Compositions

I am happy with most of the recordings that I have captured in this project but I would have liked to have had a little more time for refining everything. This however was not a major problem as I have enough material to compile the tracks to a decent standard for mixing. All the sound and mic placements have captured the best qualities of the instruments. I am confiddent that when the mixing an editing process is ongoing that all my expectations will met and the mix will be clear and neat.

Bass Guitar:

The bass guitar was recorded using a DI box. The bass guitar was pre-conditioned on the bass guitars pick-ups. I wanted to emphasise the bass input as clearly as possible rather than having to condition it within the project which may have resulted in the signal being artificial sounding.

Vocals:

The vocals were recorded using an Audio Technica 4033a. This microphone I find has a very nice pick-up pattern which is brilliant for vocals as well as many other acoustic instruments. I recorded the lead vocal two hand widths away from the microphone with the 100hz roll off activated. The pop shield was about half an hands width away from the microphone so turbulence didn’t effect the overall recording. This distance I found was the best resulting sound after trying different distances of both the vocalists and the pop shield.

Drums:

The drums were a little challenging to record as most of the channel wiring in the university CMT rooms were jumbled about. I eventually found which wiring was changed and adjusted it accordingly but this was annoying as it took me nearly an hour to figure this out, leaving me with less time to record. I used a total of seven microphones on the drum kit. Unfortunately the only mic available to use on the Kick Drum was an Sm58. I would have preferred to use a D112 or or a mic similar as the Sm58 picked up a little to much treble. I placed the head of the Sm58 into the sound hole which helped me capture more of the thud. This I found surprisingly effective. I have never used a Sm58 on a kick drum but it worked, eventually, to an acceptable standard. The snare drum was miked up using an Sm57. The Sm57 I like to use on a snare but the problem with this snare was that it had too much low end in it. I would have preferred to use a different snare to counteract this but unfortunately this was the best sounding snare I could find. The High-mid toms were miked using an Oktava. I only used one of the two Oktava’s available and placed it in the centre of the two toms. This was because having a mic on each resulted in too much snare coming through in the mix. Eventually I found a nice medium which accommodated both toms and didn’t result in too much snare interference. The floor tom I miked with the other Oktava microphone. This mic placement picked up a nice response from the floor tom which could be easily tweaked in the later processing stage of the mix. The Hi-Hat, Crash and Ride cymbals at uni I found have an horrible sound. This being the case I used a friends Sabian AAX cymbals and Hi-Hat as these were made from a much better alloy. I used another Sm57 on the Hi-hat as the mic has a nice presence on the higher end of its pick-up pattern. The two other microphones I used were the SE electronics. These I used as overheads. I placed the left channel over head in line with the ride cymbal and the right over head facing towards the crash cymbal.

Acoustic Guitar:

The acoustic guitar was recorded using an AB pair using the SE electronic mics. The left channel was slightly to the left of the hole while the right channel sat facing the 12^th fret on the neck of the guitar. The left channel was placed here as the noise from the hole in the body was too boomy, so by having it slightly to the left I eliminated the boominess while still capturing a rich sound. The right channel sat on the 12^th fret captured the nice mid-high range of the signal. Capturing only a slight amount on finger rubbing against the strings the overall result was crisp and clear. I found that the slide on the string also had a nice quality which I thought added a slight rawness to the track.

Piano:

The piano is a midi triggered sound patch which I bounced to audio for the final stages. I played the track into Cubase SX 3 as the Midi editing in Cubase is much easier than the one in Logic and many other sequencers for that matter. The patch I used was from Reason 3’s NN-XT sampler. The Acoustic Grand patch is made up entirely of individual samples taken from an actual Grand Piano which adds to the authentic sound I was aiming for. The patch also contains panning according to the position of the note on the piano adding to the concept of a nice stereo image.

Strings:

The strings are again Midi triggered. This track I left as Midi which I then triggered the sounds from the EXS instrument in Logic. I found this patch nice although the preset EQ which the patch comes with was fairly bad. The attack was needing to be quicker as the changes in the notation saw the strings slowly rising towards it peak. This made the strings sound slightly out of time with the rest of the track so I increased the response on the envelope to a quicker setting. The EQ was boosted in the bass by an harsh amount of gain and so too was the treble. This I could rectify later in the final mix of the piece.

Task four involved creating a song project in Logic 8. This project had to illustrate multi micing techniques. I began writing a song from scratch, the lyrics are from a poem a close friend of mine wrote and wanted to be made into a song. To begin with I wrote the piece for piano, to try and accumulate an understanding of how I wanted the song to be structured and also how I wanted it to sound. This was fairly easy but to ensure I was heading in the right direction, I made a rough midi sequenced which would help me understand the feel of the song in more depth.

I borrowed the Edirol R-09 hand held recorder this week from the Creative Music technology department to do some sample recordings for my foley projects etc. I was impressed by the quality of the recorder as it picks up a clear sound . I recorded various amounts of sample with this little contraption which has now taken my S-FX catalog close to 12Gb of high quality sounds.

I tested its abilities with instruments such as bongo’s and acoustic guitar. The sound again was clear and it had an awesome effect of the acoustic guitar.

I used the recordings I had captured and began to compile a song from what I had. I pre-recorded a tempo track and downmixed it onto an I-pod to ensure ease of editing Midi into the track afterwards. This would help ensure the performers played to the same 4/4 time signature and tempo.

I was able to sync the tracks to a tempo track in Cubase SX 3 then add other instrumentation through MIDI triggering.

I would definitely advise borrowing or even buying one of this as they are brilliant for anyone who has an ear for everyday sound possibilities. As also mentioned they work tremendously well with studio projects too.

“A mix is never finished. You just have to abandon it” – George Massenberg

I think this quote sums up a lot of us in the audio production world. I have been mixing songs on my latest album now for almost a year and have just realized I only have 3 almost complete tracks for mastering. I have spent too much time coming up with and trying out new ideas including different levels, Instrumentation and vocalists and I have to say that I haven’t progressed much more from say…. 4 months ago. I always keep rejecting most of the new ideas that I am thinking up.

I definitely need to take massenbergs advice here and learn to leave things as they are (until mastering at least).

My stereo micing session went very well although I used two out of the three techniques I know of, but haven’t used much.

The AB pair is a commonly used technique that I like to use on acoustic instruments. It is an easy technique to setup and works very effectively.

It worked nicely on the marimba giving the stereo image an natural pan of the rising scale of pitch. Spacings between 17 to 20 cm are detectable by the human ear, as this distance is equivalent to the distance between the two ears themselves.

The XY-Pair I have also come across on a few different occasions in the studio at home. Its a fairly simple technique to setup and gives impressive results. The most commonly used XY set-up consists of two cardioid microphones angled commonly at 90° to produce a stereo image.

I prefered the sound captured from the Euphonium benefited from this setup as it held a warming character which also emphasized the christmas ’silent night’.

The Din-Pair unfortunately my camera ran out of battery so I wasn’t able to capture a picture of my setup. It is a technique i know of but haven’t used very often. It is fairly awkward to setup but i managed eventually.

DIN stereo uses two cardioid microphones spaced 20 cm apart and angled at 90° to create a stereo image. If used at larger distances to the sound source the DIN stereo technique will loose the low frequencies.

I prefered this technique on the Euphonium again as it produced some nice characteristics to the fell of the sound. Although I prefer this track to the others, I also appreciated the sound that it also captured from the acoustic guitar.

I first used the Mackie Big Knob at college where they upgraded from the spirit Monitor desk. A product which is now discontinued by soundcraft.

I must admit that the mackie is an awesome piece of kit for the small price tag it has (between £200 – £270). It is also compact which is always ideal and it is still easy to navigate unlike some other systems I have used. Sync’d with the Digi 002 rack unit (which my old college also had) it is a perfect partnership to have in any studio (but I would still prefer to run Pro-Tools on it…I think!).

I prefer this setup to running the Digi 002 desk. This is a tidy little desk to use but unfortunately only includes 4 mic pre amps in and 4 1/4 inch jack inputs.