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.