Callums Multi Track Blog

I started by listening through the track to get an idea of how I wanted everything to sound and where I wanted them to go. I then panned everything so that I would be able to get a clearer idea of what to do.

I started with the drums as I find having a good set of drums to layer on top of is easier. For the kick I used EQ to help mould the sound into more of what I was looking for and I then used a compressor to give the kick more punch within the mix. The snare was done in a similar manor as the kick however it was much more difficult. The source sound for the snare was not great and this made the mixing process tricky. I ended up using EQ and compression to get the overall sound for the snare as well as mixing top and bottom together until I was happy with the mix. I added reverb through an auxiliary send to help give the snare more body within the mix. I didn’t really do that much to the toms, as we didn’t really use them that much within the piece. I gated the toms and added a small amount of EQ as well as adding compression to the low tom. I gated them as they had a lot of bleed that didn’t sound great when sorting the drums out. The overheads were done mainly by EQ and panning. I cut out some bass plus a section of mid from the overheads and boosted treble a small amount to stop them being cloudy within the mix. I ran the whole drum kit through a multiband compressor to help pull everything together and I was very happy with the outcome.

The bass guitar was done through using EQ and compression to help give that punchy bass tone. I also cut and boosted the basses EQ in the low mid are to help it sit better in the mix with the kick. I then blended the D112 and the DI to help give a full tone.

The guitars I decided would be panned far left and right to give a big stereo image. I used light EQ on the guitars and a small amount of reverb to help them sit in the mix rather than on top. I found they sat very well within the piece. The lead guitar I treated quite heavily as I found it didn’t fit very well into the mix. I panned the 57 partially to one side and counteracted this on the other side with the room mic just at a lower volume. I used distortion, chorus and reverb to tidy up the guitar

The piano and string section I decided to use only in the last sections of the song to give the piece more body towards the end. I used a small amount of EQ but I felt they were fine for the level they would be used.

The harp I felt would be better panned so I panned the DI and the 414 in different directions to make the section more ambient.

The vocals I found were recorded very well as they needed very little added to them to help them fit. I added a small amount of EQ, reverb and compression to help them sit better in the mix and sound clearer.

After I had my bounced track I reimported it and added a multiband compressor to help pull the song together as well as using parallel compression to finish the piece off.

This week are main intention was to tidy up the mix so that everyone had a good base to start from for mixing. We decided this as its industry practice for if you were getting your track mixed by someone else.

We started off by setting all of the tracks outputs to 1 and 2 on the desk. We did this because anyone mixing in the box would only have 2 outputs left and right. Once we had done this we had to redo all of the panning for the tracks as resetting the output had removed it. We panned the overheads left and right as well as panning the guitars. We left most things in the middle so that we could interpret the piece, as we wanted. Next we looked at cutting some silence out of tracks such as the vocal track. This was part of removing everything in the project we didn’t need including guide tracks. After we had all of this sorted we then looked into crossfading all the audio we had recorded using the pre-roll feature. Crossfading these together just make’s for a clean transition. Once we were all happy with the tracks we listened through a few times and did a very rough level mix. This was just so that all the instruments started at around the same level. The final step was colour coding the tracks and placing them in a logical order within the project. Tidying up the project like this makes things easier when mixing, as everything is ready to be mixed.

 

This week we looked at adding multiple instruments to the project to give us more diversity in what we could do with the piece. The instruments we decided to add were a harp, an extra guitar and keys.

The harp was very interesting as we had never got to mic up one before. We decided to use a 414 and the harps DI to record with. The 414 was placed about 10cm away from the harp pointing at the register that she would use. This was so that we could pick up the clearest possible sounds from the harp. We chose a 414 as we were using a high registry on the harp and the 414’s high frequency clarity helped. The harps DI added more pluck sound and the mix of the two worked very well.

We decided to add another guitar to add an intro and a solo section to the song. We used the vox in the studio as this would provide the tone we wanted. We decided to have a SM57 just off centre of the cone and a 414 as a room mic. After recording one track we decided to change the tone as it really didn’t fit with the rest of the song. We added more gain and cut some treble to make it fit easier within the mix.

We also tracked keys as we thought they would add an extra layer to the song and this would allow us more diversity within our mixing process. The piano was DI’ed directly into the desk as this was convenient. We also moved the output in protools so we could control the monitor mix easier. While the piano was plugged in we decided to put it on a string setting to add another aspect to the piece.

Over all i think the recording of these sections went very well and will allow us to have a good amount of experimentation with the mixing process.

 

This week we recorded the vocals for the track.  We first spoke about how to go about getting the best recording from being in a comfortable environment to how the singer needed to deliver. We would need to take a few things into account when recording vocals from the pitch of the vocalist, the room and the choice of microphone. We chose to do vocals in the dead room as there would be very little reverberation which would allow for a much clearer recording. We decided to chose between three microphones to see which one suited the vocalist best. 

The microphones we tested were:

Electro Voice – RE20 – With additional desk EQ to cut the low end – we chose this mic

SM57 – Very good for mic’ing up guitars

Akg – 414 – good vocal microphone as well as good for overheads.

We set them up with pop filters to help control the plosives and we were ready to adjust the angles to help with sibilance.

We began recording the vocals with the vocalist wearing headphones. We sent the track to her using fold back B on the desk so that we could set the levels on pro tools. We got one good recording all the way through the song which we were all fairly happy with. We planned to double track  the vocals to keep in with the style of the original artist, but due to time constraints we did not get round to doing this.

This week we recorded acoustic guitars for the piece. We decided to record both guitars at once in slightly different methods to give us good experience in tracking guitars. We decided to record using an amp as well as a room microphone and a DI line from the guitar. We tuned the guitars and both guitarists decided on a strumming pattern that would fit with the songs. One guitarist was in the live room where we used the SM57 and the room microphone. The other guitarist was in the dead room with the guitar directly input into the desk.

We used the fold back feature on the desk to send the track via headphones to both guitarists. No desk EQ was used to help us get a rawer sound to mix.

We had a run through of the song and recorded it with a few problems. We rerecorded some of the sections using the pre role setting in pro tools which meant we could get a very clean take.

Overall we got a very good set of takes which allows us to have a good amount of leeway when we mix the piece.