T4.5 Recording ClientsDrum Replacement: If after recording a drum kit you find that you do not like the sound of one or all of the drums, drum replacement becomes an invaluable tool that is essential for any professional sound engineer. Take the audio track and convert it into MIDI by double clicking the audio file and going factory > audio to score, the threshold can then be adjusted to remove any unwanted signal. Once this is complete highlight all the notes on the MIDI file then hit functions > transform. Select a note (e.g. C1), then functions > transform > fix velocity > set instrument as sampler (e.g.EXS24). From the sampler you can select a new sound from a large library of samples and whichever one you choose will play whenever that MIDI note sounds.

Melodyne: Melodyne is a piece of downloadable software that appears in Logic as a plugin. Melodyne allows for audio tracks to be tuned. For example, if you had a vocal track that was good throughout but was flat on a couple of notes Melodyne can listen to the track and then display it as a series of notes. These notes can then be adjusted to become a completely different note or can have the modulation of each note subtly adjusted.

The 3 songs that my group had to record were: Jammin’ by Bob Marley, Beat It by Michael Jackson and Ex’s and Oh’s by Elle King.

Recording of Jammin’ took place in Studio 1. Jammin’ consisted of a total of 15 tracks:

- Vocals - Backing Vocals - Two Guitars- Bass Guitar- 2 Keyboards- Cajon- Kick Drum- Snare Top

- Snare Bottom- Rack Tom- Floor Tom- Left Overhead- Right Overhead

Before starting any recording we set the faders to appropriate levels to allow ourselves a lot of headroom in the mixing process.

The Bass, the Drum Kit and the Guitar were recorded first, this was done so that they could play in time with each other and also so that the Drums would not bleed onto anything. The Bass Guitar was recorded through a DI box in the live room. The Guitar amp was in the vocal booth being recorded via an SM57 while the Guitarist played in the live room. To record the drums we used two Audix f9s as overheads in a spaced pair setup, an Audix f6 as a Kick mic, an SM58 on the Top Snare, an SM57 for the Bottom Snare and two Audix f2s for the Toms.

We were happy after a couple of takes on these instruments but the Bassist wanted to rerecord so we thought it would be the perfect time to record the Cajon as the Bassist could play along with it. The Cajon was recorded with an SM57. When we mixed the Cajon we EQ’d some low end out so as to not let it clash with the Kick Drum and therefore reduce muddiness in the mix, then we attenuated the frequencies around where the percussive hand slaps were. When mixing the Bass we added the sub bass Logic plugin and selected the bass booster pre-set to give it more punch. Compression was added to most of the instruments on this song to create a more equal sounding mix, a more professional recording is created when nothing on the song is jumping out above the rest of the tracks.

We then moved on to recording vocals. We set up the vocal booth by unplugging the SM57 which was recording the Guitar amp and then plugging in a Neumann TLM 103. Once the main vocals were recorded we found that they sounded slightly dead so we added some reverb and tape delay to them. This helped give the track some life. We had two backing vocalists who sang into one Neumann TLM 103 at the same time. This was primarily due to a shortage of time but it came out well. I would have preferred to have them record individually as this would have allowed for more precise mixing and better panning.

We had just one Guitar and 2 Keyboards left to record. We reset up the vocal booth to record another Guitarist, however when we listened to the recording after the session we found that this Guitar sounded out of tune and scratchy, we attempted to melodyne it but couldn’t quite perfect it so decided to cut it from the final mix. The MIDI Keyboard was quick and easy to record and had no noticeable mistakes.

Recording of Ex’s and Oh’s took place in Studio A and had a total of 13 tracks:

- Lead Vocals- Lead Guitar- Rhythm Guitar- Bass Guitar- Kick Drum- Sub Kick- Top Snare - Bottom Snare- Rack Tom- Floor Tom- Overhead Left- Overhead Right- Keyboard

This whole song was very easy and quick to record. We started with the Bass and the Drum Kit playing together. The Drum Kit was recorded in the Drum booth while the Bass player was DI’d through the LA610 HI-Z input in the studio. We utilised the Gain on the LA610 to give the Bass a nice distorted tone that was true to the original. These were played almost perfectly so were out of the way quickly so we could move on to the Lead and Rhythm Guitars. In the original the Rhythm is an Acoustic Guitar but we didn’t have one on hand so decided to create a clean, warm tone on the Electric. I DI’d the Guitar into the LA610 and told the Guitarist to play while I changed the settings. I brought down the Gain to remove some distortion and boosted the Treble and the Bass to achieve the correct tone.

The Lead Guitar was slightly trickier, the tone had to be more distorted but much less so than the Bass so we added a Small British Clean amp plugin on Logic and adjusted various settings on it, namely increasing the gain and the mids to help it cut through above the Rhythm Guitar. This recording took a couple of takes, in the first play through a few of the palm muted chords weren’t held down quite as hard as was needed and didn’t sound brilliant when we listened back. However, the short Guitar solo was much better on this take than in the second so we decided to keep both and alternate between the two.

Vocals were completed in one take. We set up a microphone in the drum booth and went straight into recording. After listening back we were happy with that take and didn’t need to melodyne it. Finally we recorded the Keys. This was also completed in one take, we used the Dreamy Bells Logic setting and were happy with how it sounded without any modification. I gated all of the drum microphones on both mixes except for the overheads. Overheads are perfect for capturing the feel of a recording space and gating them would remove this element from the mixes. However, I did attenuate the overheads around the 570Hz mark to reduce the noise from the snares as they were slightly intrusive on the overhead tracks.