Jeff and Erin’s Début

Project 1

Pre-Recording:

The studio is booked from 9:45-12:45.  The first 30-45 minutes will be spent setting up the studio and placing the Neuman KM184 small diaphragm condenser mics for the acoustic guitar, along with Neumann TLM193 for vocals, and the Crown PZM-30D mic.  When the performer arrives we will adjust the mics for him and set levels for both the guitar and vocal tracks.  This should take around 20 minutes.  We will then record a base track with him playing and singing at the same time, possibly through the floor mic.  This should only take 5 or 10 minutes.  We will then use this as a playback track for him to record the guitar and voice separately.  Each individual recording should take 20-30 minutes.  Clean up and returning equipment should then take around 20-30 minutes.  This leaves us about 30 extra minutes for potentially unexpected problems or additional explanation for the performers questions.
Sketch:

The vocal mic will be located approximately 1 foot away from the performer with a 3 foot distance away from the guitar mic.  The guitar mic will be placed just below the sound hole to pick up the sound while trying to avoid picking up the finger slides on the strings.

What’s New:

Everything about this project was a new experience for us in this class.  For this project specifically, we used an acoustic string instrument and solo voice which we had not previously had experience recording.

Post-Recording:

Overall, the session went fairly well considering it was our first time in control of this sort of environment.  We did, however, have to deviate from the aforementioned schedule.  The first half of the session was spent trying to address technical issues which were extremely unexpected.  The performer requested the use of a metronome to play along with.  As we are still unfamiliar with many of the features Pro Tools has to offer, we had to spend a rather significant period of time trying to figure out how to get the click track to work.  We then recorded a base track through the mic set for vocals.  Unfortunately, since the headphones were only outputting sound from in one ear, we had a problem with volume levels which added periodic lags within the session as appropriate levels were necessary for the performer to be able to feel comfortable playing along with both the click track and the base track.  The performer ultimately found the base track difficult to play along with so we decided to go ahead and record the guitar track on its own.  After a few takes we moved on to the vocals.  This track also was done in multiple takes until we were comfortable with the levels received (no clicks) and the performer was comfortable with the quality of sound.  We did feel as though his voice was a little shaky and it would have been nice to have a few more chances to rerecord, however we ran out of time.  We would have also liked to have had the opportunity to try recording through both mics at the same time, but again, time was not permitting.

We felt that warmth and naturalness were the most important things that we wanted to emphasize in this song, which could be exhibited in both his guitar and voice.  Thus, we sent his voice through the Neve preamp and his guitar through the Jenson which we believe produced beneficial results.  When mixing the two tracks, we tried to use compression in order toget rid of some of the sharpness in certain parts of the tracks and really smooth it out, bringing out the warmth and resonance.

While the overall recording went well once we got further into the session, the technical difficulties encountered were major disappointments.  We had really hoped to have more time to be able to experiment while recording.  In the future, we would like to be able to try recording live using both mics set up, rather than overdubbing or recording a base track using just one micr.  We would also like to experiment with different preamps and their various settings to see what actual sound differences may be created keeping other variables as constant as possible.