Method 1 – Live Band/Ensemble Capture
WSM demo
Our live recording session came about unexpectedly when another session I had scheduled got cancelled, giving us six hours of free studio time. We decided to use this time productively by recording a demo of a rock track I wrote for my band, which features drums, bass, rhythm guitar and lead guitar. Because of the unanticipated nature of the session, we had to prioritise organisation, time management, and efficiency. The band and I suggested not using a click to preserve the ebbs and flows of energy throughout the track. We chose to position the drum kit and guitar amps at opposite ends of the room to achieve reasonably good isolation and minimal bleed on the close mics, and then glue the parts together using room mics. A diagram of the room is shown below:
I took a significant role in the production of the drums because I was going to play them on the track and understood the sound I was looking for. I was inspired by the drum sounds on the album “The Second Coming” by the Stone Roses (excerpt below from “Love Spreads”), which felt natural, transparent and minimally processed yet still retained an arena rock feel with the heavy use of room mics. In fact, in a Sound on Sound interview, the producer Simon Dawson talks about trying to “preserve as much of the band’s live sound and feel as possible”.
This suited not only the restrictions of the project (no processing allowed) but also the style of the track we would be recording. We also took inspiration from Nigel Godrich’s “From the Basement” series, which is focused around loud acts doing live sessions in a fairly small space (evidenced below in rough planning notes we made on the day).
I first swapped the jazz/fusion kit, which was already set up, for the rock drum kit, which was physically bigger and had a beefier, heavier tone. I tuned the snare down slightly and muffled it with a wallet to reduce the ring. We chose to use both a kick-in and kick-out mic, allowing us to get the click of the beater but also the body of the drum. We chose to utilise an Audix D6 for the kick-in because of its pronounced high mids, and we chose to use the Sonitronics DM1B as it gave us a low-end thump and was comparable to the Fet 47 used by Dawson on “The Second Coming”. Upon reflection, though, it seems that we misunderstood the orientation of the diaphragm in the DM1B, and thus, we got less of the low end we were hoping to achieve. This is shown on the left below:
You can also see our snare mic placements above. We chose to use 2 SM57s, one right above the rim, pointing down at an angle to get the attack of the batter head and one aimed at the side of the snare. This gave us the fizz of the snare wires without being as abrasive in the high end as if we were to position the mic at the bottom of the snare. We chose to use 414s on the toms because they had a lot of attack and also had a hypercardioid setting, allowing us more rejection of the cymbals.
You can see here that we opted for 3 overheads: a stereo pair and a mono in the middle. This is because we wanted to be able to balance between a focused middle mic and a wide stereo pair. We used the SE X1Rs ribbons for their flat frequency response (as seen below), especially when considering the room mics would have quite a lot of splashy high-end. It should also be noted that we had to patch all the drum mics into the mic inputs on the patchbay, as they were on a separate wall box.
We dual-miced both guitar cabs on different areas of the speaker cones and DI’d the bass in conjunction with a mic on the sub port of the cab for some depth. We also set up a talkback mic in front of one of the guitarists for effective communication with the band.
Flo Rida Low Cover
For the Flo Rida cover, there were drums, keys, bass guitar, a lead vocal and two backing vocals (the bass guitarist and keys player). We chose to isolate the lead vocalist in the vocal booth and, after testing a few microphones, used a JZ V67, which suited her voice really well. We focused on close-micing the drums because the room was tight and lacked a characterful sound. We used a spaced pair of scheops small-diaphragm condensers on overheads that were measured to the snare, close-miced the toms with 421s, put an Sm57 on the snare top, and used a boundary mic in the kick for a tight, clicky sound as this was a jazz/pop piece. Unfortunately, we had problems with I/O, which inhibited us from using the channels that would have recorded kick out and snare bottom, but we felt that sacrificing these tracks wouldn’t harm the piece.
We DI’d the bass and stereo keys. We spent time finding an appropriate piano sound on the NORD so that it tied in with the other parts. We also stuck some electrical tape over the bassist’s polar pieces because when she slapped the bass, it was creating unwanted electrical clicks. For their backing vocals, we set up two SM7Bs angled away from the drum kit for rejection. We later added microphone booster preamps to these mics because we were forcing a lot of gain at the desk.
The mix for this track proved challenging as individual parts had a massive dynamic range across the track. In the real world, where we wouldn’t be constrained to a static mix, we would automate the parts or use clip gaining however, we did the best we could to get complementary levels overall and panned the vocals so they didn’t interfere with each other as much. We also want to note that we used a shortened version of the recording to fit the time limits.
Method 2 – Overdub Production
For our overdub project, we chose to create a cover of Aretha Franklin’s track I Say a Little Prayer. We tried to emulate as much of classic soul, Motown-esque recording, and prioritised simplicity, especially as Aretha’s ‘Aretha Now’ was recorded in only five days, according to Rolling Stone (https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/review-aretha-franklins-aretha-now-190681/). We quantised the original track to a consistent tempo using Ableton’s warp feature, giving us a guide track that we could use alongside a click. For further adaptability, we also stem split the guide track in Logic so we could balance the track to our musicians’ needs. E.g when recording bass, we muted the original bass part so the bassist could hear his own playing better and turned the drums up so he was tight to the rhythm of the track. This method of treating the guide track proved very valuable, and an example is provided below.
On drums, we stuck to our philosophy of simplicity. We went with jazz cymbals and muffled the snare slightly with a wallet. We chose the Glyn Johns technique for overheads, utilising the Schoeps small-diaphragm condensers again. This allowed us to capture a good overall impression of the kit and a balance between the cymbals and toms without having to close-mic them. We then went with the tried-and-tested SM57 on snare, which was quite abruptly angled to get a bit more snappiness from the edge of the skin. We used a D112 on the outside of the kick to get a thudiness which would nicely glue in with the high end of the kick that the overheads captured. We also recorded claps, knee slaps and clicks behind the kit, using the same mics, to add to the soul sound.
We then tracked bass, keeping the player in the control room while using the tie lines to process the signal through a DI and bass amp. We miced the bass amp with an SM57 on the centre of the speaker cone for brightness and then a D6 on the sub port to add sub bass. In the mix, we felt that both of these complemented the DI and added character rather than it just being sterile and clean. We used a nylon-string acoustic guitar to complement the mellow fingerpicking of the song. It was recorded with a large diaphragm condenser microphone, close to the guitar to get an intimate sound. The keyboard was DI’d. We decided to manipulate the studio to emulate a 60s spring reverb. Utilising a reamp box, we ran all the drum channels (except the kick) and the percussion through the spring reverb on the Roland Jazz Chorus and miced the cab with a 57 and RE20. This achieved a real grittiness that we really enjoyed. In the mix, we panned these takes hard left and right.
