Monday morning consisted of re-recording the guitar as I didn’t want to DI it and wanted more of an authentic sound. I would have preferred to start with drums to have a rhythmic baseline and not have to entirely depend on the metronome, and to have an easier time recording guitar with indications of different sections in audio instead of having to count how many bars I’ve played.
I did this to the bpm of 108 but we had issues with output and audio being way too quiet going into Logic. Below is how we set up the microphone. We used a dynamic microphone for the amp and plugged the XLR cable directly into the desk.
After trying to record guitar for the morning and not having much success, we decided to start with drums.
We recorded each part individually so we could shape some kind of structure and know what we need to record in one take to avoid awkward cuts.
We mic’d all toms individually, the top side of the snare, the kick and two overheads of equal distance from the snare. The kick was input one, snare was input 2, we only did two toms in the end, high and floor toms, as Cody didn’t use the middle tom at all, which were input 3 and 4 from left to right. At the start we used input 3, 4 and 5 for all toms. Overheads were input 5 and 6, going left to right from Cody’s perspective. This and the changes we made were seen in the videos we took.
Drums
Tuesday
On Tuesday, we started by recording the song as as trial run to see what needs work first and what changes we might want to make last minute. To help with following the structure and timing, we talked about what would be best to use between metronome, the demo track or both at the same time and concluded using both would be best. There wasn’t much pressure to get it right that day, as we knew we could use Wednesday and Thursday to continue recording.
Tuesday’s recording was more like rehearsal because we didn’t have time prior to then to rehearse. The video above is exploration of ideas based on the ideas we have, getting used to the structure and tempo and gaining confidence with the beat.
This video is later on in the day and displays confidence growth in playing along to the structure, while still trying new ideas. At this point I’d say Cody is quite confident with the tempo since we’d been practicing for a while.
I recorded what was going on in the studio to show what my job is and how we’re working together. On this day, I set up the demo track to play along with multiple times so we could keep multiple takes and analyse which ones we like and can grow from, and pick up on mistakes that were made during the day so Cody could practice whichever parts he usually stumbled on.
Thursday
We did the same thing on Thursday in the morning since we hadn’t had the chance to record on Wednesday and that break in-between meant that mistake corrections could have been reset, so we’d need to cover certain parts in practice again. However, later in the day we deleted other takes since the more recent ones were better than the others and no mistakes were being made, except for near the very end of the day where the pressure of time made Cody stress.
Thursday’s recording was where takes were going smoothly but the stress of getting it finished was starting to be apparent. Our ignorance to time might have slowed us down as we both forgot about going for lunch before this, so energy was getting low and so was confidence from noticing that energy was a problem.
This video shows how we interact in the studio and how we respond to hiccups in recordings, as well as what I do in the studio. I cut out some of the pauses, in which we talked about various things, usually related to wellbeing and having breaks or having a laugh to keep spirits high. At this point I think Cody was becoming frustrated with how many takes he’d had to do.
In the end, we took two good takes and carefully joined them together since we noticed we were low on time and that he would often play the first half perfectly and lose focus somewhere in the middle, but be fine going from after the first chorus and completing it from there.
Bass
I recorded bass at various different times in different settings, so it’s difficult to pinpoint when parts were completed. I knew that recording video made me mess up a lot more, since I felt anxious about being watched, yet I didn’t mind recording audio at all because I’m used to it. Because of this, I didn’t end up recording much of my process.