Context
My aim for this project is to be able to complete a studio recording focusing mainly on how to get a good sound for the entire band instead of just focusing on one instrument. There are many different techniques to use in the studio and this project was a good opportunity to learn about them and experiment with them. A lot of people who record now, are doing it on a low budget and with limited resources. It is good for me to get used to recording even if im not doing it in a high end studio.
TASK 1
Research
Microphones –
There are basically 3 different types of microphones; dynamic, condenser, and ribbon.
Dynamic microphones are the general all rounder mics that can be used for anything really. Although most commonly used for live vocals, drums, and guitar and bass amps. They are durable, don’t require phantom power, can take in a great amount of volume before they start to distort.
Condenser mics are generally used for more quiet instruments (apart from over heads on a drum kit) and are better for isolation recordings on vocals and acoustic instruments as they give a cleaner and more detailed sound. They are extremely sensitive and are susceptible to distorting at high volume levels.
Ribbon microphones are extremely sensitive microphones, this is because they have a very thin foil ribbon in them which vibrates and transfers the sound. They are often used by recording artists who are trying to go for a vintage sound, recording a room, or recording woodwind instruments as they give a very high quality sound.
Microphone Placement
ways to mic up a guitar amp: microphone placement can have a big difference on the tone of the guitar. the most common way to mic up a guitar cab is to use a shure sm57 four inches away from the speaker and pointed at the centre of the speaker, this gives a natural, well balanced sound. Another way is to have the setup the same as before, but with the microphone one inch from the speaker. this gives more of a bassy sound but minimises feedback and leakage which is a problem in the room we record in. Recording a bass amp is similar to the way you mic up a guitar cab although you would use a larger diaphragm microphone
Ways to mic up a drum kit: The most common way to mic up a drum kit is to use the 6 mic technique. this means a mic on each of the toms, snare, bass drum, and two overheads. this gives an overall balanced sound of the drum kit. This is one of the most effective and simple ways to mic up a drum kit both during the recording process and during the mixing process as you have individual channel tracks to change the volume of, it is also easier to control bleed during the recording process.
Condenser mics are also important for overheads, and for a more extensive stereo sound, spacing the mics apart as a pair is more effective instead of in an x-y configuration. However doing this prevents a risk of phase cancellation. If this occurs, it can be solved by moving one of the microphones until the problem is solved.
TASK 2
Here are two versions of the same funk song that I mixed as practice to get used to how to properly mix tracks. The first is just the raw audio files before I touched them, the second is after i’d mixed the track. I started the mixing process for this song by adjusting all the gain levels to get them all sounding comfortable with each other. I then began to pan the different instruments. I had the kick and snare straight down the middle, then panned the two overheads hard left and right. This gave me the sound that I was after which was that the drums would sit comfortably in the mix and surround the other instruments. I also decided to keep the bass right in the middle, this is because I wanted it to fit in well with the drums and sound like the bass was right in the pocket. I then went on to pan the guitar to the left and the brass instruments to the right. This was done in order to create contrast with the two treble high melodic instruments. The keyboard I panned both left and right slightly to the left and right, again to give more depth and so it didn’t sound like it was forgotten about. I wanted to go for a bass-heavy mix as I feel that the bass is a very important and prominent instrument in Funk music. I also used different effects on the instruments such as EQ. I heavily EQ’d the drums as I wanted to go for quite a produced studio sound with little echo or reverb. I EQ’d all instruments to get a better sound in general. I also put some reverb on the guitar so it wouldn’t sound as dead, it also added more variety to the song and made the guitar stand out that little bit more.
Overall, I think that this mix wasn’t bad and as a practice it was quite effective. However, if I was to do it again, I wouldn’t focus too much on the bass and I would make it more subtle but still noticeable. I would also try better to bring up the levels of the other instruments. For example, I found that the keyboard was too quiet during the solo so I would bring up the levels on that.
TASK 3
For this task, we had to perform in a band so we could be recorded in the studio by another pair at college. We had to perform the song ‘Kids’ by MGMT but had a choice of whatever style we could do it in. This is the original song:
Below are two quite different covers of this song which I used to help me decide what style I should perform this song in. This helped demonstrate that because this is a fairly simple song, there is a lot you can do with it in terms of arrangement. We decided to go for a similar feel to the first video which is a piano cover. This is because we wanted to do something that was slow paced and more relaxed than the original.
My performance went quite well as I didn’t make any mistakes and we were done in two takes. Each of us who were performing knew our parts very well and therefore could get straight on with performing instead of learning parts. However, we started late as it took the engineers longer than expected to set up the microphones and get everything ready. Because of this we were behind schedule and trying to get the performance done as quick as we could. Another problem with the performance was that the vocals weren’t coming through the PA and we didn’t have headphone mixes. Because of this, I struggled to know where I was during the song and found myself having to massively focus on the singer and try read her lips to know where we were in the song. Apart from these problems, we performed exceptionally well and recorded a good sounding performance.
Practical Skills
Recording in the studio was no easy feat. I managed to get everything set up relatively quickly. I moved the drum kit from one side of the room to the other so it wasn’t sat in between the bass and guitar amps, this helped prevent bleed as when recording live in a room, bleed from the drums is usually a big problem. I had 6 mics on the drums, A STANDARD DRUM PACK, ONE MIC ON THE SNARE, KICK, AND TOMS. I also used a pair of AKG C480s for overheads in a spaced configuration. I had a Sennheiser MD421-II on the guitar cab and an SE titan on the bass amp. This is a condenser mic and I decided to use this because it gave me a cleaner and more defined sound than what a dynamic mic would have given me. Also, it is a large diaphragm mic which means it pics up bass frequencies better.
Once we had everything set up was when we started running into problems. When we were soundchecking the drum kit, the kick drum sounded fuzzy and was clipping even though the gain wasn’t very high. After some troubleshooting, we determined that it was because the mic was connected using a broken XLR cable, so we replaced the cable and this solved the problem. Another problem with the drums was that when we told the drummer to soundcheck the drums, he was hitting the drums relatively hard, which is what would be expected for a normal performance. However, when the band started playing, the drummer was playing at a much quieter volume and using different techniques such as a snare click instead of a normal hit (which is what he was doing during the soundcheck). Because of this, when the band started playing we could barely hear the drums and had to completely adjust all of the gain settings which resulted in us losing a lot of time. Another problem we ran into was another broken XLR, this time connected to the mic on the guitar cab. we noticed when we were soundchecking that again, it was a weak signal but still clipping, this was again solved by replacing the XLR. Whilst soundchecking further, we thought that the guitar still sounded weak and fairly unsubstantial. we tried tweaking the amp settings but still there was this problem. We ended up changing the position of the mic to be in between the two speakers instead of in the center of one and moved it four inches away from the grille. This solved the problem and gave a much better sound from the guitar.
My time in the studio was relatively successful, albeit a bit stressful due to the time restrictions and the problems we kept running into. Overall, I think that I recorded some decent sounding tracks for the equipment that I was working with. If I were to do this again, I would line check all the instruments before the performers showed up so that as soon as they arrived, we could do a quick soundcheck and record them playing straight away.
TASK 5
It was now time to mix the song that I had recorded. With the practice that I had with mixing other tracks, I was fairly confident that I knew what I was doing in regards to mixing. I wanted to go for a fairly simple mix, not focusing on one instrument in particular and trying to keep as much ambiance and vibe as I possibly could from the original live recording. Below is a before and after mix of the tracks.
The first thing that I did was set all the gain levels, I intentionally set the guitar gain lower than the bass and drums as I thought that was the instrument that had the most bite and could benefit most from being brought down in the mix. The gain for the bass and drums was fairly similar as i wanted them to be as close as possible to give a tighter rhythmic sound in the mix. The next thing that I did was pan the instruments. I again left the kick and snare dead center so that the other instruments could be based around them. The overheads I panned hard left and right so that it would sound more natural and real. Bass I panned a little to the let and Guitar I panned a bit to the right. This is so that when you are listening to the song, all the instruments will be panned to equal sides. Below is an image that shows how I panned the instruments and their gain levels.
Once I had done this, I added EQ and effects to the tracks. Below is a screenshot of all the EQ patterns i had on the instruments. The EQ windows go in this order clockwise; kick, snare, overhead left, bass, overhead right, and guitar.
I played with the EQ a small amount until the tracks were sounding professional. As I said before, I didn’t want to have a super produced sound. I wanted my mix to sound natural but high quality, this is why I’ve tried to leave my tracks as raw as I could. The main reason I used EQ was to add more bass to the kick, more bite to the snare, and get rid of bleed from the drums on the other instruments. I also added more effects to certain instruments such as a compressor on the bass. I did this because it made the bass guitar sound more aggressive and less like it was taking a backseat in the mix. I then added some reverb to the guitar to give it more depth and make it sound less anemic. I thought this was very effective as it made the guitar stand out more and gave it more variety instead of it sounding dead and dry.
In conclusion, I think that my mix was okay. I achieved what I wanted in terms of having my mix as close to the original recording with it still sounding good. However, there were still problems with my mix such as the fact that it is overall relatively quiet, if I were to do this project again, I would raise the overall volume of the mix so it sounds better. Also, there were no vocals in my mix as when I went to load up the mix, they had disappeared and must’ve been deleted at some point during the recording session, So I had to make do with an instrumental song to mix.
Evaluation
Overall I would say that my recording projects were mediocre. With more organisation and preparation I believe I could’ve had higher quality tracks at the end. That being said, I did complete was I said I was going to do which was record and mix some tracks, and for a first effort I don’t think it was particularly bad. My main areas for improvement would be time management, such as in the recording sessions, I should’ve used the time I had spare to line check all the instruments before the musicians turned up to save a lot of hassle. Another area of improvement would be listening skills when I was mixing and comparing my mix to others. If I had done this, I might have noticed that my mixes were quiet and could’ve had the master volume increased.
I can use what I have learned here for my next project because I have learned that to be more successful, I need to be a lot more organised and know exactly what I need to do. However, I have also learned another valuable skill that can be used further on in life and if I choose to go down the music production route as a career path.
If I were to pursue this field as a career, it would only be to record and produce tracks that I have played on. This is because I much prefer performing to recording, but I think it would be valuable to have the band recording a song to produce it as they know exactly what sound they want to go for and with these skills I have learned, I will be able to do that.
Bibliography
MGMT- KIDS
YouTube. (2018). MGMT- Kids. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=w7JthgTMHDU [Accessed 21 Feb. 2018]
KIDS – MGMT (COVER)
YouTube. (2018). kids – mgmt (cover). [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWu4tl8gZJY [Accessed 21 Feb. 2018].
CAGE THE ELEPHANT – KIDS MGMT COVER
YouTube. (2018). Cage the Elephant – Kids MGMT cover. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bQSd2GWCZw [Accessed 21 Feb. 2018].
GLYNN, L.
The Different Types Of Microphones Explained | Dawsons Music
Glynn, L. (2018). The Different Types Of Microphones Explained | Dawsons Music. [online] Dawsons Music. Available at: https://www.dawsons.co.uk/blog/the-different-types-of-microphones-explained [Accessed 21 Feb. 2018].