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.

Client Feedback For Recording Sessions (LO4)

Apr4

This morning I was sent feedback for my sessions with Your Cat is a Landmine on Friday and Saturday of last week an am really happy to say that they were very satisfied. Here’s a screenshot of the email from the drummer, Alex, which was forwarded to me by Dave McSherry.

I’m really pleased with this and hopefully this shows that I have been successful in my fourth learning outcome (liaise with the client in a professional and well-communicated manner, to ensure total client satisfaction.)

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

Recording Plan (LO4)

Mar29

With such a tight recording schedule, I have made a plan for the two sessions I will spend with the band in order to make sure it runs as smoothly and efficiently as I can.

Recording Session Checklist (LO1, LO3)

Mar29

With my recording sessions with the band on the 31st of March and 1st of April approaching, I’m going to bullet point a few key techniques I’ve discovered in my research that I’m going to try in the sessions. They regard the recording of drums and vocals.

Drums:

Recording with a microphone on the hi-hat and ride cymbal. This is mentioned in my previous blog post and is something I want to try, in order to get a rounded sound of the whole drum kit.
Record toms with a condenser mic. I will try using a a C414 on the rack tom(s) during the session which is something that both Butch Vig and Chris Sheldon do. I will, however use an AKG D112 for the floor tom, as I prefer to have a lot of low end in that particular drum.
Record snare with SM57s. Again, both Vig and Sheldon prefer this mic for snares, and it’s what I personally have always used. The top mic will be 1 inch from the head, as Sheldon recommends.
D112 on the kick drum. Fairly standard, and this is what Sheldon recommends.
Use a lot of C414s. Flood, who produced 1979, used a lot of C414s to get an ‘up front and aggressive’ sound. I’ve booked 6 of these mics.

Vocals

Record vocals with a Shure SM58. While there are higher quality and more expensive microphones that I could use, I’ve found that both Gil Norton and Billy Corgan of Smashing Pumpkins favour them for recording vocals. If I decide the sound isn’t quite what I want in the session I’ll use a different mic.
Double track lead vocal parts. As done by Butch Vig on Nevermind. Should time constraints allow me, I’d like to try this technique to add power to the vocals.
Multiple backing vocal takes. As done on 1979. This is to add space to the tracks and I personally think backing vocals are one of the most important aspects of any track.