Recording

Guitar and Bass Recording:

Prior to staring this project, I purchased a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 soundcard and a copy of Ableton Live Lite to record with. This means I can record guitar and bass directly into Ableton by plugging into my soundcard. Fortunately my soundcard has two inputs, which means I can set the gain on one for the guitar, and then set the gain on the other for the bass.

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Guitar:

My guitar playing is my strongest musical ability, and I was very confident in recording the parts. When I was recording I always performed to a click to ensure my timing is spot on when adding the other instruments. This especially helped when recording the parts in unusual time signatures.

The guitar I used to record my compositions was my Chapman Ghost Fret Pro:

I chose to use this guitar for a few reasons. Firstly it is one of my few guitars that doesn’t use locking tuners, therefore I can drop tune this guitar easily and change it whenever necessary. Secondly this guitar has a really low action which is ideal for rock and metal, and makes for comfortable solos. Additionally the pickups in this guitar are tightly wound, giving this guitar excellent sustain and a really aggressive tone.

Amp sim setup:

Before I started recording, I set up my guitar channel in Ableton to get a good sound before I hit record. I could’ve done this after but I prefer recording the guitar with the sound I want as I can capture the groove better.

I can always tweak the sound later on when I come to mix and master the tracks, but here are the settings I am using at the moment:

Double tracking:

When recording the guitar parts, I used a technique called double tracking for the rhythm sections. Double tracking essentially is where you record the same part twice, and pan each track left and right. This provides the guitar with a much bigger sound and is a common technique in metal recordings. Ideally, I would’ve liked to triple track the guitars with the tracks being left, right, and centre as this would’ve provided even more power to the recordings. I couldn’t do this however as my version of Ableton Live limits me to a total of 8 channels, and I also would be very pressed for time in doing this.

Below I have linked a section of one of my pieces with and without double tracking to help portray the difference the two guitar tracks make. I recommend listening with headphones for the best experience.

Here is an example of one of my riffs with one guitar:

And here is the same extract, but double tracked:

As can be heard in the examples above, there is a big difference in the power of the guitar sections when double tracked and this is something I have been doing with all of my rhythm sections for this project to really try and obtain a heavy metal sound.

If I wasn’t limited to 8 tracks on my version of Ableton I would also have double tracked the lead melody lines, however I needed the other tracks for the other instruments.

Wah pedal:

On the second piece I wrote for this project, I used my Cry Baby Wah Pedal for the solo. Recording with this was a fun and interesting experience as I normally add such effect in afterwards.

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To record this I simply plugged my guitar into the pedal, and then the pedal into my Focusrite soundcard. This worked well when combined with the Emissary amplifier sim I downloaded and added some variety to my recordings.

The benefit to recording the pedal directly was that I got a clean recording of the effect, and I also had total control over the effect while playing, rather than having to spend time adding the effect in afterwards and automating it by hand.

Bass:

Due to my experience on the guitar and my few years playing bass, I have become a competent bassist when playing both with a plectrum, and fingerstyle. I have achieved some very clean bass recordings because of this, and they will definitely lock in well with the drums. I also record bass with a click on to make sure everything is staying tight and to a high standard.

I used my Vintage bass when recording for this project:

I used this bass as it’s the one I am most comfortable playing at the moment, and is very versatile in its sound. It has active pickups which give it a loud and punchy presence, and also has bass a treble controls built in. Additionally, this bass has a low action and a small body which makes playing it very easy in comparison to some of the more typical larger bass guitars.

Bass amp sim setup:

I recorded the bass guitar in the way as the electric guitar parts. I plugged directly into my soundcard, and loaded up a bass amp in Ableton to get a decent basic sound to record with:

Recording the parts:

The recording and writing process went hand in hand during this project. I was recording parts as I wrote the songs. I find this method of working to be most effective as its much easier than writing down riffs on paper. This also lets me arrange my parts while writing. Once I had the songs in a structure I liked I would re-record the parts to the best of my ability, and double track all of the rhythm sections to get a really good heavy metal mix.

This didn’t take as long as I was anticipating it would as I had been recording while writing, and the double tracking sections took me only a few days to record to a high standard.

Here are my three pieces with all of the guitar and bass properly recorded:

Once I had these recordings finished, I needed to go into the college studio and get some live drums recorded.

Live drum kit recording:

As a part of my project I have collaborated with a friend of mine and fellow student Abi Swift, who is an excellent drummer and has agreed to record some drums with me for two of my three songs. We decided to only focus on two songs as due to Covid restrictions we were only able to book the college recording room for one afternoon, therefore we were very pressed for time.

Setting up the drum microphones:

When setting up the microphones for the drums I did it in the following order as it made the most practical sense from the perspective of having to mix the recordings myself.

Full kit with mics:

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When setting up the microphones for the drum kit, I had to ensure I used the appropriate mics, and had them set up in positions where they could best capture the sound. Here is what I did:

Kick: For the kick drum I placed our Audix D6 bass drum mic fairly close to the front of the drum. (About 2 inches away) I also placed it slightly off centre. I did this to try capture a more punchy sound.

Snare: I placed our Audix i5 mic over the snare drum using a clip on microphone stand. I angled the mic to face just slightly off the centre of the drum to capture a really tight and punchy sound that is more suited to a rock song.

Hi-hats: I used a Shure SM57 microphone to mic up the hi-hats, and I used a regular microphone stand to hold the mic above them, angled down around halfway between the centre and edge of the cymbal. This helped to capture the full sound of the hi-hats and the sharp angle further helped to reduce spill from the other drums, giving me a fairly clean signal.

Toms: For the floor and rack toms I used our Audix D2 and D4 mics, all with clip on stands. The rack toms were angled sharply down at the drum facing more towards the edge than the centre. This gave me a loud and clean sound with minimal spill. The floor tom was rigged in a similar way, with the mic pointing slightly more inwards as it’s a much larger drum.

Overheads: For the overhead mics, I used our pair of Audio Technica AT2031’s mounted on normal mic stands. When adjusting the position of these mics I was aiming to keep them as low as possible to the kit. I did this as our recording room has poor acoustics, so lowering the overheads helps to reduce the reverb from the room. Additionally, I made sure to direct both mics towards the snare drum and ensure that the distance between the snare and each mic was the same. This stops phase shifting from the snare which is essential when getting a good take on the overheads.

Setting the levels:

Once the kit was fully set up with mics, I was able to set the levels in logic. To do this I stayed in the control room while someone played each drum individually, allowing me to set the gain of each channel to an appropriate level. This also allowed me to fine tune any of the mic placements to ensure I was getting the sound I wanted. Once this was done I was ready to record.

Recording the drums:

When recording the drum parts I was in the control room operating the desk while Abi was in the live room to play the parts in. I loaded up versions of my compositions into a Logic Pro file that had no drums on for her to play to. I also set up some headphones and a talkback mic so that me and Abi could communicate without having to run back and forth between the rooms.

We first had a few runs of the tracks to set the volume in Abi’s headphones to a comfortable level, and to get a good balance in the control room too. As we only had this one afternoon to record available to us we had to move on swiftly and get some takes recorded.

We began with the easier of the two pieces, and soon had a good take. We re-recorded a section in the middle where the timing had just slipped out slightly, and once that was done we were ready to take on the second piece.

The second piece proved more difficult due to its intricate timings and changes in tempo. We spent a few hours running several takes, and dropped in from the middle section a few times until we got something solid recorded. While we did get a pretty good take on this tune, we could’ve done better had we had more recording time available.

Recording Reflection:

The recording process is one of the most significant parts of my project next to actually writing the songs themselves. I have spent many hours recording the various parts to get them right and I am happy with what I have so far.

Guitar: I feel as though I have gotten some really good recordings of my guitar parts for this project. Taking into consideration the circumstances, and having to record everything from home rather than a studio, I believe I have done well in getting some clean guitar takes that are tight with the other parts. The guitar is my strongest skill musically, and I think this shows in my recordings.

In future I would like to improve on my guitar recording skills by using more sophisticated studio spaces and experimenting with setting up amplifiers to record through a microphone. I also feel as though I could improve upon my skills at double tracking guitar parts with more time. The double tracking I have done is all to a good standard, but I do feel as though I can only get better at doing this in time as my guitar playing skills and experience grows further.

Bass: The bass recordings I have done are also to a high standard. I have managed to record some complex bass lines that compliment the guitar parts well, and keep everything locked together tightly. While the bass is not my first instrument I managed to perform confidently and capture some very clean takes.

To improve on my bass recording skills I again would like to use a bass amplifier and a D.I. output to record and get a more authentic sound. Additionally I would also like to try double tracking some bass parts as I haven’t done this on my project. Lastly, my bass playing will only improve as time goes on and therefore I will naturally be able to get better recordings as my performance skills on the instrument improve.

Drums: The drums were definitely the hardest instrument for me to record, mainly due to the short amount of time I had to record them. I feel as though I got some good quality recordings in the end and when mixed in with the tracks they really do their part in filling out the texture and adding to their complexity. I feel as though my setup of the drum microphones was as good as it could’ve been given the timescale and my inexperience in the field. I got some really good takes of the snare, hats, and overheads thanks to the research I did into setting up drum mics.

While I am happy with what I have produced for this project, the drums are definitely the biggest area for improvement. Firstly, my kick drum sound was awful; This is because our drum kit had no hole in the front skin for a mic, making the kick sound flat with no attack at all. I should’ve taken off the front skin altogether in order to give the kick drum more of a punch. Additionally, I could’ve place the kick drum mic much closer to the drum to reduce the muffled sound it was producing.

Secondly, the floor tom on this kit sounded flat and rang out far too much with an almost ‘rattley’ sound. I should’ve firstly checked the tuning of the drum as I believe it was far too low. Furthermore I could have gotten some drum rings or some moon-gel to apply to the drum skins as these are designed to reduce how long they ring out for. This applies to all of the drums (other than the kick) as it would’ve given the whole kit a much tighter sound.

Ultimately the whole recording process went fairly well. I am very happy with both the guitar and bass recordings. They have given me plenty to work with when mixing and mastering and I am confident that they will sound excellent when finalised. I am still somewhat happy with the drums as a live kit adds so much energy to my compositions. This is definitely the weakest from a recording perspective, and will require a good amount of editing before they are ready to mix into the final tracks. I have learned from this experience however, and now feel more confident in recording a live kit when doing so in future.

Bibliography:

Fuston, L., 2017. How to Mic a Drum Kit. [online] Sweetwater. Available at: <https://www.sweetwater.com/insync/mic-drum-kit/>

Glynn, L., 2018. How To Mic A Drum Kit – A Beginner’s Guide. [online] pmtonline.co.uk. Available at: <https://www.pmtonline.co.uk/blog/2018/06/25/how-to-mic-a-drum-kit-a-beginners-guide/>

Brennan, B., 2011. What You Need to Know About…Drum Mics | Modern Drummer Magazine. [online] Modern Drummer Magazine. Available at: <https://www.moderndrummer.com/2015/01/need-know-drum-mics/>

Beattie, S., 2019. Guitarist’s Guide To Recording – Andertons Blog. [online] Andertons Blog. Available at: <https://blog.andertons.co.uk/learn/guitarists-guide-to-recording>