Despite the major setbacks I had, I thoroughly enjoyed the process of completing this module. I feel as though it was a success in the end, and I would say my skills in not only now multiple DAW’s have increased, but also in regards to how I would now go about recording a track of my own.
First off, the process of recording:
The process of setting up a live recording room for me was actually rather straightforward. I like to be methodical and organised when doing any practical work as I feel this allows me to work more effectively and with a clear plan, and therefor I had two main priorities when setting up in order to keep things simple:
- Gathering all of the appropriate microphones and equipment.
- Cable management
Now firstly I got all of the microphones I would be using out and available to be set up. This meant that I knew exactly what was going where and if I had missed anything.
Secondly I made sure to run every XLR cable in a neat arrangement from each microphone to the inputs at the side. This in turn meant that I knew everything was in place, and also reduced any trip hazards when moving around too.
Overall I feel I effectively set up appropriate recording equipment for a drum kit, two guitars, bass guitar and vocals, while maintaining a professional work environment ready to record from. Because of this planning and setup, the recording went as well as it could have done and I obtained professional sounding takes from each instrument.
The mixing and mastering process:
Now as I have already mentioned about the setback situation I was mixing a track that was different to my own, the only major change would be the multiple layers of vocals. I do believe though that this in the end worked to my advantage as I was able to use and demonstrate the recording technique of double tracking vocals.
On the other hand however, this track had vocal parts from another singer missing due to her being absent at the time of recording, however I still went onto mix the full track as the other audio files were excellent.
I would of preferred to mix the track I had recorded myself as there were less parts to it, and as it was a cover I had a good idea of how it should sound.
Working with Ableton Live 10:
The most difficult task I was faced with during this module, was the transition to using a DAW that I have absolutely no experience with. The reason I had opted to use Ableton Live over other DAW’s was that it is very highly spoken of within the music industry.
My experience with Ableton reflects these reviews. It was intuitive, user friendly, and provided an abundance of professional tools for editing and recording. Fortunately I had about a week to play around with the software and become accustomed to it before I began mixing this track so I wasn’t completely clueless when starting out.
The one thing I did learn when using Ableton, was that it’s EQ plugin was rather basic, although I’m sure it would’ve done the job. I found an EQ plugin online that is free of charge, and much more advanced than the base thing, so I installed this and got to work.
While I feel as though I could’ve done a better job using Logic Pro, I still managed to produce a track to a standard that I was happy with and done to the best of my ability. I learned a lot about the software and mixing on the whole, and I would definitely use this software again.
Was this project a success?
Ultimately this project I think was successful despite it’s problems. I successfully and professionally set up and recorded a live band to a high standard as evidenced in my blog.
I used Ableton Live to produce a professional mix and master of a live band recording, and bounced this down to a .wav file available to listen to from my blog.
If I was to do this again, I would like to experiment with more microphone types, and positioning as I have only really scratched the surface of what can be done in a studio. I will definitely be using all of my new knowledge for mixing and mastering more tunes in the future as I enjoyed Ableton Live so much that I will be purchasing the full version once my trial has ended.