Track 1 (Guitar-based band production)
[OCTOBER 8th] We had began looking at what style of music to go with as we had options between a trip-hop style track, shoegaze and a more R&B style song. Eventually we picked the shoegaze style due to the ease of making it as we’d all have the skills in our group to perform and record this collectively with minimal outside help to rely on. We had started with the idea of the guitar part, recording that in roughly using an amp with distortion on it and a DI through the desk in the studio.
[NOVEMBER 6th] We re-recorded the guitar with the same set up to get a much stronger performance and a cleaner sound out of the guitars. we also experimented with some in-the box effects to get a stronger sense for the tone and sound of the track, we also combined this with recording the drums, using a close mic technique on each part of the drum kit in a relatively standard fashion, we weren’t trying to record anything in anyway outside of the usual norm due to the nature of the track.
[NOVEMBER 26th] We had brought in a Moog synthesiser after discussing adding synthesis the previous session. This was played by Nate who was able to play the bass part on the keyboard while he and everyone else in the session spoke about the tone of the synth and made choices about the oscillators used, the filtering, other built in effects in the moog synthesiser itself and modulation. While recording the track in we were all moving the dials around and flipping switches as Nate played in order to create a sense of progression in the synth tone itself, especially for the ambient break near the end of the track which played a lot of developing sounds to pad out the atmosphere.
[JANUARY 6th] recorded extra vocal adlibs, whispering track included and sent vocal through a guitar amp and a pedalboard, giving it a fuzzy tonality and used the modulation and feedback to make it sound dream-like.
[JANUARY 8th] Began my mixing of the stems, using FL Studio so I could do my mixing at home. I had spent a lot of the time sorting through the audio files to see which were usable and organising the session into mix groups with spaces left for send channels such as reverbs and parallel compression.
Track 2 Live in the studio (jazz/folk ensemble)
[OCTOBER 8th] Discussions were held about the jazz recording, who we were getting in to play for us, with one of the members saying that he was a part of a jazz group and would talk to them to see if they would be willing to try for the assignment, to which they agreed and prepared by getting their own copies of the sheet music required and rehearsing on their own time.
[OCTOBER 15th] prior to the recording session we had discussed which microphones would be most appropriate for the set up, we ended up using the microphone list as seen in apendix 1. while setting these microphones up we had the band play a couple rehearsals and discuss their plan of what they were playing and how to play it due to the time it took to set these microphones up. In order to capture a clean sound from each of the microphone set ups we had placed dividers in the room and other methods of sound treatment, such as covering the piano with its appropriate cover over the top of microphones to make sure none of the drum sound bled into the piano microphones. Additionally we had the saxophone playing in the vocal booth, seperated from everyone else due to the presence of a solo in the track. we wished to get as clean of a sound for it as possible with a close sound to capture the details. We had also used multiple microphones for the double bass and the Piano, the double bass had a condenser microphone picking up the resonance of the sound from the sound holes with a neumann pencil mic picking up the detail of the strings. We recorded multiple takes of the track as there were a couple mistakes every now and then, when they appeared we brought them up with the band, which they typically responded with knowledge they had messed a part up. We also directed their volume while playing by telling them to play a little quieter than they would for a live performance.
[OCTOBER 22nd] got together for a rough mix of the jazz track. Using parallel compression and hardware desk EQ to print in certain sounds, this was mostly for experimentation purposes to get a plan of what the track should end up sounding like. some of the mixing decisions such as compression used on the drums was kept for the final mix.
[JANUARY 6th] Final mixing session using hardware. For this we had patched the saxophone signal into the lexicon reverb unit to get a very fleshed out and full sound from the sax as it was missing in the original reverb track we had in. after this we had put every instrument into sub group channels and mixed them within the groups on the desk, and set the overall levels of each insturment at a certain point, recording in the completed mix audio from the desk. While doing this we had also all decided to ride the faders in the middle of tracking the mix in, to better control some levels as the first bass note was noticeably louder than the rest of it, and to fix this we brought it down and nudged it up after it had come in. some other adjustments such as boosting the piano for the piano solo and controlling the vocals were done with this method.
Track 3 Remix track
I had remixed this track over the christmas period On FL Studio. I Originally planned to make this a house style track but eventually changed my mind and opted in to go for a more drum and bass soundscape, This decision was made on the pretense of this being a dance track and in my mind, to transform the track i had to go for something a bit more intricate than a simple house track. I had started by using a synthesiser (Vital) to create my own kick drum sound and playing a simple kick on the first and third beat of the bar except for on every 4th bar where the rhythm would break up, as seen in Appendix 4 below.
After this i had built up the rest of the drums around that kick pattern, using multiple different hi hat and snare samples to interplay with each other and create a dynamic and interesting rhythm section. I then used Vital again to create a bass synth. This was done with 2 saw waves detuned from each other that got more detuned the higher up the note being played was. this creates that high wobbling sound in the synth lines. these synth lines i had played in with midi information and quantising it afterwards.
In addition I added a pizzicato violin to the verses, this gives it a creeping feeling which builds towards the choruses of the track, giving it a sense of structure and differentiation from the rest as i was worrying it was feeling quite repetitive without it. This was recorded in with a friend who had a violin, I had left the recording of the instrument to him after sending him a simple synth line with the notes i wanted him to play, which he completed and sent me the files for.
To make the vocals fit into this D&B soundscape, I had compressed it heavily, put it through a telephone EQ and then sent it through a guitar cabinet emulator to give it a grainy sound and a narrow frequency range to help place it in the mix easier, giving it a very specific purpose in the track. This effect did cause the vocal to clip quite heavily so i brought it down in the mix.
However, the vocals still felt out of place after all of the work in the above section so i decided to add a piano part recorded in that would be playing gently over the choruses, this padded out the texture of the track and created a nice bed for the rest of the track to rest upon and was able to bring a lot of the elements together quite nicely, as the soft texture of the piano contrasted with the synth line to balance out the aggressive tone of the main synth. I recorded the piano with a stereo pair set up in order to have a complete stereo panned bed of sound, this then got put through a large reverb unit twice and a delay to give it more atmosphere for the track.
Unfortunately, some of the vocals fall out of time with the rest of the track, this is a problem that when I tried addressing it in the remix only made the problems worse. So I decided it’d be better to use them while being slightly out of time, this is especially noticeable during the bridge of the song.
