T4.

5 Recording Clients
Drum Replacement: If after recording a drum kit you find that you do not like the
sound of one or all of the drums, drum replacement becomes an invaluable tool
that is essential for any professional sound engineer. Take the audio track and
convert it into MIDI by double clicking the audio file and going factory > audio to
score, the threshold can then be adjusted to remove any unwanted signal. Once
this is complete highlight all the notes on the MIDI file then hit functions >
transform. Select a note (e.g. C1), then functions > transform > fix velocity > set
instrument as sampler (e.g.EXS24). From the sampler you can select a new
sound from a large library of samples and whichever one you choose will play
whenever that MIDI note sounds.
Melodyne: Melodyne is a piece of downloadable software that appears in Logic as
a plugin. Melodyne allows for audio tracks to be tuned. For example, if you had a
vocal track that was good throughout but was flat on a couple of notes Melodyne
can listen to the track and then display it as a series of notes. These notes can
then be adjusted to become a completely different note or can have the
modulation of each note subtly adjusted.

The 3 songs that my group had to record were: Jammin by Bob Marley, Beat It by
Michael Jackson and Exs and Ohs by Elle King.

Recording of Jammin took place in Studio 1. Jammin consisted of a total of 15

tracks:
-

Vocals
Backing Vocals
Two Guitars
Bass Guitar
2 Keyboards
Cajon
Kick Drum

Snare Top
Snare Bottom
Rack Tom
Floor Tom
Left Overhead
Right Overhead

Before starting any recording we set the faders to appropriate levels to allow
ourselves a lot of headroom in the mixing process.
The Bass, the Drum Kit and the Guitar were recorded first, this was done so that
they could play in time with each other and also so that the Drums would not
bleed onto anything. The Bass Guitar was recorded through a DI box in the live
room. The Guitar amp was in the vocal booth being recorded via an SM57 while
the Guitarist played in the live room. To record the drums we used two Audix f9s
as overheads in a spaced pair setup, an Audix f6 as a Kick mic, an SM58 on the
Top Snare, an SM57 for the Bottom Snare and two Audix f2s for the Toms.
We were happy after a couple of takes on these instruments but the Bassist
wanted to rerecord so we thought it would be the perfect time to record the
Cajon as the Bassist could play along with it. The Cajon was recorded with an
SM57. When we mixed the Cajon we EQd some low end out so as to not let it
clash with the Kick Drum and therefore reduce muddiness in the mix, then we
attenuated the frequencies around where the percussive hand slaps were. When
mixing the Bass we added the sub bass Logic plugin and selected the bass
booster pre-set to give it more punch. Compression was added to most of the
instruments on this song to create a more equal sounding mix, a more
professional recording is created when nothing on the song is jumping out above
the rest of the tracks.

We then moved on to recording vocals. We set up the vocal booth by unplugging

the SM57 which was recording the Guitar amp and then plugging in a Neumann
TLM 103. Once the main vocals were recorded we found that they sounded
slightly dead so we added some reverb and tape delay to them. This helped give
the track some life. We had two backing vocalists who sang into one Neumann
TLM 103 at the same time. This was primarily due to a shortage of time but it
came out well. I would have preferred to have them record individually as this
would have allowed for more precise mixing and better panning.
We had just one Guitar and 2 Keyboards left to record. We reset up the vocal
booth to record another Guitarist, however when we listened to the recording
after the session we found that this Guitar sounded out of tune and scratchy, we
attempted to melodyne it but couldnt quite perfect it so decided to cut it from
the final mix. The MIDI Keyboard was quick and easy to record and had no
noticeable mistakes.

Recording of Exs and Ohs took place in Studio A and had a total of 13 tracks:
-

Lead Vocals
Lead Guitar
Rhythm Guitar
Bass Guitar
Kick Drum
Sub Kick
Top Snare
Bottom Snare
Rack Tom
Floor Tom
Overhead Left
Overhead Right
Keyboard

This whole song was very easy and quick to record. We started with the Bass and
the Drum Kit playing together. The Drum Kit was recorded in the Drum booth
while the Bass player was DId through the LA610 HI-Z input in the studio. We
utilised the Gain on the LA610 to give the Bass a nice distorted tone that was
true to the original. These were played almost perfectly so were out of the way
quickly so we could move on to the Lead and Rhythm Guitars. In the original the
Rhythm is an Acoustic Guitar but we didnt have one on hand so decided to
create a clean, warm tone on the Electric. I DId the Guitar into the LA610 and
told the Guitarist to play while I changed the settings. I brought down the Gain to
remove some distortion and boosted the Treble and the Bass to achieve the
correct tone.
The Lead Guitar was slightly trickier, the tone had to be more distorted but much
less so than the Bass so we added a Small British Clean amp plugin on Logic and
adjusted various settings on it, namely increasing the gain and the mids to help
it cut through above the Rhythm Guitar. This recording took a couple of takes, in
the first play through a few of the palm muted chords werent held down quite as
hard as was needed and didnt sound brilliant when we listened back. However,

the short Guitar solo was much better on this take than in the second so we
decided to keep both and alternate between the two.

Vocals were completed in one take. We set up a microphone in the drum booth
and went straight into recording. After listening back we were happy with that
take and didnt need to melodyne it. Finally we recorded the Keys. This was also
completed in one take, we used the Dreamy Bells Logic setting and were happy
with how it sounded without any modification. I gated all of the drum
microphones on both mixes except for the overheads. Overheads are perfect for
capturing the feel of a recording space and gating them would remove this
element from the mixes. However, I did attenuate the overheads around the
570Hz mark to reduce the noise from the snares as they were slightly intrusive
on the overhead tracks.