Jonathan Lee - hnd music

[jlee182]

Compression

In both tracks I added compression to the vocals. The compression ratio being 3:1 helps maintain a dynamic range whilst increasing the volume. Compression was also added to other streams.

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FadeIn FadeOuts

It is also important that the start and end of tracks have clear easing starts and ends. Using the fade in and fade tool it can prevent the abrupt volume to the listener. Generally though at the end of the track a fade out could be employed after the music rings out unless the sound of the room/amplifier is wanting to be heard .

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Cross-fades to correct timing

In the 'Right For You' track at one of moment the bass guitar & percussion was noticably out of time. By splitting the bass guiatr audio track before and after, the audio was moved and cross-faded segments cross-faded togeather. The cross-fade prevents any audio clicks which may occur from zero crossing.

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Multiple Vocal Takes

Within 'Right For You' there were multiple vocal takes. I ended up splitting up different audio tracks and chosing them the vocal sections which sounded the best. What is important when playing vocals between different mics is that the gain difference isn't noticeable when with other instruments in the mix.

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Juggling EQ

A particular mixing technique I used was juggling EQ. This means for different instruments different frequencies charts are used and the hz of the highest peak is different. Within Logic pro 10 the EQ has an inbuilt analyzer pre, and post so you can see visually where the instruments frequencies lie. In mixing 'Let Me Out' I gave each instrument I employ this.

Bass EQ

When putting EQ on bass guitar's it is good to remove the treble to lessen the sound the generated in plucking. I did this for both the 'Let Me Out' and 'Right For You' tracks.

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Recording Bass Guitar

An effective way to record bass guitars is by placing the microphone at just in front of the speaker cone. An advantage of this is it captures any the modulations of signal produced by the amp, suchas equalisation, compression and preset effects built into the amplifier. A disadvantage though is that if the jack cable is not tightly plugged into the amp and moves out of the amp this can cause electric a/c noise which in most cases is not wanted. A potential disadvantage of this technique is that the direct input DI of the electric instrument isn’t recorded and therefor this sound cannot be edited in the mixing stage in a daw like logic, though conversly the performer will usually want to hear the effect of amplification whilst playing and will hopefully will cause a better performance. For this session we overdubbed an descending scale intro we felt necessary for the transition from the intro/bridge to verse.

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Overdubbing ‘Right For You‘ with percussion After the break of in the session we recorded percussion like an rice egg using the C1000s condenser mics. These mics were placed closer to the source so the sound recorded would be rich. If recorded further away like the guitar spaced pair it would produce more of a hollow sound given that the rice egg the volume is significantly less than guitar. The tambourine was recorded similarly though using a drum stick hitting it to produce more of a clean sound than a tambourine shaking.

[jlee182]

During this weeks session we planned an overdubbing session for this week and next week and overdubbed "Sweet Annie(cover)" and "Let Me Out".

Plan "Let Me Out" by High Strung  Vocals in full room -- to add reverb / stronger vocals  Percussion (kick drum) -- to add emphasis on  Bass Guitar -- again to add emphasis to the track

"Right For You" by Rob Fuller  retake of vocals, as sounds dry __mic SE2200  bass melodic take __D112 on base  percusion Tambourine  Order of recordings being 1st Bass, 2nd Vocals, 3rd Tambourine

Sweet Annie (cover)  Gain was low on the original take which can lead to the noise floor being higher so if amplified may interfere with song.  However we found that the track was recorded with 24 bit so gave more room for amplitude editing. Applying a compressor to the L R Guitar spaced pair. This increased the volume without significantly raising the noise floor.

Week1 Image 1 & 2 To record the kick we used 2 microphones, 1 D112 dynamic mic, and the other a speaker cone converted into a microphone. The speaker cone mic has more of a base and softer sound. Image 3 The D112 was used to record the output of the bass guitar for ‘Let Me Out’ trac. Dynamic mics are suited to recording audio where the source (in this case the amp/ drums) is directly facing the microphone. Image 4 A condenser with cardioid pattern is used. First off this time the mic was placed in the room and not the vocal booths given that we wanted to capture the room sound for the haunting track ‘Let Me Out‘. The cardioid pattern means that the mic will capture sound in a heart like shape around the microphone rather than spherical with an omni-direction pattern.

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The importance of the tracking sheet

After the setup, both mics and cables in the recording room, and input ties, phantom in the control. We had ran into error of a faulty mic / lead cable.

The tracking sheet was also ordered in a not ascending way so it quite hard to trace which signal was causing the noise. After checking the connection points was intact, the problem was still not resolved. Later we discovered that one of the microphone cables for piano L was faulty so was replaced. This error took up about 30 mins of time which could have been spent recording. To prevent such error in the future the tracking sheet should be numbered ascendingly and should be relative from visual placement of mics.

[jlee182]

Dan was in a booth room so isolated to record vocals. The advantage of this is that the vocal audio signal is clear with no other spill from other instruments. This type of recording also allows for vocals to be overdubbed or re-recorded given any mistakes or dislikes needing to be corrected. The reason that there are 4 mics in the room was inorder to experiment to find which mic had the appropriate frequency response for Dan’s lyrics and the texture of the song as a whole. Each of these mics were condenser so required phantom power which was switched on from the mixing room.

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In image 1 the piano was turned around so that his wooden frame would reflect the sound reducing the sound of the room near the condenser microphones to record electric guitar. This was to insure a clear audio signal for the guitar setup. In image2 2 condenser mics, Shure Beta 57 placed over the piano L R will capture the sound spill of the room but not direct output of electric guitar amp but reflection of the sound which is what we want in this case. The Opus contact mic although placed at the treble of the piano captures base sounds of the frame vibrating.

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Health & Safety

Cable Control in order to prevent a trip hazard

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Visit Original Link

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Recording photos

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Studio Engineering, “Come out to play“

This week we setup a recording up a recording session for 1 of our(me, Dan, Rob) song "Come out to Play". The recording technique which I helped setup was top and bottom xy setup for the piano, The top is actually in a photograph.

The microphone type used in the piano setup were condenser with pattern cardioid. This capture pattern was to capture more of the air vibrating about half a meter above the piano strings, they also received reflections from the wood above

Below was 2 dynamic mics in xy, this was to capture more of the base sound of music. The below piano mics were recorded form the mixer with inverted polarization. This was to insure that the additive synthesis of top and bottom waves would not have a negative effect, in which +dB is added with -dB reducing the amplitude, but increasing the amplitude. The microphone setup was also one which needed the polarization inverted given that. The microphone setup was double cardioid, with top and bottom.

The guitar recording setup entailed 2 mics. These were spaced apart, one recording below the brigde of the guitar and the other recording the neck to capture most dynamic range, and also when the strings hit the fretboard.

The target max db level for recording was around 6db, this was to ensure enough volume and also limits the probability of clipping (after tracks being recorded the volume can obviously be balanced in a DAW). Each of the performers had headphone monitors, which was helpful in hearing other band memeber, our singer Dan was in a vocal booth, and hearing the live settings for the track.

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Dytopia, Drums echo controlled by ramping the gain slider

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Looking at this storyboard. The game is something like doodle jump or flappy birds but horizontally. Given that I set my tempo higher at 130bpm as quite intense. 

I was also looking for an woody and whistley kind of sound. What I found was the Xylophone in percussion which suited this giving an snappy sound (you can here this in my recording with scales going up and down).