Studio Project – Track 2
9th November 2010
So a short session in the studio today, recording individual drum hits to use in the ‘Structure Free’ plugin. I originally intended to simply mike up each drum, play several hits and record then chop out the individual hits. Firstly i tried doing this in the loud room with the entire kit present, but found that when playing individual drums, other drums would resonant, so i moved each drum separately into the chill room to isolate it from the rest of the kit. I used 2 AKG 414s to create an MS set-up to provide a stereo field, whilst also using 2 DPA omnidirectional microphones for close mono recording. I positioned 1 DPA next to the top skin of the snare and toms, then the other DPA underneath each drum also. I found that the combination of the two DPA’s and the MS set-up provided a good sound, but was lacking in the bass frequencies when recording the toms, so I switched out the lower DPA for a Sennheiser E602 which gave a much warmer sound. For the kick I kept the MS set-up and used the E602 positioned in the drum skin hole and for the cymbals and hi-hat I again used the MS setup along side the two DPA’s, one under and one over. On listening back to the recordings, and soloing the MS audio then the DPA audio it was clear that separately the sound was rather flat, but when played together provided a well rounded stereo sound. Once I was happy with the recordings I had made of the drums, I decided to collect some non-instrumental audio with the hope that these can be used in the track too. I used a single DPA, the E602 and the MS set-up all focused at a single point at which I experimented with several sounds. I scraped my fingernail down the strings of the double bass, scratched the surface of the AKG boxes, which gave a nice rasping sound, crumbled my tobacco pouch and flicked my lighter. I’m not sure if I’ll use any of these in the track, but it seemed a waste to not at least try to get these sounds while I had all the microphones set-up.
I want to try and produce a dub-step style track, using these sampled drums and some of the non-instrumental sound. Use the double bass for the bass track, hopefully double tracked with some distortion subtly added (via my mini-kp chaos pad then output through the Behringer bass amp) to one of these tracks. I haven’t written anything yet for this track, but once I have a drum track sequenced I feel that I’ll quickly build a piece around it.
16th November 2010
Short session in the studio today, having quickly achieved todays goal for my first track I set my sights on developing the second. Yesterday I took time between lectures to cut individual drum and cymbal hits out of the recordings I made in my last studio session for this track. I used the kick, floor tom, the two toms on top of the kick, a rimshot on the tom, a tap of the splash, a large hit of the splash, a tap of the ride, a large hit of the ride, the snare, hihat open hit, hihat closed hit and the hihat closing without a hit. I felt this was a good sized collection of drum samples to begin sequencing a beat for this track. As I had four individual audio threads for each hit I bounced them down to a single stereo thread. This allowed me to input the samples into the ‘structure free’ sampler in Pro Tools. I used 4 separate samplers as it seems that adding more than four samples to one instance of the sampler crashes protools (note to self: save progress regularly!!!!). Once the samplers were loaded it was a simple matter of sequencing the beat on the arrange screen. Now I have the beat I need to get into the studio with the double bass to come up with a bass line for the track.
26th November 2010
Todays session has proved very fruitful. After originally planning to produce a live dubstep track, I have changed my mind and decided to produce a hip-hop track that me and my brother have been working on. I simply changed the tempo of the beat I had sequenced to 94 bpm and I recorded my brother rapping the vocals from the track. I multi-tracked this section of the track, two recordings that are very similar with accents on certain words to add emphasis and also two other tracks, one panned right and one panned left, on each of these tracks only certain parts of the lyrics were rapped and each track being rapped in a different style. I think this worked really well, giving the effect of many different people providing the vocals rather than just the one. For the vocals I used a Nuemann mic with a pop filter for all the different tracks. I also recorded a piano part for the track consisting of two sections, alternating on each verse of the song. For this I used two AKG 414s and the piano in room Hel037. I set both mics to cardioid and aimed one at the bass strings and the other at the treble strings. I plan to play back the piano track through the Genelec speaker in the recital hall and record the audio using a mic in the centre of the room to capture the natural reverb. I want to try this several times to produce a very deep reverb. Once I have done this I want to fade from the reverb laden mix to a the dry recording to provide an introduction to the track. I’m booked in the studio again next friday and will concentrate on adding the bass to the track. If the double bass is available I would like to use this, but if not I will be using a DI’d electric bass guitar, with a mic also used to pick up the sound of the string fingerings to add more depth to the recording. If time permits i want to get the guitar part recorded also. The other elements included in the track will be synth and violin.
3rd December 2010
Short studio session today to record the bass section of this track. Originally I planned to use a DI’d electric bass, but on reflection and hearing how the double bass sounded on the previous track I decided to use the double bass again. I plugged the double bass into a bass amp and used an E602 to record this feed, I also use an MS setup with two AKG414′s to record the stereo sound, picking up the sound of fingers on the strings. I also set up and instrument track and sequenced some mid for a synth line. I decided that i would like to try and use Frank Zappa’s technique of Xenochrony, by using the guitar part from my previous task ‘Smokestack Lightning’ and include this in the mix. On re-listening to the track at the end of the session I decided not to use the stereo recording of the double bass (the ms setup) and to just use the recording from the E602, the sound of the fingers on the strings seemed to interfere with the overall mix. Using just the E602 recording gave a much warmer feel to the bass.
11th December 2010
The final mix of the track has been done and looking back over my previous posts it is clear to me that I haven’t talked much about the techniques that i wanted to emulate. I originally wanted to use a part of Phil Spectors Wall of Sound, specifically sending audio to be played out of speakers, then re-recorded to capture the reverb of the room. However i was unable to get access to the recital hall and my attempts to employ this technique in the corridor outside the studio was thwarted as the microphone cables were crossing fire exit routes. So I decided to try playing the piano and drum recordings through a set of headphones in the chill room and used an MS setup to record the resultant audio. I used this for the introduction to the track, fading from the recorded headphone output into the main track.
As mentioned in the above post, i also tried to emulate Frank Zappa, by using audio from an entirely seperate track and adding this to the mix.
I used techniques developed by George Martin, namely sampling – I recorded sounds of individual drums and then used the ‘structure free’ sampler to sequence these individual hits to create the beat for this track.
The main technique employed throughout the track is multitracking – pioneered by Les Paul, by recording the vocals, then re-recording them we had a ‘double-tracked’ vocal section. I decided it would be good to add more vocal tracks too, but not the entire vocal track, just certain parts of it and some extra additions to it. This technique is quite often used in modern hip-hop so I felt it was appropriate to use it in this track.
On reflection I think the track as a whole is well presented and the quality of the recorded sounds is good. I wasn’t exactly happy with my attempt to emulate the ‘Wall of Sound’ reverb technique and the results reflect more of an adaptive approach to, rather than emulation of this technique.
