Recording Diary, May 2011

[geekd]

Hello. My band, The Experiments is recording 2 songs in our home studio. I'm going to document the process here.

Some background: We've been together since 1994. We've recorded in a lot of different situations, with lots of different hardware over the years. In the spare bedroom on a cassette 4-track, to full of top of the line studio with Pro Tools. We're a rock / punk band, fast and loud. Bass, Drums, 2 Guitars, & 3 Vocals. All of our music is available for free download at our website.

After recording our previous album ("What Kind Of Animal") ourselves in Pro Tools M-Powered 7 back in 2009, I decided the M-Audio ProjectMix I/O wasn't cutting it as far as sound quality goes. Since Pro Tools 9 finally allows the use of 3rd party interfaces, I sold the ProjectMix and bought a Mackie Blackbird and a TC Electronics Impact Twin. I had previously bought a used FMR Really Nice Preamp. With these upgrades, I was confident we could get a better sound than we did before.

We decided to record songs start to finish (meaning mixed and mastered) in groups of 2 or 3. We always seem to learn something when we record, and we want to be able to apply those lessons to the next batch. Also, when we recorded What Kind Of Animal, we did all 10 songs at once, and it was a long process. This way, we get the reward of having finished songs sooner, and we can release them in a steady trickle on the web, even if it might take longer to have 10 or so songs for an album.

So, on Saturday May 14th (2 weeks ago) we all met at Dan's (guitar, vocals) apartment. He has a spare bedroom, and our control room is set up there. We are running Pro Tools 9 on a 2007 Mac Mini, with an external firewire hard drive. We set up the drums in his living room, and ran the snake from the bedroom to the living room.

We ran the FMR into the Impact Twin's channel 3 & 4, and ran the Impact Twin to the Mackie via ADAT. That gives us 12 channels at once.

We mic'ed the drums using:

* 2 Octava MK-12-01 condenser mics overhead, using Recorderman's method. These went into the Mackie
* AKG D112 inside the kick, about 1 inch from the beater, This went into the FMR.
* EV Blue Raven on the snare, into the FMR.
* CAD M117 condenser on the floor tom / ride cymbal. into the Mackie
* Samson condenser on the hi-hat, into the Mackie.

We were only keeping the drum recording. We'd overdub the rest later. But, it helps to have scratch tracks, so we plugged the bass in direct, and took direct out from each guitar amp, and set up a vocal mic. So that makes 10 tracks.

We ran the Pro Tools out to our headphone amp. This is a Behringer. It has 2 headphone outs, each with their own volume and 3 band EQ.

The singer and I (bass) stayed in the control room, and the other guitar player went into the living room with the drums. The snake has enough channels back and forth to run headphones where ever we need them.

Brian (drums) warmed up and we got levels. He was shaking the whole apartment. We thought for sure the cops would come tell us to stop. But Dan has cool neighbors, and it was Saturday afternoon.

We recorded the drums for "This Side Of My Brain", which Andy (Guitar, Vocals) sings, and "Ready, Willing & Able" , which Dan sings. I ran the software.

I'm very happy with the drum sound. It's way better than what we've gotten in the past. I'm eager to hear how this whole thing turns out.

More updates as we make progress.

-Dave

 

[geekd]

Part 2: Guitars & bass

Yesterday, we reconvened at Dan's apartment to record guitar and bass. Big thanks to his girlfriend for putting up with us all afternoon, as we made all kinds of racket.

First we did guitars. We had Dan's Fender combo amp in the control room, loud but not crazy loud. We put a Shure SM57 close on one speaker, and a Shure SM7b about 2 feet back pointing at the other speaker.

At first listen (I'll have to listen again to be sure), the SM7b sounded better and thicker, but the close in SM57 had more high end and cut through. We may use one or the other, or a mix of both in the final mix. We'll have to make sure we don't have any phase problems, though.

We put Andy's amp in the kitchen, and mic'ed in the same way. For him, the 57 sounded much better. The SM7b picked up too much "wonk" from the room, I think. It's not really usable. Fortunately, the 57 sounds great.

Both times, both mics went into the FMR.

On "This Side Of My Brain", Andy does a lead. When we play live, it's 4 short leads over breaks with rhythm hits in between. (here's a live version: This Side Of My Brain - the part I'm taking about is towards the end, at about 2:29) In the studio, he did the rhythm hits on a separate track and recorded the lead all by itself.

This posed more problems than we thought it would, since he's not used to playing it that way. However, he got the hang of it, and we got a great take.

Then I recorded the bass direct through the FMR. I'll use an amp simulator in the mix.

So, we got all of Andy's guitar parts done, all of my bass, plus half of Dan's guitar. That took about 4 hours.

Hopefully we can get together next weekend and finish the guitars and start on the vocals. It's tough when everybody has a family and a job and a life. We get together when we can.

 

[zazz]

love the thread but i swear i thought during the verse that you were doing a cover of failures by joy division with that right side of my brain track ...take that as a compliment by the way.

 

[geekd]

Just got back from Dan's place. We recorded his rhythm guitar for both tracks, and started on his lead on "Ready, Willing & Able". He was going to finish that tonight on his own.

His amp was in his bedroom (where he sleeps, not the spare bedroom where we have the control room set up) with an SM57 and a SM7b on it, slightly back from the speaker grill. He went into the Mackie. He stood in the control room and played, with his guitar cord running under the closed door to the bedroom.

If he finishes his guitar tonight, or even this week, then we can do all the lead and backing vocals this weekend and be done with the recording phase.