| 6 | Overhead R | Neumann KM184 | Further from kit to create illusion of wider recording space |
| 7 | Room (Drums) | Rode K2 | Figure 8, off axis from kit, equidistant to both walls |
| 8 | Cymbals (Overdub) | AKG C414 XLS | |
| 9 | Bass | LoFreq Sub-Kick | |
| 10 | Bass | ElectroVoice RE-20 | 45 degrees off-axis, middle of cone |
| 11 | Rhythm Guitar | Shure SM57 | 45 degrees off-axis, middle of cone |
| 12 | Rhythm Guitar | Beyerdynamic M160 | Outer edge of speaker cap |
| 13 | Room (Guitar) | Rode K2 | 1 Ft away from Amp |
| 14 | Lead Guitar | AKG C414 XLS | Centre of Cone |
Mixing.
The mixing for the overdub project was spent panning multiple mics from multiple parts of the many guitar parts. To achieve a full stereo field of sound for the final chorus. The main lead is at the front, while the power chords and the upper 4th are panned left and right respectively. These parts blend the microphones in different tones, similar to the recording process of ‘In Bloom’ by Nirvana. To build the song from the very start, the drums were trimmed of certain microphones to avoid muting automation. A mistake during recording meant we recorded the drums on the guitar microphones too, which we made use of by removing the overheads and replacing them with the unplanned room mics. This cut the energy from the first verse until the pre-chorus where the overheads are re-implemented.
Project Management.
As a group, we managed the project and shared the workload by designating certain roles and responsibilities to each group member. I led the sessions and instructed the other group members to help with setup or troubleshooting. Lorna and Hannah had the responsibility of capturing evidence during the sessions. We all had equal creative responsibility and weight in terms of the sounds we captured, as well as when it came to mixing. We used an instagram group chat to converse, discuss arrangements with the band and we used zoom to share notes for the write-up.
We structured all of the recording by putting the live session first , and then moving onto the overdub sessions. This helped to keep our concentration on one session at a time while we organised players for the second round.
Initially, we planned to have everything finished before Christmas, but we wanted to improve the final mixes so we used extra time in the following year to refine the sound for the submission tracks to achieve our final result.
