Another recording session been and gone...

So after a big mess up with who's being recorded and what equipment to use etc, our recording session went very well.

Me and Alie got to Xtreme Studios early in the morning like we usually do anyway and decided we'd get a head start on setting up the live room for the recording. After getting all the equipment from the technicians which consisted of 2 C1000s condenser microphones, 2 XLR leads and 2 microphone clips. 

First off we had to try and move the piano forward so we were able to place the microphones behind it, but after my shoulder decided to die on me whilst doing this I wasn't able to move the piano properly so Alie done it instead. After this we got straight on with setting up and plugging the XLR leads into the patch bay in the live room. We had the left microphone for channel 1 and the right microphone plugged into channel 3 as channel 2 doesn't work. 

Setting up the live room didn't take long at all and we got straight on with powering up the desk, as we done so and loaded pro tools we had a problem with picking up any signal from the microphones on the desk. Anyway after restarting the whole studio Adam turned up and got straight on helping Alie out getting the studio set up ready for me to perform. 

Whilst they were working out the solution I decided to go and get a start on warming up for my recording session. I played 'Charlie Brown' by Coldplay through a few times before I was fully ready to get started and record as soon as possible to make sure there's plenty of time for any retakes. 

It didn't take Alie and Adam long to work out what the problem was and straight away got everything prepared and made sure I was ready to record. After the first recording of 'Charlie Brown', Alie realized that the left microphone didn't pick anything up as something was wrong with the input, this didn't take long to resolve and straight away went ahead to record 'Charlie Brown' for the final time. After hearing it played back to me in the studio I was satisfied with the outcome and decided it would be the final recording for the acoustic EP. 

Next up was 'To Sheila' by The Smashing Pumpkins. I went into the live room to practice the song through a few times as I wasn't as confident with this song, this showed when it came to the recording of the song as I had to do lots of retakes as I kept on cutting bits short because I was coming up on the pedal too much, then I was playing parts too quietly and too slowly and some completely out of time. Alie, kindly came into the live room to give me some advice when recording which I found helpful and I thought was rather nice of her too. So after a few more times I finally got it right and was satisfied with the outcome. I orginally decided I would record different layers of piano to get a different texture but after not knowing what to add and how complex it would've been to do this Alie told me to think about it and see if I would like to do this another time. 

Overall, I thought that we all worked well together and that Alie and Adam were helpful during the recording process with lending me advice and understanding the feelings of the performer and not just telling me what to do and instead left it down to me to let them know when I was ready to start. 

Thanks for reading, 

Chazzy.  

Slight change of plans...

So after deciding last week that we would be recording Adams band this decision has now been changed to something different at the last minute.

This obviously is a bit of a pain but luckily me and Alie sorted a back up plan if the initial plan to record Adams band was floored. And good thing we did this because yes, we are now no longer recording Adams band but now instead are re-recording my songs for the acoustic EP. Overall I am happy that I have been given the chance to re-record my songs so I can get it all done and out of the way but it's just that it's been all at last minute notice, instead of being able to make sure that all the floorplan and equipment list is done a week in advance of the recording session we've had to do all this and prepare myself all a day before the session.

I have decided to re-record my songs because I made a few mistakes in the previous recording and was not satified with one of my song choices. Instead of recording With or Without You by U2 I am going to be replacing this song with To Sheila by The Smashing Pumpkins and then I will re-do Charlie Brown by Coldplay as I made a few mistakes when I was last recorded.

For this recording me and Alie have decided that we would use two C1000s condenser microphones as we found out the last time that we recorded the piano that the C1000s microphones worked best and gave us the soft piano sound we were looking for.

The last time we recorded songs on the piano we used the B5 condenser microphone as well as one C1000s condenser microphone. We used the B5 for the high end and the C1000s for the low end of the piano. Although it gave us a reasonably good sound when it came to mixing the tracks afterwards the B5 picked up far too much of the high end and made the notes sound like a horrible ringing sound. This influenced mine and Alie's decision to use two C1000s microphones each situated at opposing ends of the piano, this will give the piano a more softer and even sound without the extra ringing on the high notes that the B5 condenser microphone gave us.

A floor plan will be added soon as I've not had enough time to create one yet as I've been busy trying to organize other parts of the recording session with Alie.

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

Third recording session and financial stuff...

So after deciding two EP's would be the way forward for our group we have decided that we would be recording Adam's band for our up and coming recording session.
As this was on pretty short notice we are yet to discuss the equipment that we are going to use to record his band with.

As well as deciding all the album cover, track listings, recording sessions etc.. we have also been discussing the financial side of recording and producing an album, to do this we gathered together a list of phone numbers for different recording studios and Adam phoned them up and asked them for an equipment list and the price of how much it would be to record and hire the equipment per hour.

From this we work out what our budget will be and work with this as if we were going to do all of our recording in a studio and how much they'd charge us etc...

So far we have a good start on this and are continuing to work on this as a group.

The track listings have also changed slightly for the acoustic EP as me and Alie are both going to be doing two songs of our own and then doing two songs together to make the track listing six songs long which is about right for an EP. I am going to be re-recording one of my songs and changing my second song completely so a lot of work is still yet to be done but I am looking forward to the finishing products!


Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

Album artwork designing...

So after mainly thinking about everything else such as recording sessions and the track listing for the album we decided to get a start on album artwork.
As its an acoustic album as a group we all want different things yet we all want something simple yet reasonably detailed.

After spending three hours thinking about the different ways we could go about so we were all satisfied as a group of three we came up with the idea of creating a survey for random people in college to see what they think. These questions are asking people what kind of design they'd like to see on an acoustic album and what kind of colours. We think this would be a good idea because after all this is mostly about what attracts people to buy an album instead of being biased about it and just including what we want on it. We all agreed this would be a good idea as it would also be good market research for our product also.

Although deciding this we also all decided to each come up with two designs each to get an idea of what we all like on an album cover and try to come up with a solution to our on going problem of agreeing on something. I came up with two idea's one being a photography based album cover and the other being a more graphical drawing kind of cover. Although I have tried tirelessly to finish them I have had issues trying to fix the album covers together so no one has had a chance to see what I have come up with yet, however I'm still working on this problem and hope to get my ideas into the group as soon as I can.

After all this we then came across another fault within the group, Adam wanted to record his band however our album was based around an acoustic album so this wouldn't fit in with our initial product idea. Alie then came up with an idea to talk to us about which became the idea that solved the issues we had within the group. She came up with the idea that we would create two EP's instead of one album. One EP would be based around acoustic and the other being an EP for Adams band recordings. We all agreed that we liked this idea and are now currently working on it.

So this brings this blog to an end.

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

Second recording session!

As a group of four people the first thing we decided to do was choose who's job was who. Of course Alie was performing today but me, Adam and James decided who would be the engineer, producer and runner. We decided that Adam would be the producer for the day, James would be the runner for the day and I would be the engineer for the day. 

So first thing we did was got James to get us all the equipment and set up the equipment in the room, Alie helped out as well as being the performer! Alie decided she would rather be put out of the way so she couldn't be seen by anyone else but me and Adam. So taking the artists needs into consideration we placed her out of the way with her back to us whilst she was performing. As Adam (guitarist) didn't mind where he was put we placed him more in the centre of the room. The set up didn't take us very long, took us a maximum of 20 minutes to make sure everything was in place. 

Afterwards me, Adam and James went back into the studio and got the studio all set up and running. This mainly consisted of me and Adam doing the studio side of things as seen as he was producer and I was the engineer. After we got the studio up and running we proceeded with the sound check straight away, after getting the levels right and making them comfortable we thought we'd give them 10 minutes to run through the song before recording so they could warm up and get ready for the recording. Alie and Adam (guitarist) decided that they wanted to do a live recording instead of doing it separately so no headphones at this point were needed. Once we started recording we stumbled across a problem which we couldn't work out for ages! The instruments were coming through louder when we was recording than when we played it back. It turns out the monitors weren't turned up enough, silly I know but we managed to solve the problem. Whilst the recording process was going well James decided to give up half way through for some unknown reason so yet again we was left with just a two member team as Alie was being recorded. However, me and Adam got on with it as usual and didn't do a bad job at all, he helped me by giving me advice on what we should do. For example, after recording one song we played it back and Adam asked Alie and Adam what they thought of the recording themselves, he suggested if they would like to re-record and what he thought of the recording. He also helped me out with some of the engineering side of things. We re-recorded both of the songs again as Alie wasn't satisfied with her vocals. 

Overall, I thought the microphones we used were a very good choice as they gave us a very nice clean, clear sounding vocal and a nice crisp clean sounding acoustic guitar. D.I'ing the acoustic guitar as well as micing it up gave us a more fuller sound than just using the microphone. This suited the sound we wanted for our acoustic album and were very satisfied with the final result of this recording session. If I could've done anything differently I would've paid more attention to what was going on with the monitors, however making this mistake will show me in future how to solve it if it was to ever occur again. 

Once again, pictures will be added ASAP having trouble uploading things lately! 

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy! 

Second recording session planning!

So, our second recording session is of Alie singing and Adam from one of the other groups is playing the acoustic guitar.

For our planning, me and two other members from our group decided that we'd be using two C414 condenser microphones to mic up the vocals and the guitar. The other two members of our group were not too interested at putting any input into this so the rest of us got on with it and went ahead and decided.

The C414 condenser microphones are extremely powerful microphones as they provide 9 different polar patterns that you can use. For our recordings we decided that on both of the instruments we'd be using the cardioid pattern as we want to make sure we get the best sound from the instrument and vocals without lots of room ambiance. The C414 condenser microphone has a frequency response of 20Hz - 20KHz, this shows a strong frequency response picking up all frequencies which will be a real advantage for us so we know we will deffinatly be able to pick up a really nice sound from both the singer and the guitarist.
We also decided we was going to be using a D.I box as well as micing the guitar up. This is to boost the sound of the guitar to make it sound fuller than if it was just being miced up.

Floor plan for our second recording session.

We then decided that we'd be recording two songs for the session as we achieved two in the last session. We made up an equipment list and drew up a floor plan of where everything was going to go in the room, this would make it easier for us on the day so we know where everything's going to be set up and what channels the microphones were going to be plugged into.

Because we done a lot of the major planning at the very beginning of this project it's easier when it comes to planning for each recording session as we know who's going to be playing which song and what equipment we want to use. The three of us in the group that work together, work together well and can agree well on things which also makes it easier. We also planned out our whole track list as well which makes this a whole lot easier.


Thanks for reading,

Chazzy.

First recording session!

I'm excited to write this blog to tell you all how well our recording session went today! Well, as you may know from previous blogs that I was performing two songs (Coldplay - Charlie Brown and U2 - With Or Without You) for this recording session. I decided to change one of the songs from Owl City's 'Vanilla Twilight' to U2's 'With Or Without You', this is quite simply because I preferred this song and for me, I found it easier to play therefore, I felt this was more suitable.

Firstly, as a group we went and got all the equipment to set up with and used our floor plan to set up the microphones into the position me and Alie decided on. We made sure that everything was neat and tidy and out of the way and then went into the studio to get everything set up. After the studio was set-up I went into the Live room and had a little practice before doing the actual performance to make sure I was all warmed up and ready to go. Setting up the studio and mics in the live room and the warm up took about 45 minutes to do.

When recording the two songs I was quite nervous but took my time and kept a nice tempo with both the songs. I was impressed that I didn't mess up as much as I thought I would. I messed up a note or two half way through Charlie Brown but that's the extent of the faults.

Once they'd finished, I went back into the studio with my other group members to listen back to the recording and mix it down and add effects. However, whilst listening back through the tracks one of our team members decided he'd 'finished' doing his work and didn't bother helping out any more. Me and my remaining group members stuck together and mixed down and added effects to the recordings as we had plenty of time left to do so. As we had two microphones for the piano it gave us two tracks so I EQ'd one track on the second song With or Without You with Alie and Adams help and get their opinions on how the recording sounded, if it needed anything taken away. Alie then EQ'd one track and added compression on both of the tracks. 

After this I EQ'd both the tracks on Charlie Brown whilst Adam went on to add compression to both of the tracks and also giving me and Alie tips on what we should take away and add when EQ'ing the tracks. 

I found this fun experimenting with the different effects on Pro-tools however, we decided to keep the tracks clean instead of adding a loads of effects as it had some nice natural re-verb and everything sounded nice and clear. 

Screen shot of us mixing down. 

Myself mixing down some tracks. 

Anyway a quick review on the positioning of the microphones and how well they performed for us!

Just to say we were very impressed with the outcome, it was clear with a very small bit of ambiance but was easily got rid of with the EQ. The positioning was near-on perfect however the Behringer B5 microphone did respond maybe a little 'too well' to the high end of the piano and we had to take away a huge amount of high-mid and high frequencies. Other than that the C1000's gave us a nice clean, clear image of the sound paired with the B5. 

Thanks for reading!

Chazzy!

Mic specs and frequency charts...

As a group we decided on two microphones to mic up the piano. The two microphones we chose were one Behringer B5 condenser microphone and one AKG C1000S condenser microphone.

 We decided to use two condenser microphones for the piano because they are far more sensitive compared to a dynamic microphone and therefore will pick up a vast amount of detail. This will benefit us because a piano is quite a delicate sounding instrument and a condenser microphone will pick up all the small details that will ensure we get the full picture of the sound to work with when mixing and mastering. 

We chose the Behringer B5 microphone for the higher end of the piano and the AKG C1000s microphone for the lower end of the piano. We decided this because the Behringer B5 microphone is more responsive in the higher end of its frequency response. However, the AKG C1000s microphone is reasonably responsive in all areas throughout the frequency range. From previous experience we know that the AKG C1000s microphone is good at picking up delicate sounds as we used it to record an acoustic guitar.

The standard 88 keyed piano has a frequency range from 27.5Hz (A0) - 4.2Hz (C8). 

The Behringer B5 microphone has exchangeable cardiod and omnidirectional polar patterns. A polar pattern is a graph showing whereabouts a microphone picks up from. A cardiod polar pattern means that the microphone will pick up from the front of the microphone only. The frequency response for the Behringer B5 is from 50Hz - 20,000Hz. 

The above diagram is showing the frequency response for the cardiod pattern for the Behringer B5 microphone and the frequency response chart.

The omnidirectional polar pattern means it'll pick up from opposing sides of the microphone however, this will be no good because were focusing on one area of the piano with this microphone. 

The AKG C1000s microphone ranges from the same as the Behringer B5 mic (50Hz – 20,000Hz) and is a reasonable frequency response throughout the frequency range. However, as stated above the piano's frequency range seems to be a lot lower than what the microphones are able to pick up, but this will not effect us as only the mid-range and high-mid ranges of the piano will be used. 

The above graph shows us the cardiod frequency response chart for the AKG C1000s microphone and the frequency response for the AKG C1000s microphone a meter from the sound source, this is showing us that the frequency response is reasonable the whole way through the frequency chart. 

I'm missing one picture so far of the cardioid polar pattern for the AKG C1000s but that will be added very soon.

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy!

Planning, practicing and more..

So I haven't posted on this blog in a while so I thought I'd upload one about everything that's been happening recently...

So far we've been playing around with different song ideas for the album, making up recording session sheets and equipment lists. We decided that everyone would choose a few songs each that they'd like to perform whilst the rest of the group do the recording, and when someone else performs the other people in the group record and so on...

I came up with two songs that I'd like to perform which were Coldplay's Charlie Brown and Owl City's Vanilla Twilight. I chose these songs because I felt they were powerful and were songs that I could play well.

Alie asked me to play the piano while she sings. She's chosen four songs; Kate Voegele - Kindly Unspoken, Simple Plan - Save You, Avril Lavigne - Fall to Pieces and Mcfly - She Falls Asleep (Part 2).

So far I've been tidying up a few parts on my songs and been practicing the Kate Voegele song as it's a lot harder than the other songs so getting a head start would be the best idea. I've really enjoyed learning this song because its so much different from anything else I've ever played before, although it's been a challenging trying to learn the bass notes and trying to find a way to place the music on the piano without having to turn any pages. In the end I came up with some random idea and its worked so far. 

Anyway, with regards to the planning we've been writing out a recording session sheet for our first recording which will be Coldplay - Charlie Brown and Owl City - Vanilla Twilight. We wrote out an equipment list which didn't consist of much however we've chosen what we think would be the best microphones and placement to get the best possible sound. Next I drew out a floor plan of where everything is going to go and drawing up all the connections so it makes it easier for everyone on the day instead of running around deciding where everything goes on the day. The floor plan benefits us because it'll save us loads of time leaving us more time to record and get it right. 

Floor plan of the live room at college for our first recording session of just the piano. 

I'm really looking forward to performing the first songs for our album and I can't wait to start recording everyone else! 

This is what my arrangement of all the sheets for the Kate Voegele song looks like on my piano! I finally managed to figure out a suitable way to make it so I can read everything in one go! 

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy!

Introduction...

First off I study music technology at college and we're currently doing our final major project (FMP) where we have to keep an up-to-date portfolio of all the stages that we go through until we get the finished product.

The finished product has to consist of an album with various songs that all together have to add up to thirty minutes worth of recordings. 

So far we've been split up into small groups of up to four of five people and each had to come up with a record company name and logo for our group, we collectively decided on the name 'Gamma Mouse Records'. We've also been planning and discussing possible song choices and who we're going to record for our album. However, one of our group members, James was missing today so we had to work around it by listing song choices made by everyone else and at a later date this shall be further discussed with him. So far this has been fun and I can't wait to get stuck in recording and finish this project! Hopefully the outcome will be a great one! 

On a slightly different note, in college we now have a BRAND NEW STUDIO! Today in our practical session in the studio we went through how to use the new equipment such as the order the studio has to be set up in, different ways of using the desk and how to record a whole drum kit with one microphone! More details on that will be added in the next blog. 

Thanks for reading,

Chazzy!