Critical Reflection of Minor Project

Reflection on Minor Project- ‘Country, Rock and Pop’ EP

Before the beginning of the trimester, myself and teammate Peter Jackson were approached by our mutual friend, Mark Bonacroso to record, mix and master a 3-track demo EP. We left the song choices in his hands. An established cover gig artist, he has a catalog of about 200 songs that he could have chosen from. He ended up on ‘Folsom Prison Blues’ by Johnny Cash (Country), ‘Touch’ by Noiseworks (Rock) and ‘Slow Hands’ by Niall Horan (Pop). Creative/genius EP title if you ask me.

Bono already had a drummer in mind, his long-time friend and collaborator, Bryan Mac. It is important to make your artists as comfortable as possible at the time of recording to give the best performance and it was reassuring knowing that they have played together many of times.

Prior to this recording, I had never recorded a full drum kit before. I had to do a lot of research into the types of mics to use on certain drum pieces and also the distancing of them from the sound source.

For example-

Snare- Bottom- 1 x SureM57 to capture grunt of low end

Snare- Top- 1 x Sennheiser MD441 Dynamic Hyper cardioid

On the snare bottom, a SureM57 was used on account of the potential high SPL that the drum would give off. We also wanted to catch the live feel of the session, so it was a nice blend for the mix. The top mic, a MD441, was positioned about 3 or 4 inches from the snare, angling more towards the middle of the skin to emphasise the attack. The bottom mic also flipped out of phase at the pre-amp. These recordings were supposed to be a somewhat ‘live’ performance recording, emulating a small venue gig. We wanted to hear each element as clearly as possible. Attack time and clarity/separation of sounds was a big factor in the decision making going into the recording session. A roll off of 80Hz was also used in DAW to mitigate bleed from the toms and kick.

Kick In- 1 x AKGD12

Kick Out- 1 x BETA SHURE 52A

A large dynamic mic was used on the inside of the kick drum- AKGD12. The mic was kept slightly off center to improve the low-end frequencies. We then experienced with the distance from the batter head to the front head, opting to be about 4 or 5 inches from the point of impact from the beater. It was a meatier sounding kick with a reasonable attack and mid-range frequency level, just what we wanted.

Now for the kick out, I found that using a large diaphragm condenser like the 52A would serve us nicely to help pick up some of those low-end frequencies. The mic was kept away from the hole so as not to pick up the batter head. Using two Royer R21 ribbon mics in an MS configuration, we captured a nice room recording. This can be seen below:

After recording had been completed, I felt that overall, we did a good job of researching and implementing drum miking techniques to gain the sound we wanted. However, upon the editing phase of mixing, we noticed considerable bleed from hi hats and the ride due to the mic being too far away from the front of the kick drum. Soloing individual mics and testing their levels more attentively would have lead to a cleaner sound from the get go. Being under time restrictions for recording lead to things being slightly rushed in some areas, but overall still reasonably happy with my first ever drum kit recording.

Originally, we had set out to record tracking vocals with a SM58 and overdub with the Neumann U87. This came to fruition. We also set out to record the guitar separately with a spaced pair of U87 aiming slightly behind the hole/bridge of the guitar to accentuate clear low end and a KM184 small diaphragm condenser aiming at the 12th fret to get the warmth from the strings.

Bono had brought in an effects pedal system, so we sent that into a DI and set up another track in pro tools for the effects pedal signal. We ended up just recording the acoustic with a U87 placed in the middle of the guitar hole and 12th fret to gain the best of both worlds.

(Guitar effects pedal and vocal mic set up with pop filter)

The patch bay was also utilized for very subtle EQ and light compression just to tighten the vocals up going into the DAW during recording. Overdubbing the vocals with the U87 was a no brainer for us, capturing the cleanest vocal takes possible and paying attention to the high frequencies of our artist. In the mixing stage, a small blend of the tracking vocals and room mics were used to help fill out the low end.

Here is an updated project plan equipment list-

Performance Correction-

Using Melodyne is a relatively new application for me. But this is one powerful tool to any engineer.

Above is a snap of the entire vocal of the second track of the EP, 'Touch', that has been imported into Melodyne. This tool allows you to identify and correct and major pitching issues that you or the program can see/hear.

Below is a snippet of us using the program to identify the key note that the track was sung in, B minor. It was then up to us to go through the entire track and center the pitch where necessary, essentially snapping the majority of the vocal notes to match the song in B Minor. I think the process definitely made improvements on the original take, but as my music theory knowledge increases, the accuracy of using such a program will be far more effective than this particular application!

The following video is a FANTASTIC run through of how to use this crazy program!!

Pre- Mixing/Editing-

• Duplicated VOX track 8 times for time and pitch shifting- 4 are panned hard left, 4 hard right for stereo image.

Above are pictures showcasing the copying and panning of 8 duplicates of the original vocal. Adjusting each and every copy either plus (+) or minus (-) cents in small values and also changing the time expansion by a small amount. This created a much wider, fuller vocal for our tracks. Without these subtle pitch and time shifting values, we would only be raising the loudness of the vocal, not the vocal itself.

• Gated drums

• Removed extraneous noise in VOX

Pre-Master mix session in S6 studio-

Upon watching a mix session with our lecturer, we decided to use the hardware available in the S6 for some pre-mix brightening and 'mojo'. This would require us to patch the signal into the hardware and apply subtle EQ and compression to really bring a bit of life into the tracks. It only accentuated our mistakes....

When we were printing the tracks with the hardware, I swore I could hear a tiny bit of distortion on some of the louder parts of both 'Slow Hands' and 'Touch'. We had been told before the session by the previous group that the levels were slightly favoring the left channel coming out of the hardware i.e a bit hotter than the right hand side. We took that on board and proceeded with the recording. We used Avalon EQ and a Manley compressor.

When it came to mix time, we swore we had accidentally recorded a slight distortion into two of the mix's. We are adamant that this problem was not present during recording. But maybe we were too close to it to notice. Upon more brain-busting trying to figure out where we went wrong, we contacted Bono the artist for his view. He told us that due to him using a capo on his guitar, there could have been areas where it jumped or moved slightly, creating a nasty 'fret buzz'. Applying this subtle EQ and compression to a problematic track would only have added to the problem.

We then took these tracks home to mix and master ourselves before the week 5 presentation. We were very unhappy with our presentation to the cohort. Having the surround sound set-up in the theaterette, the projects shortcomings really shone through.

Since the presentation myself and Peter have gone back to the original stems and re-mixed the tracks without hardware processing. It is the beginning of week 9 now and we have a studio session booked in class with one of our lecturers this week and are going to be presenting the two problem tracks to get some input on where we could improve. I am really quite excited to get to sit down and pick the brains of a professional to see where we can take the tracks from here. I will be blogging about the changes made to the tracks with some pro direction and the reasoning why they were made, so stay TUNED!

References-

YouTube. (2018). Basic Drum Recording: The Full Kit. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-2MT3y7r30&t=104s

Odqvist, C. (2018). 6 Ways to Get Creative with Vocal Doubles. [online] Pro Audio Files. Available at: https://theproaudiofiles.com/vocal-doubles/