Date: 12/11/24

Studio/Room: 113

Personnel Present and initial roles for the session:

1. Solomon Hughes – Recording Engineer/Working with Performer

2. Sam Best – Managing Pro Tools

3. Oliver Washington – Monitoring Engineer

4. Junior Varley-Simmons – Recording Engineer

5. George Cavaghn – Monitoring Engineer

6. Jamie Coates – Recording Engineer

Session Aims/Objectives: The first session was a drum recording for the overdub. As a member of the Pop/Soul band, I worked closely with our drummer, Art Marshall, to find an appropriate arrangement for the structure that would keep us within the required time restraints.

Were the aims Met? (Y/N)

Yes

Checklist for Supporting Documentation:

Track Sheet Kick IN——Kick OUT——Snare Top——-Snare Bottom——Hi-Hat——OH L&R——Room Audix D6–Sontronics DM1B—-SM57———–SM57———AKG C451—AKG C414—–sEX1R

Session Notes: All of our mics were fairly typical choices; we wanted the snare midrange brought out through the 57’s and high-end fidelity in the overheads to capture the cymbals. The room mic was placed roughly 3 meters away from the kit, and as a dark ribbon mic, it gave a lot of warm character and subtle room ambience, which proved helpful in the mixing stage. We did 5 takes, each the exact slightly different lengths as we knew the rest of the band could vamp to fill the time until the end of the song. We recorded to a click at 106 bpm, which Art picked up very quickly. We had an issue with the Hihat mic which was producing a strange popping sound, and so after the 3rd take where the issue persisted, we moved the mix position so it wasn’t being caught in a burst of air from the Hihat opening and no sound was reflecting off of the music stand that Art had his lead notes on. We did another two takes with no issues and carefully monitored for peaking each time, which by the end was no longer an issue.

Photos:

Date: 19/11/24

Studio/Room: 113

Personnel Present and initial roles for the session:

1. Solomon Hughes – Performer/Recording Engineer

2. Sam Best – Managing Pro Tools

3. Oliver Washington – Monitoring Engineer

4. Junior Varley-Simmons – Recording Engineer

5. George Cavaghn – Monitoring Engineer

6. Jamie Coates – Recording Engineer

Session Aims/Objectives: Our second session was for guitar and vocals, my instruments.

Were the aims Met? (Y/N)

Yes

Checklist for Supporting Documentation:

Track Sheet: Guitar Bright—–Guitar Dark——–|———–Vocals —SM57———-sEX1R————|———–SM7B

Session Notes: Our second session was for guitar and vocals, my instruments. This was the same time the following week and was relatively straightforward. I had my PRS SE Silversky (similar to a Stratocaster), plugged straight into a Vox AC30. We used two mics, an SM57 and an sE X1R for a mix of bright and dull tones. When the amp was turned up relatively loud it produced a bright and excellent jangly overdrive tone which fits the original track perfectly. The original Stevie Wonder record is quite bright, with high-end-focused guitar tones and very Hihat-heavy drums. I completed the intro riff and main chords in a total of 4 takes. For my vocals, we used an SM7B for its high SPL capacity (sound pressure level) which was needed for a fairly powerful vocal in the choruses. We used an additional pop filter as the built-in one was unsatisfactory.

Photos:

Date: 26/11/24

Studio/Room: 113

Personnel Present and initial roles for the session:

1. Solomon Hughes – Recording Engineer/Working with performers

2. Sam Best – Managing Pro Tools

3. Oliver Washington – Monitoring Engineer

4. Jamie Coates – Recording/Monitoring Engineer

5. Junoir Varley Simmons – Recording Engineer/Working with Performers

6. George Cavaghn – Monitoring Engineer

Session Aims/Objectives: Record 4-piece Jazz band playing “Autumn Leaves” arrangement.

Were the aims Met? (Y/N)

Yes

Track Sheet: Drums: Kick Out——Kick Far——Snare Top——-Snare Bottom——Hi-Hat——OH L&R——Rack Toms Audix D6–Sontronics DM1B—-SM57———–SM57———AKG C451—AKG C414—–MD421 Sax: SM57 Double Bass Bridge: AKG C414, Double Bass High: Calrec CM1050 Piano: 2X Neuman KM184’s in XY position

Session Notes: We used a nearly identical mic setup on the drum kit as we did for the overdub with a few key differences. Instead of a kick in and out we had a kick close (Audix D6) and a mic slightly further back from the kick (AKG D112). We also knew the drummer would be using the toms, unlike in the overdub session, so for them we used 2 Sennheiser MD421s. The double bass was mic’d with an AKG C414 at the bridge and a Calrec CM1050 (small diaphragm condenser) on the fingerboard. We thought the blend would be good for depth at the bridge and clarity higher up the neck; we struggled a lot with bleed from the drums, especially with how quiet the double bass is. The piano micing was the same as in the overdub, and we made sure to face the lid towards the drum kit so there was as little bleed as possible. We kept the Sax relatively simple with an SM57 and tried to get the Saxophonist to move as little as possible while playing. After a few takes, we knew there was an issue with the channel that the floor Tom was using as the preamp was very stunted and either far too high or far too low with a minute change on the gain control. We got another three takes in without any peaking on the desk or in Pro Tools; the band were happy with their performance and we kept the 4th out of 5 takes.

Photos:

Date: 3/12/24

Studio/Room: 422

Personnel Present and initial roles for the session:

1. Solomon Hughes – Performer/Recording Engineer/Working with performer

2. Sam Best – Managing Pro Tools

3. Oliver Washington – Monitoring Engineer

4. Jamie Coates – Recording/Monitoring Engineer

Session Aims/Objectives: Record Bass, Rerecord guitar and vocals

Were the aims Met? (Y/N)

Yes

Track Sheet: —–Bass Mic——-Bass DI——|——Guitar—–|———–Vocals ——Audix D6——-DI Box——|——-SM57—-|———-AKG C414

Session Notes: My bass player, Freddie, is a natural session player and dialled in a tone on the Ashdown amp in a matter of seconds that he thought fitted the song. We mic’d up the cab with an AKG D112 and linked the bass with a DI box for a more cutting and precise tone to blend in later. Unfortunately, we had lost my vocal and guitar takes to a technical issue and a producer’s absence, meaning we spent the rest of that session doing a brief redo with the same amp and guitar, but an improved mic setup. For the guitar amp, we only went with an SM57 for simplicity, and we knew it would give a great tone in and of itself. For the vocals, I opted for the AKG C414 for its high-end clarity and used the -10dB pad to protect it from the sound pressure level. The vocals were done in one take, and ironically were a much better performance than the ones I had done previously and were lost. Another obstacle was that the backup for the drums was not present at the recording, and so we were recording essentially blind and without certainty of when the track is meant to stop. For the main section, I did some rough guide vocals for Freddie to play to, and then I did some rough calculations to the best of my memory to find where Art did his stabs to end the song. We wouldn’t know how accurate this was until our next session, where we could import all parts back into the same project and only hope that the whole thing synced up.

Photos:

Date: 3/12/24

Studio/Room: 113

Personnel Present and initial roles for the session:

1. Solomon Hughes – Recording Engineer/Working with performer

2. Sam Best – Managing Pro Tools

3. Oliver Washington – Monitoring Engineer

4. Jamie Coates – Recording/Monitoring Engineer

5. Junoir Varley Simmons – Recording Engineer

6. George Cavaghn – Monitoring Engineer

Session Aims/Objectives: Recording piano for overdub and sync previous recording

Were the aims Met? (Y/N)

Yes

Track Sheet: Piano Left – Neumann K184 Piano Right – Neumann KM184

Session Notes: We put all of the separate tracks in a new project and after finding the correct starting places for all of them, we listened through to find that everything synced up and the unison ending was perfect. For piano, we used a pair of Neumann KM184 small diaphragm condensers, my personal favourite. They were mounted on a stereo bar aimed at the high and low strings of the grand piano, although we knew we wouldn’t pan them for a sense of realism. We wanted wide drums but a nice tight rhythmic piano. I was quite specific with Harry about his playing style as he typically plays the part on a keyboard with various other organ and horn sounds; it wouldn’t have come across as well if he played the same way on a grand piano. After 4 or 5 takes we had one we were happy with and then could save it for the mixing session.

Photos:

We had two mixing sessions for each of our recordings. First was the overdub recording, we needed three hours as there were still some old takes that we kept in the project to choose later in this session. We had a technical issue where an old drum take was playing at the same time but we had no idea where it was coming from, as it wasn’t in an alternate playlist on a hidden track. So we renamed all the clips that we wanted on the tracks and deleted any other clips that showed up in the clip window which solved the issue. We did an appropriate amount of automation on the vocals and more general volume changes for the drums, piano, bass and guitar to keep it balanced all the way through.

Mixing the live recording was a bit more challenging, as we had a lot of bleed from multiple instruments and the double bass was incredibly hard to pick out. We remedied the issue mostly with some genre-typical panning and volume automation. We could only do so much with stereo imagery and volume automation but by the end of it we had a very well-balanced mix all through the track.