Author: Declan Bryan

When mixing anything you need to think about what you are using to listen to the track. This is because some headphones like DrDre Beats, boots bass frequencies and high end so this needs to be taken into consideration when mixing. I used standard headphones and my logitec computer speakers as there are what I like to call normal listening devices i.e. nothing special, just normal.

The first thing I did when opening the track in protools was sort out the levels and dynamics of the drums. When listening to the drums the main things that stood out were the cymbals were too quiet and so was the kick drum so I raised the level on each of the overheads, which resolved the issue of the cymbals but I had to heavily compress the bass to make it sound more punchy whilst also upping the bass frequencies to make it stand out more. I felt this still wasn’t enough so I duplicated the kick track to make it stand out more and then I stuck a small amount of reverb on it to make it sound a bit more real apposed to the sound of dropping a sack of potatoes on the floor.

I then listened to the other instrumentation again, not changing much, apart the acoustic guitars where I boosted the bass frequencies slightly to try and give it more of a warmer feel opposed to them sounding rather tinny and higher ended. I also changed the sound of the solo guitar by adding about 15% reverb onto it to give the sound a bit more depth. I also used a bit of compression so that the sounds that were played quiet could then stand out more and to reduce the track from clipping.

When it came to the bass guitar, I used quite a bit of compression to give it more of a punchier sound and to raise the level of the quieter sections that were too quiet.

Once all the levels of the instruments were done I then spent a bit of time on the vocals as when I played the entire track, the vocals stood out too much almost as if it shouldn’t be there and it was directly in the middle of the stereo mix. I started by duplicating the track and panning both either way slightly to give it more of a stereo feel to the vocal. I also used a bit of reverb to make it sit better within the rest of the track. I then added quite a bit of compression as the dynamics of the vocal changed quite dramatically at times.

I then added a bit of compression the whole track and bounced the track down to MP3

I felt that I struggled a little with the technical aspects of this project i.e. why I should add a certain insert. I feel as if my knowledge so far is pretty standard. Next time I do any recording; I will look into the parameters of each insert more and try to apply them practically and professionally. For my mix my ears were the main tool I used i.e. thinking, that sounds too bassy or that has too much high end with I feel has helped me a lot within this project. I feel that we all worked well as a team throughout and everyone was eager to get involved and the quality of the musicians helped a lot as it would have been a lot harder to put things in time etc. Over all I think I did well and I am happy with the overall result.

Once we were happy with all the instrument recordings, we then went through and cleaned up the track i.e. getting rid of the guide tracks and any unwanted audio or silence to ensure an easier edit.

Once we had done this, we decided to pan the instruments and the different elements of the drums from the drummers perspective to give it more of a realistic stereo sound ensuring that the kick and snare were central in the mix.

We also ensured all the tracks were grouped and labelled correctly to make all the sounds recognisable and easy to change the general levels ie if the drums need to go up in volume, once grouped, all faders representing each of the elements of the drum kit would increase.

We also created a stereo master fader to make us able to adjust the entire track when it came to editing it.

The extras and the overdubs are the extra bits of audio that can potentially increase the dynamics of the song. This included things like guitar solos or extra instrumentation or backing vocals.

Electric guitar solos and noodles

To record the solo electric guitar parts, the guitarist played through a VOX amp which we used an SM57 microphone was directed slightly off centre of the speaker cone. this is to eliminate some of the bassier frequencies and capture more of the high end.

Like the acoustic guitar, we set up a room microphone and the sound barriers to pick up the reverberation of the room and to eliminate any unwanted room sounds.

While doing a recorded dry run, we noticed that the sound of thee electric guitar was too sharp and to piercing so we reduced the treble and increased the bass and mid settings. With this the guitar still sounded rather acoustic like so we tried changing the pre-set effects to give it a little more distortion and gain.

Once we selected a good enough effect and we got the headphone mix right and we started recording.

Piano and strings

To add more dynamics to our track we added piano. This was a simple set up as we just recorded it line in to the input in the wall which is fed directly into the desk. We adjusted the gain level and set up the headphones so Sean could hear the entire track.  We did a couple of practice runs and then went straight into recording. When we listened back to the entire track we unanimously decided that we needed strings on the musical break to calm the song down further so we changed the setting to strings on the electric piano and recorded the strings the same way.

Harp

Part way through the recording process Abigail brought up the fact that she played the harp and we all thought this would be a fantastic addition to the track. Recording a harp was new to all of us including Luke so trial and error and being experimental was our most useful tool at this point.

Abigail told us her harp had a jack input to plug into amp or in our case the desk. We did this and listened back and thought it wasn’t quite enough so we set up an AKG 414 directed at the strings at around the mid to high end of the harp which was where Abi was plucking. we thought this would fill out the sound and give it more of a realistic feel to the harp sound.

After making sure she could hear everything through the headphones, we set the gain and started to record. the only issue we faced was we had to maximise the gain to hear it due to the soft nature of the instrument. once the levels were boosted it sounded beautiful, soft and calming which was a great dynamic during the beaks in the song.

Whenever you record vocals, there are many different things you need to take into consideration to ensure a good recording.  Because believe it or not you capture a lot more than just the vocal.

here are some factors that could affect a vocal performance;

• confidence
• being in a comfortable environment
• having a good headphone mix
• Making sure the pitching is perfect
• The emotion of the song or singer
• The Clarity of the vocal
• Intelligible or understandable pronunciations

A lot of these will be perfected through lots of practice and its harder to capture emotion in a song when it isn’t your own without understanding what emotions need to portrayed.

When physically recording a vocal track you need to firstly choose the microphone that best suits the singer. To do this we picked 3 different microphones to choose from which were the SM57, Electrovoice RE-20 and the AKG 414. Although some people may think that a microphone is a microphone, they are very wrong. The frequency response specifications is what you need to look at dependant on the vocalistist voice ie if the vocalist has a lower voice, you would use a microphone that had a better low end and mid range frequency response opposed to the high end.

As well as looking at the frequency response you need to check which respond or reduce sibilance which is the S’s, T’s and C’s that tend to peak in vocal tracks. We did this practically and we decided that the RE-20 sounded more warm and accurate with limited sibilance. To reduce the sibilance further we used a pop shield.

Once we had decided the microphone, and the headphones were set up to the vocalists requirements, we adjusted the gain structure to effectively pick up the vocal as the vocalist had a soft quiet voice.

Once we ran through the song a couple of times we then started to record. We thought that the take was sufficient however when the vocalist listened back she picked out a couple of parts that she wanted to re do. so again to do this we used a pre role so she could join in with the track and record over the part that was wrong.

 

For this track, we decided to record two acoustic guitars playing different variances of the chords to give it more of a dynamic feel.

To do this we placed one guitarist in the live room and the other in the dead room. This was to separate the 2 different sounds of the guitars as we decided as a group that we were going to try and record them both at once to save time.

Set up on the guitarist in the live room:

We chose two microphones to record the live room guitarist which was the Sure SM57 and the SEZ200aII.

When recording an acoustic guitar, the closer you place the microphone to the sound hole will give it more of a bassier sound equally if you direct the microphone higher up the fret board you get a higher treble sound. So we directed the SM57 to the 12th fret of the guitar to pick up a nice mid range.

We also set up the SEZ200aII at the other side of the room to capture the reverberation of the room opposed to the direct sound of the guitar. The reason we used the SEZ200aII was because it had a changeable polar pattern which we set to Omni directional and a low shelf setting which we left on for recording this guitar.

Because we were using a room microphone, we placed sound screens either side of the guitarist to dampen any room noise that may be present.

Set up on the guitarist in the dead room

The set up on the second guitarist was very simple as we only DI’d this guitar. We did have an issue when doing this which was the battery had run out on the guitar which would allow to capture the sound so we had to go down to media loans to get one which was something that should have been checked prior to the recording process. When testing the quality of guitar in the dead room we could not here any sound. we found this odd as we had just changed the battery so we started checking we had done everything correctly within Protools and within the gain structure process. We then identified the problem as being the simplest one to rectify. We didn’t turn the DI box on… this was a learning curve which we will learn from next time we DI something.

So both guitarists could hear what each other was doing and to hear the track, we patched the headphones through to each room. We did have an initial issue with the track not being heard in the dead room but this was rectified by adjusting the amount of sound was going to the headphones. He also couldn’t hear much of the other guitar so we patched through more of channel 6 to ensure the guitarist heard all instead of just some of the track.

Once all the issues had been resolved we started to record however whilst playing the guitars sounded out of tune however we realise this was due to Rob playing the song in the original key opposed to the changed key 1 full tone up or 2 frets higher than the original.

A few mistakes occurred including one guitarist dropping out to early before the bridge so we had to use the pre role so the guitarist could listen back and join in before the mistake to again keep the dynamics of the song and to get it in time with the rest of the song.

One issue that I noticed while mixing the guitars together, was that the strumming patterns were slightly different which made it appear out of time in certain parts but I will mention about this in further detail within the mixing process.