First of all, me and my peers (Leo, Xu and Xinyi) sat down and discussed our plans. I had a friend, Harry Preston, who was a drummer attending the foundation year performance course, so I asked him if he and his peers could perform for us so we could record them. He accepted and even said that his class was doing an assignment that also required 10 mins of musical material. For the past few weeks they had been practicing jazz renditions of Zombie by The Cranberries and Creep by Radiohead. We then got down to discussing scheduling and when we should book the studio. This was when Xu and Xinyi informed us that they will be leaving for China for the Christmas holidays. With this in mind, we discussed it and decided on recording everything the day before they leave as everyone was available. 

We also discussed what equipment we would need. And using what we’ve learned in our first trimester so far, we concocted a list of equipment as follows:

• 3 dynamic microphones – they’re very robust so 1 is perfect for recording the kick drum, which produces very loud, low end sounds. And the other two are for the bass and guitar amps to pick up the wide aspect of low end and high ends as well as the overall sounds that are very strong since they build the main rhythm.
• 3 condenser microphones – these are more sensitive and so are better for recording the lighter sounds of the drum kit; two of these will be the overheads for the drums. While the third one is for the vocalist as these have a high sensitivity, allowing them to be able to capture the full “richness” of a singer’s voice.
• 6 XLR cables – we will be using 6 microphones in total so we will require these cables to connect the microphones to the wall box and into the desk.
• 4 headphones + headphone extension leads – there will be 4 band members who will need to hear themselves and each other when recording so as to stay on time.
• 2 jack leads – to connect the bassist and electric guitarist to their amps. 

When the time came however, none of the band members who confirmed actually came except for Harry. This immediately threw a spanner into our plans, but we figured something out. Harry can play multiple instruments, so he agreed to play each of the instruments so we can record him through overdubbing. So to start, we mic’d up the drums using the Glyn Johns method. This involves setting up a dynamic microphone in front of the kick drum and then setting up two condenser microphones as overheads. To do this properly, I set up one of the condensers directly above the snare so as to primarily pick that drum’s sound up, while Xinyi set up the other condenser above the floor Tom. We then used an XLR cable to measure if the distance between each of the microphones and the snare drum were identical. This puts the condensers in the optimal positions to record the entire drum kit. We then set the dynamic microphones in front of the bass and guitar amps for us to position properly later when we come around to recording the bass and electric guitar. This also meant that Leo had to go down and collect a bass and electric guitar since we were told the bassist and guitarist would bring their own instruments. 

We then opened Pro Tools and on the desk set each of the drum’s 3 microphones to 3 different channels, set the gain and volume and panned the overheads left and right according to our front view of the drums. This gave the drums a more “spread out” sound. We did struggle to get any sound through the desk, however we fixed this by correcting the playback engine as it was set to the wrong one and we reset the inputs and outputs on Pro Tools which remedied the problem. We wanted to record the drums first as they “build the songs” – setting their tempo and signalling transitions to other sections of songs. So we asked Harry what tempo he would be playing at (85bpm) so we could set that as the tempo in the software, so if we needed to edit anything it should be easier and on time. We first recorded his drums for Zombie. After we did this, we set the 4th channel to record the guitar and sent the drums’ long fader signal through the headphones so Harry could hear them and play to themBut we then had another problem: Harry didn’t have a guitar pick. So he opted to use his fingers in a not so efficient strumming method. I set the amp to a crunch preset as it wasn’t too distorted but not entirely clean (zombie is an emotional but powerful song so it needed softness yet power) and we positioned the microphone central to pick up all of the sounds due to how intricate guitar sound settings are. Because the guitar opens the track, Leo proposed we record the guitar’s intro, then move the drums’ stems in the software to right after the intro. We then did a countdown from after the intro and recorded Harry play the rest of the song. Due to him using his fingers it really didn’t sound loud enough or have any dynamic control, but due to the number of takes, the issues with the sound at the start and the fear of time, we decided to continue the session later on in the day when we had a lesson in our studio class. This would give us time to record the bass and redo the guitar so for the time being we just wanted both tracks recorded with at least 2 instruments. We then moved on to Creep. 

Harry said the tempo was 90bpm, so we set the software session as such. Then we recorded the drums. We set the guitar amp to a much cleaner tone as Creep is a much softer song than Zombie. We then recorded the guitar intro, but struggled as Harry couldn’t play in time and the click track didn’t help as that was out of time. So we recorded the guitar intro starting at verse 1 of the song (since they’re the same chords) then dragged the guitar stem to the beginning and positioned the drums after them accordingly. We then recorded the rest of the song. Recording the bass had no issue as we didn’t really need to change its amp settings because they didn’t make much difference to its sound and it was already a perfect sound for both songs. Once we recorded the bass, we ran out of time for that session, so we asked Harry to meet us back there at the time of our lesson later on. 

In the time before the lesson, I re-read the assignment and realised that for using the overdubbing technique, we’d need 4 instruments. We only had 3 (drums, guitar and bass). So me and Leo discussed this and thought that playing simple piano chords during certain sections of the songs would be the easiest solution. I knew Harry could play basic piano chords so we asked him and he agreed to do it. When the time came, we got the equipment we needed (2 XLRs, 1 dynamic microphone, 1 condenser and one pair of headphones plus extension) and we set up the bass. Wanting to do Zombie first, we set the gain and volume of the bass and after some bass playing and moving around the microphone we settled on positioning it centrally again as the bass is very low and so we found that a central microphone picked this sound up the best. We recorded the bass with no issue at all. We then re-recorded the guitar track but this time Harry used his lanyard as a pick, which delivered significantly better volume and quality. We recorded the guitar exactly how we did previously, however there was an odd beeping noise coming from the amp. This was altered by changing the presets but not entirely silenced. So we set the amp to a crunch preset where the noise was at its minimum volume. Afterwards, we set up a condenser microphone above the piano with the top open so as to pick up the internal strings. We used a condenser as its high sensitivity will pick up all of the details of the delicate frequencies and the bass notes. Xinyi panned the piano to the right as the guitar was to the left (so you can hear the fullness of both instruments). Then I taught Harry what chords to play and so we recorded him play the chords in the choruses (this made recording far simpler yet added to the build up to the choruses in the song). Once we were happy, we bounced the mix, compressed the files and moved on to Creep. 

We decided the guitar for Creep didn’t need redoing as it sounded light yet heavy during choruses (this is how the song is). So we recorded the bass in the exact way we did in Zombie. Then we recorded the piano. But we opted for a little more complexity this time. We told Harry to play a bass note in addition to the chords as well as play the individual notes of the chords just like how he strummed the notes of the guitar chords. We recorded this into the verses as these were when the song was at its softest and lightest. This added to the lightness and emotion of the song. Once we did this, we all listened back to the songs and agreed they