MPR5C001R~001 MAR21083190 Studio Portfolio 1 & Log Book

1500 words

Please use the sections below to evidence your personal contribution to the production for the portfolio. Please include details for all the tracks produced as a part of this portfolio.

Provide rationale for any of the production decisions that you made as a group. Include any multimedia (pictures, videos, audio recordings etc) evidence to the relevant sections.

Consider the following:

Pre-Production

Rehearsals
Track development
Demo recording
Arrangement decisions
Session planning

Recording

Microphone choices
Room setup
Musician management

Mixing

Mix plan/concept
Balance
Pan
Tone
FX

Project Management

Time management
Planning
Roles and responsibilities
Structure and organisation

Track 1 (Guitar-based band production)

Before we started recording this track, we listened to the demo provided to us and wrote down which instruments were present, how many parts they each had, and how long we’d have to spend in the studio to record them entirely. After writing this list, we then decided on what we would be recording first, starting off with the drums, then the bass and guitars, and finishing with the vocals. We thought that building the track up from the drums first was the easiest way to record the song since it would provide a solid foundation for the rhythm section. I wrote the original mic list for the drums, but we decided to swap a couple out after deciding that other mics would be better for the track.

The only changes to this were to swap out the overheads for AKG C414s as they aren’t as bright as the KM184s, swap the beta91a for an Audix D6 since it would provide more of a click sound from the kick, and the hihat was changed to an AKG C451b so it sounded brighter, although it was decided that a hihat microphone wasn’t needed in the final song due to it being picked up enough in the overheads while the hihat mic was picking up too much of everything else. For the guitar mics, we used an SM57 and an MD441 since they have a much different tone which could be blended well together, with the SM57 being harsher and brighter and the MD441 being warmer and having clearer mid-range frequencies. This was recorded through a Fender Hot Rod Deville, as chosen by the guitarists. A Sontronics Orpheus was also used for a room mic, but I didn’t think it was needed in my mix so I didn’t include it. There was also a layer of an acoustic 12 string added in parts of the song which wasn’t in the demo and was recorded using KM184s. The bass was recorded using an active direct input box but was reamped as a parallel effect. We ran the bass through a bass amp, but I also suggested that we use a guitar amp with distortion as another layer to help the bass cut through the mix more. We used another Hot Rod for this because it had the most options for distortion built in. Vocals were recorded in one of the 116 mixing rooms since the singer was more comfortable performing in a smaller area which we knew would mean he was giving his best performance.

In mixing, I started by organising each instrument into folders, and then made my way through each drum starting with the kick. I used EQ to make the kick in have a clicky punch, the kick out have more of a boomy punch, and to make the subkick only be below 100hz. I also used a gate on the subkick to make sure that the tail of the sound didn’t sustain too long each time the beater hit. For the snare, I boosted around 500hz and 2khz on the top, and added a plugin which adds white noise when the snare is hit to the snare bottom to make sure the sound of the snares hitting the skin was more audible through the busy mix. I always put a gate on the toms so I can turn them up higher without the bleed getting too loud, but I also added a saturator to the floor tom because I thought it lacked the clarity and intensity that the drummer was playing it with. The rack tom was panned slightly to the left and the floor tom was placed further to the right. I added a stereo widener to the overheads to make sure they didn’t seem too close together and overlapping, because I wanted to make sure that both speakers would have different parts of the kit in them. I then added a gentle saturator to the drums as a whole so they had more punch. For the electric guitars, we recorded four different layers with two mics, so I made sure the MD441s weren’t all on the same side during panning and the same with the SM57s otherwise the difference in tones would be evident in each speaker. For the bass I tried to balance all of the tracks to make sure there was a fair sound, with the sub mic being high cut to only feature everything below 150hz, while the D.I was more of the midrange and the distorted track was more of the high end. I compressed the main vocals since there was a large difference in dynamics, but made sure that they didn’t get lost in louder sections because of this.

MPR5C001R~001 MAR21083190 Guitar-Based Production – Rax Marsh Download

Track 2 Live in the studio (jazz/folk ensemble)

For the jazz recording, we listened to the band play the song beforehand so we could see what instruments were involved, the dynamics of the track, the length, and how well they knew the song. After this, we booked studio 113 since it’s the only studio of a size where they would’ve been able to play comfortably. I organised where everyone should go and whether we’d need to use any of the moving dampening walls, which we only thought we would when we thought there was a guitarist so none were needed in the end since the bass and keys were recorded using a D.I and we could put the saxophonist in the vocal booth. We used the same mics that we used for the guitar based recording on the drums, with an RE20 on the saxophone. I suggested we reamp the bass, but after hearing it in the final song I decided that there wasn’t any reason to and that if we did it might just affect an already useable bass tone.

In mixing this track, we used a Drawmer DL241 to compress the kick in, kick out, subkick, and snare. This helped to balance peaks in the dynamic performance, but also the noise gate on this unit helped to reduce bleed. The snare had a lot of bleed from the hihat due to the mic being moved by the drummer, which meant that we had to use a high cut filter on the desks built in EQ to try and make that less evident. We also used the EQ on the kick out to give more punch. The bass was also high cut to make sure that the bass frequencies were coming through the most. I EQ’d the bass to increase frequencies around 500hz so the bass could be heard through the mix, but also so each note could be heard instead of it being more of a background bass line. We then ran this through the Distressor to tame some of the peaks and so we could increase the volume of the track. After this we used the same compressor for the sax, and then ran it through the PCM92 to add some reverb to a separate track. After this, we compressed the overheads using the 1968 and increased the high and low frequencies on the desk while lowering the lower mids. Then the 1968 was used on the drum group while also the entire track was ran through the Distressor so it could be used as parallel compression.

MPR5C001R~001 MAR21083190 Live Jazz Ensemble – Rax Marsh Download

Track 3 Remix track

For the remix, I created a synth using two sine wave oscillators, with one being slightly out of phase and detuned, to be the main rhythm synth part. I also created another synth with the same oscillators to feature as the lead part. After finding the tempo and lining up the vocal with the metronome, I used a tuner plugin to figure out which notes the singer was singing when I was wanting the chords to come in so I knew what base notes would work with the vocal melody. After some experimentation and researching the key of the original song, I figured out that Dm, C, Em, Am, and G would work in the chord structure that I was imagining. I knew that I wanted this chord structure throughout since the vocal melody is the main part so a changing chord structure would potentially make the song sound too busy. For the drums I programmed some which I then put a bitcrusher on to help them to be heard better and to make them sound less real sounding because at first they didn’t fit with the way the song sounded. I also used some loops for the white noise, heavier kick, and shaker. For the real live instruments that I had to record, I did a bassline which I wrote, which was a bit drowned out because I had to make it purely more of the sub frequencies since with the higher frequencies it sounded too natural which didn’t fit with the more electronic sound of the rest of the instruments. I also recorded a guitar part during the quieter bridge which I processed heavily to make it sound more dreamlike. I used automation to have a high cut filter sweep open in multiple places during the song to help bring instruments in and to pave the gap between quieter and louder parts of the track.

MPR5C001R~001 MAR21083190 Remix Track – Rax Marsh Download