It was my job during the first live band ensemble session to do the main microphone set up for the drums which I had assigned myself due to my experience drumming in the past, having experience which would influence my judgement of microphone placements and choices for the whole kit. Using my knowledge of spaced pair microphones, I used 2 Neumann K184s placed to be in phase with each other with the main point they were pointing to being the snare, this would be to bring the entire sound of the drum kit together while capturing the overheads and the sparkle from the cymbals due to the high frequency response of the K184s. I had also used a Shure sm57 to capture the snare top, placed to be facing close to the centre of the skin to capture more tone and body to the sound and a D112 for the kick drum as it would have been standard to do for a good low frequency response. We had settled on leaving the drum kit towards the far end of the live sound room to avoid it bleeding over to the rest of the players such as guitars and piano. We had also placed a wallet over the toms due to unwanted resonance and tone in the drum itself which we did not want to be captured. Additionally, I felt that the bass drum had a particularly boomy sound to it upon first listen when recorded through the AKG D112 and thought it was too overpowering, so we got someone’s jacket to put inside the kick to dampen the sound slightly which greatly improved the sound and fixed the issue I picked up on to begin with. In the recording stage of the session, we had acted very collaboratively in the booth using the mixing desk as a collective to listen to specific details and pick out what we liked and what we didn’t. I had heard a particularly harsh resonant frequency in the crash cymbal that I then went back in to change by placing the overhead microphones in a slightly different position which dulled that tone

On our 2nd recording session I was involved in the pre-production, having arrived early, which involved getting the microphones and equipment into the studio that we would use for the session. We also used this second session to try to fix prior issues we found in the first attempt. One such issue was the bass being extra prominent and so we got together to think of ways we could separate the bass from the rest of the players which ended up leaving the bass amp in a separate booth as that was a problem with the bass bleeding through to the piano microphones and we wished to rectify it. I had argued on using a direct input signal for the bass in the mixing booth to make the signals of all the instruments cleaner, but the bass player insisted that they wanted the tone from the amplifier which led to us reaching a compromise putting them in the vocal booth to isolate their sound, which worked in all our goals in cleaning up the general capture of the sound as well as the bass player getting their desired tonality out of the bass amp.

In the mixing booth where we were monitoring their playing, the other producers and I were discussing the sound of the capture, what we liked, what could be changed, and doing some minor level adjustments from the desk. I had not actively organised any of the times and bookings due to me not having the contact details of the musicians and not being able to discuss with them what times could work for all of them and had left that role to Jack who knew this band in the first place to record them. Due to this set back, I had tried making up for that shortcoming by doing as much as I could in the sessions that were organised by being as handy as I could have been. This was done in ways such as connecting the microphones to the wall boxes to send signal through, As well as making sure the routing of the signal inside the desk was correct and paying attention to different parts of the track, soloing different instruments and microphones throughout the recording process to make sure their tonality was right or to check on any issues I had been hearing through the playback. I offered my opinion on many of the minor changes such as microphone angles for guitars or distance of the microphones from the piano which made subtle but much needed changes for the track overall.

In our overdub recording our musicians had been doing a cover of “stuck in the middle with you” by Stealers Wheel and I mainly had worked on getting the drum part just right. I had been unable to attend the previous session on this so I was doing my best to get as much done in this session as I could be due to it being the only one for the overdub track, I could attend that had been scheduled out. The previous session the players were adamant about not playing to a click track and so the timing on what work had already been done had inconsistent timing and some parts playing ever so slightly out of sync with each other. Because of this we had our drummer play to a click track and planned to get the other musicians to do over the whole thing again due to how bad the timing was in the recording. The other producers and I had discussed which mic technique we should approach this track with, and I argued for doing Glyn Johns technique due to the more vintage minimalist nature of the original track having that sound being an integral part of it, to which we had all agreed to, we had achieved this using two C414s and an AKG D112 for the kick mic. This was all set up after taking down the microphones from the previous song we had recorded:

A cover of “song 2” by blur, which was done prior to the recording of “stuck in the middle with you” and the drums were the first thing to be added in this overdub recording, meaning there wasn’t the previous timing issues as previously mentioned. In this session Ollie and I had both set up the microphones for the drums to be a more maximalist set up due to the entire session we had that day being focused on the drum capture. With individual microphones on each part, with a kick in (AKG D112), kick out (Sennheiser MD 421), snare top (Shure sm57) and bottom (same as kick out), high tom (sm57), floor tom (AKG C414) and overheads left and right (Neumann K184) at a slight distance to bring everything on the kit together. I had then spent extra time making sure the cables were managed and neat so that they would not be a tripping hazard or get damaged in any way during the recording session However, neither Ollie nor I could figure out how the signal flow worked in that particular studio and so we struggled for a few minutes trying to figure it out, getting some things through but not at an adequate level and only started recording takes after Jack finally showed up and realised where our issue was. We recorded a couple takes for the entire song because the drummer was willing to do it in one take and did some minor level adjustments such as the snare gain, as well as moving microphones around for different tonalities. after we were happy with the takes we had for the verses, chorus, etc. we went back over the track to record the eight note rim hits that are iconic to the song’s opening drum section due to the nature of the drum part being physically impossible to play with one musician and we could make the most of our overdubbing.

Unfortunately, I could not have been working as much as I should have and that is something I will reflect upon and make efforts in the future to be much more proactive and generally more present in these sessions. Due to my messy schedule clashing with studio times, not planning things out more thoroughly and not communicating my availability clearly enough with the other producers on this production, only really attending 3 of the total sessions held for this project. I understood that lack of involvement while in the final 2 of the 3 sessions I was in and therefore pushed my participation in this project to whatever lengths I could have. Trying to be as helpful as possible with as much input as I could give and lending a hand or my services in the studio with cable management and putting microphones on stands and working in the mixing booth on checking levels and managing the pro tools session.