1st Recording

1st Recording

Today we began our first recording in music production techniques class. It involved us splitting into groups, setting up equipment, and recording an instrument in great quality.

Equipment

We used a fair amount of equipment during this assignment, things including:

The Floor Box (it connects the XLR cables to the mixer), XLR cables (to connect the microphones to The Floor Box), Logic Pro (to record the audio), The Shure SM57 (Dynamic Microphone), The Audix D6 (Condenser Microphone), The Rode NT5 (Condenser Microphone), The Jam Hub (It sends signals from the mixer to The Floor Box to a pair of headphones via a jack cable), headphones (so the person playing the instrument can listen to their cue and what they are playing), microphone stands (to position the microphones where desired) and, of course, the mixer (Zen desk, to control volume levels of the microphones and level our microphones to produce a clear sound) and a drum kit (the instrument, obviously)

Method (Session 1)

First, we started of by setting up the microphone stands to where we wished, we positioned one above the drum kit (to capture the sound of the whole kit), one in front of the kick drum (to focus on the kick) and the last one above the snare drum.
We used the Rode NT5 for over the drums because we thought it would be good pick up the collective sound. We used the Audix D6 for the kick drum because it has a good frequency low end, so we though it we pick up the bass of the kick better. And we used the SM57 on the snare because it has an improved high end, so it could pick up the crash of the snare.


Once the microphones were set up we plugged them into the floor box using the XLR cables (blue) so we could control the mics with the mixer and Logic Pro. We also plugged the Jam hub into the floor box using the jack cable (yellow) so the drummer could hear their cue and what they were playing.




When that was finished we went into the studio to set up Logic. After making our file we connected the microphones to Logic and the mixer.
We set up microphone 1 to input (what Logic and the microphones will hear) 1, microphone 2 to input 2 and microphone 3 to input 3, so we didn't get confused. We set their output (what we can here) to number 8, the reason we set them up as a collective outpout was because we thought that we wouldn't have to hear each individual microphone because we could just edit their sound levels using the mixer gain.
After doing this we labelled the tracks (with their mic and intrument) and saved the file.

Once everything was set up we tested the microphones levels (by playing the drums). At first listen the microphones sounds did not mix well with each other and was not satisfactory (the sound was distorted because the microphone's levels were to high), so we changed each mic's individual gain (the red knobs on the mixer) we did this whilst the drums were still being played so we were changing the sounds in real time.
When the drums sounded up to standard we turned on the click, so the drummer could hear their cue (to play in time) and changed the tempo.

Now that we were ready to record we made sure the drummer could hear the click (his cue) and what they were playing (so they weren't making any mistakes) and started to record. When we finished recording, we noticed that the sound was still a little distorted, so we changed the microphone's gain levels again (we turned them down) and recorded again.
We recorded a piece of music around 50 seconds long and made sure that the sound had not distorted in any way. It hadn't.

Once recording was finished we made sure to save our project and flatten the desk (changed all the mixer levels back to neutral) and packed away all of our equipment away (coiled the wires and packed the microphones).   

Method (Session 2)

During session 2 we used the same equipment but we didn't use the Audix D6 (as we feel we didn't need it), instead of the drums we used a piano and instead of 3 XLR cables we used 5. We used 5 XLR cables because we needed to extend them, 1 cable per microphone didn't stretch from the floor box to the desired position near the piano, the last XLR cable was to extend the jack cable to where the jam hub was (next to the piano). We simply connected the male adaptor (the side with prongs) of the first cables into the female adaptor (the other side, with holes) of the second cable.

We used 2 microphones during this session, the Rode NT5 and the Shure SM57, we position the SM57 on the inside of the piano (to capture the full sound) and the NT5 was placed above the piano, looking straight onto it (to capture the sound the piano made throughout the room). We plugged the XLR cables from the microphones to the floor box (Rode NT5 was in number 1 and Shure SM57 was is in number 2)


We set up the Jam Hub so the piano player could hear what they were playing and were able to hear their cue (we could not see the piano from the Zen desk as we were in a separate room, so the player had to be able to hear us), we placed it next to the piano. We made sure that power was running into the Jam Hub (at one point it wasn't) and were able to set up Logic.

Once we finished setting up the equipment we went into the separate part of the studio (where the mixer and the computer were) and loaded Logic up. We found our previously saved file, loaded it and added 2 more audio tracks to it. We set up the Rode NT5 into mono, input number 1 (as it was in number 1 on the floor box) and the Shure SM57 into mono, input number 2 (for the same reason) and we set both of the microphones to output number 8 along with the already recorded drums (to avoid confusion).

Again the levels were not to standard so someone went into the other room and played the piano whilst the gain levels (red knobs on mixer) were edited in real time to achieve a good quality audio. Whilst doing this we made sure that the player could hear through the headphones and when they couldn't we realised that the output was not set to relay back into the headphones (so the player couldn't hear a thing) so we changed this by turning up the blue knob on the mixer (Zen desk) on channels 5 & 6, as this was what channel the headphones were set to.

We made sure the player could hear the previously recorded drums through the headphones, we also set up the click so that the player could play in time with the drums and the click in order to produce something that sounded remotely good. Once everything was ready we started our first take. When recording finished we were unhappy on how the final recording (of the piano) turned out, it didn't really match the drums, so we recorded again. After recording the second time we were much happier on how it turned out, it went with the drums fairly well. We called the player in and listened to it one last time, we felt it turned out good so we saved it. Once we felt we were finished we flattened the desk and packed up our equipment.