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Live Recording – “Beautiful Love” by The Keano Ritchie Quartet
We chose to record with this band as I had become good friends with 3 of the members since moving to Leeds Conservatoire. Initially, we had planned to record a folk group, though unfortunately we could not line up our schedules. Rolling with the punches, I created a groupchat with this jazz group and asked if they’d like to record a song. I had seen them each perform live and had jammed with some of them, so I knew they were good musicians. We set up a recording session after our seminar on Tuesday 25th November, as this meant we could utilise our seminar time (6:30-8:30pm) to set up the microphones, create a ProTools session, and correctly patch and cable everything; I like to take my time when setting up and have the least stress as possible when recording, so this process was very beneficial for me. It was helpful to have the other members of the specialist group on hand as it meant we could allocate jobs and speed up the process. I feel I did this successfully. I asked each member to either work on setting up the drum microphones, or the desk and DAW, et cetera.
By the time the band arrived around 8pm, we had set up all the microphones and were fully prepared to start sound-checking as soon as the band were ready. Some of the microphones were only roughly positioned as they were bound to move as soon as the drummer sat down and started moving the kit to their taste. We assured them that was ok, and we would work around them as we wanted them to be as comfortable as possible to be able to capture the best performances.
I asked the performers to send any references they had. George, the guitarist, liked the idea of his guitar tone to sound like Pat Metheny’s guitar in “A Lot of Livin’ to Do”. We achieved this by having his tone rolled back a lot and using a hollow-body guitar. Others were not as concerned with the exact sonic qualities, Keano, for example, asked for his piano to sound like a piano. We tried to accurately recreate the sound of the instrument in the room in this case.
I believe my microphone choices were wise and well informed.
As a drummer myself, and a jazz enthusiast, I like to think I know how good jazz drums sound. Tommy is a great drummer and knows his sound. He requested specific sizes of drums, which we provided for him. We captured a full range of frequencies on the bass drum with the use of a Solomon Low Frequency microphone we used as a sub-kick mic and an ATM 250 as a kick-out mic. Most of my microphone choices were based off prior experience using them. I knew these two were great for creating a full bassy sound. We chose not to use a kick-in mic as for a jazz track we didn’t want a particularly harsh attack on the bass drum. For the snare top we went with a trusty SM57. We decided not to mic the bottom or side as we didn’t want too much bleed and phase interference in relation to other mics. Jazz drums often have the hi-hats keeping time on the “two and four”, so we chose to mic them up with an AKG 451B; we positioned it off-axis to avoid harsher frequencies. For the toms we used two e604s. They’re very practical as they’re small clip-on mics meaning they’re not invasive, but they still sound great.
Here’s the frequency response graph of the e604. It isn’t flat, though I found this beneficial for our intent as it captured the low warmth of the toms, was less sensitive to the muddy mid-range, but captured the clarity of the high-end.
The Aston Starlights were effective as overheads, we placed them further away then you may usually place overheads to get a wider image of the kit and get some room sound and used a Phantom C too as a room mic in combination to attempt to get an accurate room recording. We panned left and right to give the kit some stereo width.
On the Fender Hot Rod, we mic’d up one speaker cone with an SM57 and a JZ V67. We put the SM57 on the side of the cone to avoid the harsher, higher frequencies that the SM57 usually picks up. This also allowed us to record a tone closer to Metheny’s, as mentioned earlier. On the double bass, we used an MK319 on the F-Hole to pick up most of the bass frequencies, and a 414 on the fretboard to pick up the percussive clack, which is a very beautiful and common feature of double basses in jazz recordings. We initially had trouble getting a good level out of the double bass, so we connected a DI box, and this gave us a lot more mid-range. We put baffles encasing the double bass as it is quite a quiet instrument, this allowed us to not get as much bleed from the other instruments in the bass’s mics. We also placed one in front of the drums as they’re very loud, this was to avoid them bleeding into other microphones.
We stereo mic’d the grand piano with a coincident pair of AKG 414s inside the lid. We then panned them left and right to create a wider sound and try to replicate the size and sound of the piano.
Having a patch list allowed us to be quick and effective too.
Overdub Recording – “Wonderkid” by Jeanine
Like the jazz band, I had befriended this indie rock band since moving to Leeds. I asked them while hanging out if they’d like to record for this assignment and they agreed. Cleverly, they are using this recording as well as some others I have done for them in my own time as demos to send to management.
We recorded this song over two sessions. The first focussed on drums and guitar.
The bass drum mics are the same as the jazz recording, for the same reasons, however, we also used a DM1B as a kick-in mic to get more attack on the bass drum and some higher, percussive sounds. For the snare top and bottom we used 2 545SDs, we initially wanted to use SM57s but they were not available, so (rolling with the punches) we chose the most similar mic, and they suited really well. We used an AKG 451B on the hats for the same reason as the jazz recording. We used an ATM 250 on the rack tom and an ATM 25 on the floor. They’re similar mics, but we chose the 250 for the floor due to it’s better rear-rejection, as it would be right under the crash cymbal. The 414s are trusty overheads; we used these equidistance apart as we all liked them from our experience using them and thought they’d accurately reproduce the sound of the full kit as they have a reasonably flat frequency response graph, with a slight upwards curve at the higher frequencies, which sounded good to pick up the shimmer of the cymbals. We used the KM183 as a room mic. It is omnidirectional which allowed us to capture the whole space, this was beneficial in overdubs, as we didn’t have to worry about bleed from any other instruments. I am happy with how the drums sound. As with the jazz recording, we asked the drummer to get himself comfortable and we’d move the mics around him when he was settled in.
We made a guide track for the boys to play along to, this helped them out a lot with timing and structure as they are used to recording live, but they still worked well in this setting.
We used a Sontronics Delta 2 on the left cone of the Fender Twin, a little off to the right to avoid harsh frequencies, and an SM57 on the right cone, off to the left for the same reasons. We then blended these together when it came to mixing to create a nice warm tone to fit the vibe of the song.
In the second session, we used the same mics, as well as a DM1B at the back, as it is an open back speaker. We blended all of this together again and panned each guitar take L and R to create a wide stereo effect.
Also in the second session we recorded the vocals and bass. For the vocals, we used a Sontronics Orpheus – one of my favourite mics. It has a really warm, vintage sound which suited this track perfectly, it is also gorgeous looking.
For the bass, we used a DM1B on the cone of the Ashdown amp for the main body and mid/higher frequencies of the bass, a D6 on the port to capture the sub-bass, and we took a DI out too to have more tone to blend in and work with.
