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Instrumental Cover of Stitches by Shaun Mendez
Here’s my most recent cover of Stitches by Shaun Mendez. All of this was recorded and produced by me within one day with limited resources to my disposal compared to how I would normally record a track. The main disadvantage for me personally was the restricted sound from the guitar DI.
Instrumental Cover of Stitches by Shaun Mendez
Here’s my most recent cover of Stitches by Shaun Mendez. All of this was recorded and produced by me within one day with limited resources to my disposal compared to how I would normally record a track. The main disadvantage for me personally was the restricted sound from the guitar DI.
5 track album
This is Changing Seasons new EP - pay what you want for it
3rd day in the studio mixing...
Arrived at EFS at 5mins to 9pm only to find out we were getting upgraded from the small echo studio to studio 1 which was super lucky and convenient. Studio 1 had so much more outboard gear to use for our mixing.
Loading up the session the way we left it took longer than expected…again. The bass track had become entirely white noise for a small section for no apparent reason it seemed, even though the audio track in pro tools showed no sign of being distorted. Even moving the output to a different channel on the desk didn’t do anything, eliminating that there was possibly a problem with the desk. We restarted the computer and tried re-loading everything back up. In the end we decided to work with what we had. Cut and paste other parts from the bass track to the right places and that sounded just as good, if not better. The other glitches from the previous studio days miraculously disappeared. Again totally unexplained.
After a frustrating hour we started mixing. Taking on board the feedback we got from Sam, we started mixing the drum kit. Started with just the kick drum. Using a software plug in to remove the spill from the snare and cymbals. This was also then EQ’d through the desk. A low pass filter was introduced to make sure just the low end of the kick was clear. We experimented with different EQ settings with the mids and low frequencies until we thought we had a good kick sound. Adding in the snare we firstly sent the snare to compound compressor D. It took a bit of time with a soloed snare to adjust the attack and release times of the compression. We ended up with a quick attack and a medium release time. The medium release was ideal because it allowed there to be enough of a ring from the snare to sound good without allowing too much spill. Then taking it off solo with the kick it sounded pretty good so not much needed to be changed. The overheads needed more top end in them so as soon as we added them into the mix we increased the amount of high mid and high frequencies. This added more clarity to the overall kit sound. With the tambourine included we didn’t want there to be audio masking with the high end of the rest of the kit, so we boosted the mids in the tambourine and cut some of the top end. After twiddling all those knobs we needed to take a quick break before cracking onto the rest of the tracks. Moving onto the bass guitar, we knew from our feedback that there was audio masking with the bass guitar and electric guitars. With that in mind we already wanted to bring more of the low end and cut the mids out of the bass to create more room for the guitars in the mix. But in doing that we over did it and ended up masking the kick drum. So in the end we found a compromise. If we had more time it may have worked better side-chaining the bass and the kick drum so that it would stop them from occupying the same frequency space in the mix. Guitars were fairly easy to mix and EQ because the sound captured from the SM57 was almost perfect for the track. The main issues we faced were the guitar amp hum and the nasty ring that came from the bridge of the guitar (Jazzmaster). To get rid of the guitar amp hum we used a software gate, this eliminated the hum entirely without killing the sound of the guitar fortunately for us. However the ring from the bridge of the guitar was almost impossible to get rid of. And even in the final mix there are tiny amounts of the ring cutting through especially in one section where the intro repeats itself. The SM57 guitar track was sent to the Focusrite Focus EQ where Luke managed to find a great guitar tone by pushing up the mids and cutting lower frequencies. The SM57 track is then supported by the blumlein pair of 414s which captured a weaker sound. These tracks were EQ’d through the desk focusing more on the higher frequencies to add clarity. Finally for vocals we decided to use software plugins to add a church reverb and on top of that we added an inflator. This made the vocals seem wider and more present.
The progressive changes to the compression on the Snare through the compound compressor. (In order)
Luke tweaking a few things on the desk
All of the patching :)
Focusrite focus EQ settings for the Guitar (SM57)
EQ settings, Pan settings, Level settings. Track 1 = Kick Track 2 = Overhead 1 Track 3 = Overhead 2 Track 4 = Snare Track 5 = Tambourine Track 6 = Bass DI Track 7 = Sm57 Guitar Track 8 = 414 Guitar Top Track 9 = 414 Guitar Bottom
Studio Day three and four: Mixing.
After we submitted our work for SRT Tracking, we received feedback on how to improve the tracks, and thus began our second phase of the assignment: Mixing the track. With loads of time in advance we booked three sessions in Studio basement two at UWL for mixing. This was the same room we used to track vocals and bass previously, and of course we knew it had quite a good selection of outboard gear to use as well (lovely!). The first two days were booked as seven hour session, followed by a third four hour session. Unfortunately it was both our faults that we had missed the first day and effectively lost seven hours due to a recent trip to frankfurt germany, since it was the next day after I got back. No matter we still had 11 hours to mix which we figured would be plenty of time, haha how wrong we were.
The next seven hour session went not quite as we had expected, and due to some technical difficulties we couldn’t upload latest session from which we had made some key editing, therefore we lost a few hours consolidating tracks to the best takes of guitar, and the drums but this wasn’t so bad.
Once everything was squared away, we could begin the actual mixing to the track, based on what feedback we had been given by our tutor the lovely and talented Sam. He suggested that, we add top end to the drums, compression on both vocals (prevent distortion otherwise rerecord), and bass. following these guidelines,this is exactly what we did. We started with the drums soloed on Pro Tools, beginning with the Kick I added some EQ via and the Oxford plugin to remove some of the spill from the snare and cymbals, followed by a plugin oxford compressor to actually cut through the mix and prevent any masking from the bass. The snare was solo’d on the desk and using the tape insert, we sent it to the Warm Audio WA75 Compressor set to a fairly fast attack, and then back to its tape return. The cymbals were simply just EQ’d on the desk with some attention paid to the high frequencies to not be masked by the guitars.
As sort of a spur of the moment idea, we decided to record a tambourine as it actually appears in the original track, and also it adds a nice touch. Johnny set up in the vocal booth with a AKG c414 set to cardiod about a foot away from the diaphragm. Once levels were set on the desk, we created a tambo track on pro tools and in just one take captured what we needed.
Just before we left the session, the tamborine was EQ’d to have more mid frequencies to therefore not occupy any of the space of drums or guitars in the mix. Btw we had a lunch break at Santa Maria pizza down the street from Uni and if you ever get a chance go there its the bomb diggity.
Studio Day four
The following Tuesday, we were back in studio basement two and I made sure to arrive super early, and get the equipment to get cracking as we had limited time (4 hours). We need to redo the bass guitar through the DI, sort out the guitar noise (amp hum, and bridge buzzing) and we made a last minute decision to redo vocals as the tracks would actually clip during the chorus so that was unfixable otherwise.On playback of our work we noticed some very strange glitches, I noted atleast four which were unexplainable, almost like digital distortion yet the tracks appeared fine (we solved most of them later on).
The bass guitar was simple, we plugged a squire jazz bass directly into the control room DI box, patched into the desk line input. Once appropriate gain levels were set we recorded the track. Then from the tape send we patched the bass signal into Ed the Compressor which is a pretty cool piece of hardware we had and brought the sound to life, then sent back into the return patch.
On the Electric guitar tracks we had amplifier noise which was removed using a noise gate plug-in available in pro tools.
The vocals were rerecorded by Johnny with the Orpheus (cardioid setting), we did all of the verse sections and once we had a good take of the chorus we just copied and pasted, which took a bit of fiddling with moving the sections to be in time. We then added some church reverb to add some fullness to the vocals, and also an oxford inflator to produce more output (he’s a lovely lad our Johnny).
At this point we had everything ready to go, the track was done and we had panned everything appropriately as to give a good stereo image and create good space in the mix but we ran out of time, and we needed to record our settings on the desk. Although we had a technician show us last minute it was too late, we saved the session and were out of their faster than you can say “wow that was fast”, Nearly got fined by the same MRC guy again Grrr but we booked another late night session at EFS to sort it out.
Xxx
LB
Very cool video from the boys at Fender talking to Mike Kerr about his amplifier Rig.
Glyn Johns Mic technique with AKG C414′s!!!!!!!!
The Brighton duo's self-titled LP will be released in August After doing some undercover research, Jonny found an awesome video showing some studio footage and highlighting the drum mic placement live, which by chance also was similar to how we did it for our tracking. Great success!!
Day 3 in the Big Brother House.... I mean Basement Studio 2. This was the final day of tracking and we had Matt Dean come in to sing for us. His punctual arrival meant we could crack on. Firstly we set up the Vocal Booth so that we had the U87 and the Orpheus as a Blumlein pair (both mics were set to have a figure of eight polar pattern). The mics were then connected into the Vocal Booth mic ties.
After setting up the desk (which hadn’t been reset) and opening the pro tools session we created 3 mono audio tracks and then we got Matt to make some sounds in the Vocal Booth whilst we set up the Mic Levels and since both mics were condensers we had to add Phantom Power to channels 25 and 26. This was then routed through the desk to inputs 9 and 10 where we could then record the incoming signal. Next on the list of things to do was to set up the Headphone output so we connected the headphones into the Vocal Booth Samson Headphone preamp which we could then patch with the Rednet outputs 1 and 2.
The tracks were armed and we started recording some takes and managed to get 3 proper takes of the vocals for the whole track (after a few minor hiccups with lyrics). A stylistic idea we spontaneously had was to record a whisper track with the vocals to bring out the air and sibilance in the vocals. In order to do that we had to go back and raise the mic levels so that Matt’s whispering could be heard.
Meanwhile whilst Matt was doing vocal takes, I was setting up the next phase of tracking bass guitar. Turned out the DI box we had picked up from the MRC was of no use to us since there was already a DI Box on the rack. After Matt had finished we plugged the Fender Squire Jazz Bass into the DI Box and patched from there into Desk Input 8. Since we were rushed for time we set up the levels to track Bass and managed to record a take of that. Looking back on this we should have spent more time specifically for the Bass guitar tracking.
Overall a productive day in the studio followed up by a thorough listening of each take for each instrument and working out which parts of which takes to keep. A lot of muting was involved.
“And thats all folks.” - Quote by Luke Blackburn
- JS
Equipment Used: Day 3
Equipment: Behringer Ultra DI Pro Foucusrite Rednet Computer Tower + Mouse & keyboard Audient ASP 8024 2 x Amphion One 18 2 x Quested S8R 2 x Viewsonic flat screens Patchbay
Samson S.Phone h/phone Mixer/amp Behringer Rack Tuner
Line and Mic Ties
9 x Boom Stands 3 x Mini Boom 2 x Ultimate stands
Microphones:
Condenser Kit Contains: 1 x U87 1 x Sontronics Orpheus 1 x Calrec CM5010C 2 x AKG C414 2 x Sontronics STC 1S 2 x DPA 4090 2x AKG C480 Dynamic Kit Contains: 1 x Shure SM58 1 x Shure SM57 1 x Shure Beta 57 2 x Sennheiser MD 421 1 x AKG D112
12 x XLR cables
1 x Headphone extension
1 x Pop shield
Epic Trailer for Thursday's lecture ;) - JS and LB
For Phase 2 of the Recording Process we moved to Ealing Film Studios 1 to track drums for our cover of “Out of the Black”. We got in bright and early to set up the drum kit. We hit the Low Tom around the live room until we found a good resonant spot in the room. This was where we thought the Kick Drum would be ideally placed. Once we had set up the Toms around the Kick Drum we decided to tune the High Tom to match the Floor Tom because the High Tom was ringing with a horrible overtone.
We were trying to achieve a tight drum sound to replicate the track and to do this we decided to avoid using a room mic but using a combination of close mic’ing and stereo mic’ing instead. The lack of a room mic was ideal to produce a crisper sound rather than an ambient sound.
To record the sound from the Kick Drum we used an RE20 Ribbon microphone angled to one side of the kick. We wanted to deaden the Kick Drum sound so we used 2 pillows inside the shell of the Kick Drum.
From what we have learned about stereo mic’ing techniques we thought that the best way to record the overall sound of the drums was to use the famous Glyn Johns technique on the overhead microphones. To achieve this we used a pair of AKG C414s distanced equally apart from the snare, one directed towards the Floor Tom and Ride, the other directed towards the Crash and Hi-Hat. (We measured the distance using the length of the headphone extension cable.)
http://therecordingrevolution.com/2011/01/10/the-glyn-johns-drum-recording-method/ (For more information on the Glyn Johns Drum recording technique.)
We also close mic’ed the snare with a Shure SM57 angled towards the edge of the drum head. There were a few minor issues we encountered when setting up the close mic: The clip on the mic kept falling down and changing the angle of the SM57. To solve this problem we simply changed the mic clip.
When all the mics were in place we connected each mic into the live room mic ties and took note of which mic ties were for which microphone. In the control room we then patched the live room mic ties into the Audient desk line inputs.
On the desk we made sure that the AKG C414s had phantom power and then we let Paul Sergeant play drums until we had signals coming into each channel. Then the levels were adjusted on each channel so that the recorded signal would not be clipping. This was then monitored in the control room and the Rednet output was patched to the Headphone amp in the live room.
In the pro tools session we made 4 additional mono audio tracks and setup the inputs to match the inputs into the desk. The tracks were then armed and ready to record. The click and the count in for our session was still messing around so we just used the count in and recorded Paul playing to the backing track which was soloed in the pro tools session.
We managed to successfully get 3 different takes and use the best parts of each take. All in all a successful day in the studio.
-JS