Comparison of drums from my semester A and B projects (LO1, LO2)

Apr19

Throughout this semester’s audio project, two of my four main learning outcomes have been to improve the drums on music that I have recorded and mixed. I set these learning outcomes for myself because while I was satisfied with the overall capture and mix of my semester A project, I wasn’t especially content with the drum sound. I therefore wanted to focus on drums in this project to improve capturing and mixing, particularly as drums are a central part of much of the music that I enjoy recording and mixing.

I am very confident that, subjectively at very least, my drums in this project sound much better than in my previous project. With the research on recording drums which I’ve implemented from a range of different producers and artists, I’ve been able to use techniques which I feel have much improved the sound of my drums. While a small part of the improvement is due to the improved drum kit we recorded on, the key difference has been the capture and the fact that I focused heavily on drums during the mixing stage.

Objectively, the drums sound more prominent in the lower frequencies, emphasised by the kick drum, and also crisper in the high-end. The reverb is more controlled and the whole kit, as can be heard in the final mixes, cuts through the rest of the track much more successfully. Each drum is more refined, rather than blended heavily with a room mic, as was required in my semester A project, and the overheads are more withdraw in volume. Finally, the panning is more noticeable also, due to the stronger capture of each drum enabling me to pan them more naturally.

For comparison here are the isolated drum tracks (post-mix) for Lone Gazelle and 200% Gentleman, from the Your Cat is a Landmine EP.

And here are the isolated drum tracks (post-mix) for Antagonise and Fame from my semester A project.

While drum sound can be subjective I personally feel that I have bettered my own work and therefore have gone some way to achieving my first and second learning outcomes.

Mixing Process (LO2, LO3)

Apr16

Today I mixed down the four tracks for this project, hopefully ready to submit. I feel like they are mixed as well as they can be and used several of the techniques that I listed in my previous post (“Mixing Drums and Vocals Checklist”).

The first thing to mention is that I am really pleased with how each track was captured and believe this shows in the mix. Every aspect of each track is a direct improvement on anything I have previously captured in other projects and I’m particularly happy about how drums sounded, even pre-mix, compared to my submission for this project in semester A. Following this blog post will be a post directly comparing the drums and vocals from this project with those of my previous one. Given that the recording and mixing of drums and vocals encompassed three of my four learning outcomes, I feel that this project has been really successful.

The first item on my mixing checklist was to simply pan the toms left and right, in accordance with Butch Vig. This is a common technique and can be seen as part of the mixer for ‘Lone Gazelle’ in the image below.

Next on the list was the heavy compression of the room mic, which I actually used in the mix a lot more than initially expected. I had thought that due to the nature of the room sound in the live room of the university multitrack that I would be using as little of the room microphone as possible but I was pleasantly surprised by how it sounded when blended with the rest of the drum mics. Through research I have identified that both Butch Vig and Chris Sheldon noted the use of heavy compression on the room mic(s) and so I replicated this through the compressor on Logic, the settings of which can be seen in the image below.

Chris Sheldon also noted the importance of compression on the kick and snare drums, which was also added. The snare, recorded in two tracks (top and bottom) was also sent through a bus to another compressor to mesh the two tracks together. The kick drum was side-chained to the bass guitar track(s) in order for the bass to lower in volume to allow the kick drum to be more dominant and avoid the two masking each other.

Butch Vig claimed that the room mics can clog up a mix, in the 300-500Hz range, but I did not encounter any issues with this, perhaps due to where I placed the room microphone. I hardly needed to use any EQ on the room mic and only lightly boosted between 5 and 10kHz in order to bring out the overheads a little more.

Vig notes that he pushes up the room mics in certain, quieter sections of tracks and this is something I replicated in each of my tracks because I think it really worked in the mix and added depth the stripped-back sound of the band. It should be easily audible in the final tracks but here is the automation for the room mic for the track ‘Lone Gazelle.’

The two aspects of mixing drums that I found through researching 1979 by the Smashing Pumpkins (part of my influences playlist) were not used. Firstly, distorting the drums was something that I tried for each track but due to the relatively clean nature of the recordings of each of the other instruments and the nature of the tracks musically, I felt it sounded out of place. Even using light distortion on the snare drum, which I regularly do, didn’t sound quite right. I also refrained from using a gate on the snare as suggested by my post on 1979. Again, musically it didn’t sound right.

For vocals, I used the Butch Vig Vocals plug-in by Waves on all three of the tracks in the EP which feature vocals, and it worked really well. It did need other plug-ins to make it sit properly in the mix but on the whole it was a success. The controls for EQ (in this case called ‘Lows’, ‘Presence’ and ‘Air’) were great for getting the most out of Ben’s voice and were also used heavily on the backing vocals. These had more ‘Air’ than the lead vocals had and much less ‘Lows’ and ‘Presence’ in order for them to be less prominent elements of each track. The plug-in also included a nice-sounding compressor that was also used throughout. The vocals were heavily compressed due to the differing intensity of Ben’s voice throughout each section of each track and this aligns with Chris Sheldon’s view on vocal compression which is part of my list of mixing techniques to use.

I also doubled-tracked several of the lead vocal parts, noticeably in ‘Lone Gazelle’ and ‘200% Gentleman’, which added power to vocals and also replicated the technique that Butch Vig demonstrated in ‘Drain You’ (part of my influences playlist). As in Drain You, the two vocal parts are panned centrally, rather than hard left and right, which means that you get a slight chorus effect. The channel strips for the chorus vocals in Lone Gazelle can be seen below.

The backing vocals throughout the project are double tracked as well and panned varyingly left and right to add space, as heard in 1979.

In terms of guitars and bass, I didn’t do anything particularly unusual when mixing and for the most part I found these two aspects to be the most simple. There is doubletracking of guitars right the way through the project and they are generally panned hard left and right, mostly playing the same part. The bass was recorded with both DI and an SM57 on the bass cab and I only used the DI in one of the tracks (200% Gentleman) to blend with the mic capture.

Overall I think my mixes of the tracks on the EP achieve everything I set out to and I’m happy with the final outcome.

Mixing Drums and Vocals checklist (LO2, LO3)

Apr6

Here’s a list of all the key pieces of information I’ve found through research that I’ll apply when mixing the drums and vocals on this project.

Drums

Pan toms left and right – mentioned by Butch Vig when setting a stereo space for the drums and the rest of the track, by extension.
Heavy compression on the room microphone, as identified by both Vig and Sheldon. They also note the importance not to over-compress the rest of the kit.
“It’s also worth compressing the kick and snare drum, but again, don’t overdo it.” – Chris Sheldon’s further thoughts on compression.
“Hearing the room mics is important. To me, the mid-range frequencies define what the room mics sound like, though these frequencies are also what can clog up a mix, particularly in the 300Hz-500Hz range. ” – Butch Vig on how to place the room mic in a mix.
“Sometimes I will push up the room mics in calm sections of a song, like breakdowns, and then pull them back when things get dense in the chorus” – Butch Vig on room mic automation.
Distort the drums and make the level of distortion change in certain sections of the song as in 1979. I may choose to leave this out depending on the rest of the mix.
Try using a gated snare, such as in 1979.

Vocals

“You might start with slow compressor, to let the consonants ring through and follow it up with a hard brick-wall limiter at the end, to push everything.” – Chris Sheldon, on adding compression to vocals.
Limit the dynamic range of vocals if needs be as “in full on rock songs, you don’t want a huge dynamic range on vocals, the vocal needs sit firmly in the middle of everything. So by limiting the dynamic range, you can make sure that it’s neither overbearing, nor hidden.” – Chris Sheldon on compressing vocals.
Double tracked lead vocal parts will be both central in the mix, which is something that was done by Butch Vig on Drain You by Nirvana. This can be seen in the video at the bottom of this entry.
The Butch Vig vocals plug-in. I’m going to try using this for vocals to replicate the classic grunge vocal sound, particularly as it seems that it would suit the nature of Ben, YCIALM’s vocalist’s voice
Backing vocals panned hard left and right as in 1979.
Set correct delays when using reverbs and delays in order to make the reverbs sound natural with the rest of the song. The reverb on the EP as a whole should be quite dry as is commonly found in grunge.

Client Liaison – Communication between me and the band (LO4)

Apr4

Just as a follow-on from my last post about client liaison I’ll add here the communication between the band and I. While at times I was slightly frustrated with the relatively slow communication from the band, I think I may have been worrying a little too much as the sessions went perfectly as planned on Friday and Saturday. I assured them that I needed to record four tracks for the project despite their earlier thoughts on recording just three. Overall I think the communication was enough for the project in order for me to fully prepare and plan the sessions.

Here’s the first email I can find from Alex where we’re discussing the format of the project. I had the idea of recording the band way back in November so I’ve had a long time to prepare for it.

The original plan was to record in January but due to issues with availability that changed

Finding out about instrumentation and demos

Re-arrangement of recording dates

I wanted to meet before recording to get a proper account of what the band wanted from the project

Recording dates and meeting up

Meeting

Settling on recording dates

Here’s a big delay on one of their replies which wasn’t significant in the end. I also tried to book the 15th with the band as a fallback but that wasn’t available either

I checked the amount of songs we were recording and Alex mentioned that we’d be able to do some of the recording on the Friday night. I also checked whether Alex was bringing his own drum gear as the university’s isn’t fantastic. The same goes for amplifiers.

Recording Sessions – Reflection

Apr4

On reflection my recording sessions with Your Cat Is a Landmine went incredibly well. I was worried about not having enough time to get everything done but we actually managed to finish and pack away early. A large part of this is due to the fact that Ben, the bassist/vocalist was able to come to the session on the 31st so all of the drums and bass were recorded on the evening before the session.

In this session I managed to fulfil all five of the recording techniques identified in my post “Recording Session Checklist.”

First of all, I mic’d the hi-hats and ride cymbal with SM57s. In a previous post I said I’d probably mic these with AKG C1000s, but in soundcheck I decided there was just a little too much high-end, and that an SM57 would get a slightly less harsh tone from these cymbals, while also being more suited to cope with the high volumes. I am going to use both of these microphones in the mixing stage because I’m happy with how they turned out. The mics can be seen in the images at the bottom of this entry.

As theorised in the mentioned post, I used a C414 on the rack tom and was very happy with how that turned out. I had to use the pad to make sure the noise from the kit at such close proximity didn’t affect the sound quality but this condenser mic picked up tone from the rack tom that would be more difficult to capture with a dynamic mic. I used a D112 on both the kick drum and floor tom. The floor tom in the recordings sounds extremely powerful as a result. Due to the nature of the band, being a three-piece, I wanted the drums to have a prominent sound and using both of these mics will make this more possible in the mixing stage. Again, these techniques can be seen in the photos. As I said I would, I used SM57s to record the top and the bottom of the snare drum. I had planned to use more C414s than can be seen in the images below but unfortunately one of the stereo pair of C414s used as overheads didn’t work. I therefore substituted them for the pair of C1000s that I didn’t use on hi-hats and ride cymbal. I was pleasantly surprised by this forced changed and really like the overhead sound captured by the C1000s. Much of the low end of the kit has been filtered out without any EQ due to this and allows more space for the kick, snare, and toms.

I also managed to use all of the vocal techniques identified. I used an SM58 for the vocals on two of the tracks which feature vocals. The third, I used a C414 due to the acoustic nature of the song which meant I wanted to capture every nuance of Ben, the vocalist’s, voice I could to add depth to a stripped back line-up. The SM58 picked up the intense nature of the vocal tracks for the other two tracks really well and I’m happy with the choice of mic. I managed to double track several of the chorus lead vocal parts of the tracks, taking influence from Butch Vig on Nevermind. We also recorded several different backing vocal takes for each song, so that I have enough content to mix the vocals into something really powerful. The vocal mics can be seen at the bottom of this entry.

I recorded bass with a combination of an SM57 on Ben’s bass cab and with D/I straight into Pro Tools. For guitar I used two SM57s. One pointing directly at the speaker cone and one off-axis in the corner of the speaker.

I did not know, perhaps due to a slight lack of communication from the band on their part, that of the tracks they wanted to record, one of them, Mineral, was an instrumental, and one, Kingfishers, was acoustic. This means that there are only three tracks for each of my first three learning outcomes. Hopefully this will not be an issue in the long run and I still have a lot of content to mix in the project.

In terms of client liaison, I think the band were really happy with how the session went. Mike, the guitarist was surprised to hear when he arrived for the second session on the Saturday that all of the drums and bass had been done. The band reassured me that the session was painless and easy-going and there were no real technical issues to slow us down. I had time to experiment with all of the techniques I wanted to and still had time to spare at the end. While I haven’t had the best communication from the band, my client management has been something I’m very happy with throughout the project.

Full kit mic setup

Hi-Hat with SM57

Rack tom with C414

Ride with SM57

Kick drum with D112

Snare with 2 SM57s

Floor tom with D112

Room microphone

Bass amp with SM57 and D/I out

SM58 and C414 for recording vocals

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