Recording Session 1- Before and After

Before the first recording session, I ensured that I was prepared to be able to record one guitarist and one vocalist. I thought up different techniques to record the guitarist and which microphones could be used depending on the sound they desired. I also assessed the possibility that the guitar may be electric or electric acoustic, giving opportunity for use of a DI box. I also looked into how positioning in the live room could achieve a range of different acoustics, for example if the singer were to be positioned in close proximity to the window into the control room, there may be more reverb.

Upon meeting the performers, we discovered that they wished to record two tracks, one with the vocalist and a backing track from Youtube and one with the vocalist accompanied by the guitarist. After this, I stayed in the control room in order to, alongside a fellow group member, set up the mixing desk, a session in ProTools and to find the correct backing track on Youtube. I then came into the live room in order to assist my group as they finished mic-ing up the performers, they had decided to make use of the XLR socket on the electro-acoustic guitar so that it may be plugged directly into the stage box. We then asked the vocalist if she wished to have any talkback as well as the foldback for her backing track set up, she consented to this so after I had finished removing various health and safety hazards (untidy cables), I went back into the control room and set it up using the patch bay and the auxiliary controls on the mixing desk. After we adjusted the gain and levels on the mixing desk and the soundcard we then proceeded to record the first track onto Protools.

After we were happy with the recording, we went on to record their second song, this time with the guitarist accompanying and after setting up his headphones, we asked them to start to play so that we may adjust the gain and levels on the mixing desk and the sound card. It was then that we discovered that the signal of the guitar was a bit quiet. Therefore, we decided as a group that due to time pressure, the best way to solve this was to switch our recording methods (which the guitarist was okay with) and a group member went into to live room to set up a condenser microphone. After re-adjusting the gain and levels, we then proceeded to record them, it was then that I made the mistake of adjusting the gain during the recording! During the second take, we noticed that there was some popping and clicking audible, however, when we played it back for the performers on Protools there wasn’t any at all in the recording (it turns out it was the left studio monitor!).