In the first session for this recording we first wanted to record a track of vocals and rhythm guitar, which meant we had the core of the song complete to then add other instrumentation to it, and given that the rhythm guitar of the song was a constant strumming, this would act like a metronome to play to, meaning nothing needed to be recorded to a click, even though we were overdubbing.
We decided to record the vocals and guitar together to capture a single take performance, with imperfections adding to its character and feel. We used the NT2000 as a vocal mic, and then SE1A's as a coincident pair on the guitar, with a ribbon behind to capture all the sounds, and tie the guitar and vocals together. Here's a channel list for this first recording:
We tried a few takes of this, and moved microphones between takes to get a better sound. We also had to phase invert one of the coincident pairs so the two waveforms didn't cancel out each others peaks and troughs, so we had a full guitar sound, before we could then pan each one creating a stereo guitar sound, which we wanted to make this sound big like the original recording does. We felt this went well, and got a good solid take of the track with no major mistakes or any recording problems, so then decided as our session was almost half way through, to move onto drums before we finished.
To save time, we used the same microphones for the drums, and didn't close mic anything like the Kick or snare with dynamic microphones, and this was for many reasons, as although it saved us time, it was also the ethos of the original recording, to get a large room sound with nice condenser microphones, and as the wasn't much snare in the track, and the drums were a rigid and constant 4/4 groove with lots of toms and cymbals being hit frantically, we thought these microphones would capture everything we wanted to hear. So with changes of mic position to the drum kit, and some routing changes we were ready to get a take of drums to the guitar. We did so in one take, having set levels on the microphones according to the section of the kit they were closest to and used the take we had from it. We had once again used the ribbon as a room mic, further back from the kit, with the SE1A's as left and right overheads, and the NT2000, in front of the toms and kick as these are used most in the drums for this song. They play mostly at the same time, or on off beats so we didn't muffle them and allowed the kick to be boomy also by removing some padding. Here's another channel list showing these simple changes.
This was all we had time for in the first 3 hour session, but we were happy we had the key core of the recording done, to build upon in the next three hour session.
Session 2:
In this session we aimed to finish our recording, by adding the harmony vocals, lead guitar parts, bass guitar, piano and then programme some midi instruments we didn't have to play but needed to have to emulate the original. Firstly we recorded the harmony vocals, which was very simple and just required setting up the NT2000 we used to record vocals in the first session, in the live room in front of the window so we could communicate, and to setup a headphone mix so the performer could hear the multitrack to add the vocals to. We sent this through input 9 in the live room, to channel 9 on the desk and it was a standard level setting procedure. To save time, while this was going on, mic's were being set up in the piano room to move straight to recording the piano after this was done. When we finished recording vocals, we moved the NT2000 we were using into the piano room to use as one of these piano microphones.This was recorded with three microphones listed in the channel list below.
After recording all of this we no longer needed to record using microphones, as the lead guitar and bass guitar could be DI'ed through the desk, meaning we didn't have the hassle of mic'ing up amplifiers and sending headphone mixes. We used a jack to jack to plug the instrument into the DI box, an XLR to XLR going from the box to the insert of a desk channel and sent phantom power to the DI as the MTR DI-3 we used is active, meaning it needs power to work like any condenser mic would. We then set up an amplifier pre-set in logic for the lead guitar signal, so it sounded nice in the mix as the performer was playing in the control room, hearing the guitar on top of the multitrack, so it had to sound audible and in the style of the multitrack for performer comfort and also just to sound right as we were recording it in, although we could spend as long as we wanted tweaking the amp sound in mixing later on. We did the exact same procedure for the bass guitar, which meant we had done all the recording necessary, and all that was left was to add some MIDI flutes in the tracks chorus to again emulate the original track. This was one major drawback of this project, that we couldn't get a flute player to record for this, and although it's not crucially important to the track, the MIDI flutes unfortunately don't sound close to the original regardless of how we processed or edited them, which is a shame but doesn't subtract from the quality of the other material we recorded.
Session Costs:
2 x 3 hour sessions = £180
KM184 pair = £25
Ribbon R1 = £20
Fender Telecaster = £15
Fender Precision = £15 Both Recording Sessions Total: £255
Mix & Master Costs:
4 hours mixing = £80
Mastering Session = £50 Mixing & Mastering Total: £130
Net Total: £385
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