Multi-track Experience

Mixing our group’s sound track has been a great experience, having control and having your opinion on what it should sound like. Its definitely a time consuming process which I didn’t expect but fun at the same. This project was made up of twenty tracks; it included the drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar, and piano and finally managed to fit in a lustful sound of a harp.

 

The guitar had a nice tangy sound at the beginning; it was record at the right level, no equalizer was used on this instrument apart from deceasing the level.Mixing the harp and strings was a complex task, the spring volumes were automated and the harps were paned, this separated the sounds more and gave it a nice rhyme. The harp recorded with the AKG 414 had a balanced sound but the harp recorded on DI had a high frequency hissing sound, but it was enhanced and the high frequency was removed by the EQ3 1BAND, both harp track were sent to a auxiliary track and levelled to -9.6 db. The strings were compressed with the Dyn3 compressor, low gain and high threshold so it doesn’t interfere with the vocals and harps.The piano sounded great but I added some compression so it can sound out more and layer up the other tracks and I also increase the db up a bit. The drums were levelled right apart from the snare, which I lowered the high frequency. I also increase the level of the drums. The acoustic guitar and the bass guitar levels increased a bit because it was the body of the track, after listening to with and with the solo I think it was great.

 

 

The vocals blended well with the instrument, the and s were cut from upper end of the frequency by using the EQ3 – 7BAND and a bit of reverb was added at low mix rate, the bass guitar has a nice rhymed sound the, D12 gave it that natural touch, the microphone picked up the low frequency incredibly well, using both DI and D12 produced a compressed effect to the sound.

 

Overall this has been a great experience and I enjoyed my contribution into this project, I had chance to play every role apart from playing an instrument, which I kind of felt worried about in the beginning but at end of the project I know what I will be focused on in studio and what areas needs to touched and practiced more the studio.

During out pre – mix session  we did the following procedures :

– Route all outputs to 1 and 2

– Virtual fader master to get all levels on 0

– Head room (-12 db  t0 -15 db)

-All effects were turned off

-Nothing on he master bus

-All level set

-Consolidated any track if necessary

-Re-pan

-File made in order

-Insert comment if needed

– Group all the drums , Bass guitar, Acoustic guitar

– Listened to track at high and low level in terms of volume

-Insert fade in and fade out were its needed

-cutting out silent parts in a track (wave)

The following week we had a short seminar on software and hardware effects. We were taught how to use the insert and axillary function on the desk and on the effects rack. It complicated process but it was a good practise session .

This week will recorded the Harp , piano and a Electric-guitar, these were instrument that weren’t planned in the being especially the harp but did add flavour to the mix . it was my first time  I saw  a harp, I thought it was more of an orchestral instrument.Even though was a desk operator I really determined to be among the crew to setup the harp just to see what it looked like. its seemed like a very delicate instrument, light for its size and has a natural great sound. The harp was setup and tuned. we used a AKG 414 for the recording and used a DI box which was connected to the DI rack, which we connected a jack to harp which I didn’t expect. the challenge we faced was that the instrument produced a low signal, which we thought it the battery but I guess it wasn’t but we figured it out at the end.

The piano was played by Sean, we sorted out he’s headphone mix then lastly we recorded the strings which sounded great. the guitar was also recorded, it gave the entires a nice tang felling and change the song a bit but still was my  best part on song , the Electric – guitar was play through the amp and we used a Shure SM57 microphone also used a room microphone to pick up the reverberation of the room.

Recording vocals in the studio, the vocalist has to be prepared , identify with the microphone and  comfortable in the studio, there also other things to consider like:

– Perfect headphone mix

– Confidence

– Pitching

– Delivery

– Clarity

-Lyrically content

-Mic quality

-Plosives (Pop shields can help filter)

-Proximity effect (Mic position matters)

-Polar pattern

we used three microphones for our recording to find out which one was suitable and sounds great, this is a process that producers go through to know what microphone works well with the vocalist. During our session we used the Shure SM 57 which is similar to the Shure SM 58 but slightly different frequency effect, it has a low frequency effect and it is a highly versatile cardioid dynamic microphone, the Electro-voice RE-20, this is a broadcasting microphone commonly used in recording kick drums and has a flat frequency response we also used was a APG-414, this microphone has a flat frequency response,its versatile,it operated with a phantom power  , No SPT, low shelf (160 Hz).After recording we concluded that the each microphone had an advantage, the  Shure SM 57 manage to filter out the S’s , T’s and C’s , the Electro-voice RE-20 had a nice warm smooth effect and APG-414 also had the same effect. We concluded that the Electro-voice RE-20 microphone was a great microphone for the vocalist.There were a couple parts that re-recorded and we were had a short lecture on markers and playlist.

This week I had the chance to work on the desk. All the channels on protools were named and the tracks were setup  for the session. The acoustic guitars and elecric-acoustic guitar were tuned and ready. we had a discussion on what microphones will be suitable for the recording  and finally we decided to use the SM 57 and SE 2200a II

Shure SM 57  and the SE 2200a II were used to record the acoustic guitars and DI was used to record the electric acoustic guitar .The SE 2200a II was used as a room microphone and the Shure SM57  was placed right in front of the guitar .The omni-directional polar pattern mode was selected on  theThe SE 2200a II so that it can pick up signal around the room. The DI box was connected directly to the electric-acoustic guitar and then connect to the DI rack  then the signal were channeled down to desk. we worked on the headphone mix , spoke about the Mix A and Mix B function and how to communicate across to people in the live and dead room.