Planning Stage

At the start of this project i was given multiple artists songs which were in the demo stage of the songs process and i had chosen the artist Lianne Kaye with her song called ‘Glow’, the song was in the rock genre like all of her other songs she has realesed in the past. I will be changing the intrumentation by adding and romoving some of the instrement tracks in the demo, this song will be including Drums, Bass, Electric Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and then keep the original vocals & Acustic guitar from the demo she created.

I wanted to make the Drums and the Eletric Guitar tone like what R.E.M. Made in ‘Losing My Religion’. The Sound of the drums in this song is less focused on the cymbals and more on the kick and snare and I think they might have used a large room to record it with a room mic far away from the drums and/or some added reverb to the snare but once i started recording the drums and guitar i found my own sound which at the time or recording i belived to fit the song more so i chose that over trying to reinact an already made drum and guitar sound.

I would be keeping the vocals which were in the demo Lianne Kaye had created but I’d have to heavily mix these vocals with EQ, Compression & Suttle Reverb.

Below are the overdubs which i had planned to do in this project

Overdub 1: "Drums "

I will be using recorder man technique in this recording and not micing the hi-hat. I will use some of an Audix Kit microphones for the toms, se 4400 for overheads, Sm57 for the snare and then using a beta 91a for the kick in and then an EV re-20 for the kick out.

Overdub 2: "Bass Guitar"

I'd use an EV re-20 and put it in the centre of the speaker cone to achieve a clean tone. I will also record a DI during each recording Aswell to experiment with guitar rig for some experimental tones.

Overdub 3: "Electric Guitar”

I will use C414’s, one on the middle of the speaker cone and one offset from the cone and then blend the 2 sounds together from panning.

Overdub 4: "Acoustic Guitar”

I will use 2 C414’s to create a XY stereo image with one facing the bridge and one on the pickup of the acoustic and pan the 2 to opposite sides. I will have Nashville tuning used on this recording. And also record the normal tuning encase the Nashville tuning doesn't sound good in the mix.

Recording Process

Session 1 - Drums:

For the Kick In we used the Shure beta 91A and the kick out was a D112 which we used so we can get a good frequency range which we want during the mixing stage to experiment with different sounds. Snare top used was SM57 matched with a SM57 on the bottom as well to get a clear peak of the hit then blend the bottom snare to soften it more. Tom mics which were used are D2’s so that they all give an equal range of frequencies.

Drums

The 2 overhead mics were akg perceptions in a spaced pair technique because the drummer had brought some extra cymbals and wanted to make sure we capture the sound of them as much as everything else. The Room mics that had been used were 2 C414’s 4 meters away from the drum kit so we can capture a natural reverb to increase or decrease it in the mix on cardioid pattern so that it was able to more of each side separating the reverbs slightly to give it more of a stereo image.

We had recorded 11 takes of the drums and most of them were pristine with barely any mistakes been made, the 7th and 9th take are the best ones that had been recorded which has no mistakes from hitting something wrong or not hitting at all, there is some times were the drummer drags or is a little too quick but apart from that the drums were recorded perfectly.

Session 2 - Bass Guitar:

On the 28th of January we went into the audient studio to record bass guitar. The Bass used was the Fender jazzmaster Bass Guitar. We used the Ampeg BA-112 For the Bass Amp microphone,

Bass Guitar

I chose to use a D112 because the frequency range of this mic has a lower frequency boost peaking at 100Hz. We used a mix of DI’ing and Using an amp so that we could get both if the tones needed, I was looking for to capture both these tones so that I could blend them together and use guitar rig on the DI track.

Session 3 - Electric Guitar:

On the 25th February I booked SSL2 to record the lead electric guitar for this this track. The mics we used in this was 2 SM57s and 1 AKG 414, 1 of the 57s was on the middle of the amp cone while one 57 was off centre away from the middle of the cone to capture a different tone to blend together in the mixing stage, I used the 414 to record the other speaker in the amp off centre so I can pan it to create a wider stereo image. We recorded a DI in case we would need to re amp in the future. I think that after the session I had gotten what I was looking to create.

Mixing & Mastering

Mixing Stage

The first thing I done in the mixing step of this project was to splice up each of the tracks so i knew when a channel was playing something and not playing static from the microphone or bleed from another instrument. The next thing to do was comp all the instruments so that it was all in time and didn’t go out of time because it will disrupt the listener.

On the kick in I have put an EQ to get a boost of the 120hz range just to enthesis on the kick drum hit, there is a high cut shelf to get rid of a little bleed from other instruments on the drums. There is a Compressor on it as well because the drummer was playing in a high and low velocity quite a lot so the compressor is there to eliminate that and keep it all smooth, and there is a compressor on the kick out to do the same as the kick in. There is a kick folder which I have put a EQ on to cut the unwanted low and higher frequencies and boost the kick at 150hz.

The snare doesn’t have any inserts on the channels itself but on the snare bus there is reverb so I can extend the tail of the snare hit and also a multiband compressor but only has one band on it so I can expand all frequencies above -20dB.

For the Toms there is also no inserts on each of the channels apart from the tom bus, this insert was another multiband compressor which was a bell placed at 640hz and +15dB to Expand the frequencies around that range

Overheads in this songs where pretty good but I made them deep in the mix to focus on specific instruments and not the whole picture. Each of the overheads have the same Compressor settings made to them to keep each one balanced , the drummer played a lot of the cymbals which I didn’t want much of so I put the threshold all the way to -30dB and set the ratio to 1:30 because it was being harsh in the overall drums. There is also a multiband compressor so that I could compress the low end, Expand the 200-700hz range because I think it is good to capture some more low end from the tom bleed , Expand the 2khz area by +5dB and gain the snap of the snare and toms. There is another band to compress anything 5khz and above which would include the hi-hat and cymbals. I did not put any inserts on the room mics as I used that as a slight reverb for the whole kit and loved the sound of the blend it had made.

On the bass guitar I decided not to blend in the DI with the amp so I muted the DI and kept the amp. I include an EQ as the first insert to this channel and place a slight increase on the 170hz range just to get more of the lower end to the bass in the track, with a High cut on the amp as well to cut out the unwanted sounds of the Bass guitar. After the EQ, there is a compressor placed with the sole purpose to keep the bass guitar sound smooth and not bouncy which i believe came out well in the mix.

Electric Guitar

I decided not to use the DI on the Electric guitar as well as the bass guitar because I think that the grit of the amp sounds good for this track and I believe that it sounded amazing from when I had recorded the amp so I hadn’t put any effects on it. The Electric Guitar bus has an EQ to start with then a multiband compressor. The EQ has a low cut on it to get rid of the frequencies that humans cant hear so that it doesn’t ruin the overall mix, there is a little low boost to get the low notes to be heard better, a cut at 500hz -3dB do it doesn’t interfere with the bass guitar and also 2khz so its easier to hear the snare hit snaps clearer than without the cut then I boosted the high end to get the emphasis on the grit of the amp. There is a Multiband compressor to expand the low end and even out the 500hz range too then there is 2 which compress in the high end, one of them at 3khz but ranges from 1.5khz- 10khz and then a shelf at 16khz to compress all the noise white im not wanting as much from the amp.

Acoustic Guitar

On the Acoustic Guitar there isn’t any inserts on the individual mics but on the acoustic guitar bus there is a saturator which has a boost of +7dB to get some grain on the low to mid frequencies, then there is another boost but made at +12dB to do the same effect but more prominent. An EQ if right after the saturator to simply just boost the 150hz range to get the sound of the lower area of the acoustic guitar sound with a high cut just to remove the harsh frequencies there.

Vocals

On all 3 vocal tracks there is the same EQ copied across all three tracks so I can take away the harshness of the voice and cut the unwanted low frequencies in the tracks as well with a high shelf boost feuturing to add more high end to the mix. The vocalist sings very loud then quiet alot so what i did to all the channels was but a heavy compressor on them to keep the level similar in volume throughout the song. On one of the backing vocal tracks i put a tape echo on it to add more depth to the vocals on there own.

Mastering

I decided to master the track in a different DAW because of one of the effects on it. I used a utility effect on the master so I could give the track more width and surround the listener.

I added Ozone 11 so i could use a profesionals preset then edit it from that point onwards and mainly changed the output volume from it so i have more headroom to work with in other inserts.

EQ is there to boost the lower frequencies of the bass and kick drum, A high bell was placed to remove the harsh frequencies from the cymbals getting in the way of the song then also a high shelf to take away more harsh frequencies.

A compressor was put after the EQ and was mainly there to make the song just flow better and not have to many peaks and troughs.

At the very end is a LUFs meter so it is good for going onto streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music.