Multitrack Recording and Music Production Blog – D

I was playing bass for our group so before the session I made sure that I had learned and practice the piece. We recorded the bass through a DI box and an amplifier in the dead room for a clean sound. The DI signal went straight into the desk while we tried two different microphones on the amp. We positioned an AKG D112 and an AKG 414 towards the amp at an equal distance from each other. We placed them at around 3/9 o’ clock so as not to get a too bass or treble heavy sound and also had them very close to the speaker for a dry sound. We tested the two microphones by soloing them on the desk and decided that the 414 had the clearer sound that fitted the song more so we went with that.

One problem on the amplifier was that it had a bad hiss when the treble nob was up caused by a faulty tweeter. So we got around this simply by putting it to zero which was fine as we wanted a low/mid sound. I set the EQ on the amp at around 1 o’ clock on the low and 12 o’ clock on the mid nob. I did not want any part of the sound to be overpowering as the bass in our chosen track Beat It is mimicking the guitar part throughout.

Before the recording I used a guitar tuner to ensure I was in tune and played through the piece by myself a few times. As well as playing along to the drums from last week Panashe also provided guide vocals during the recording (using an sEX1 microphone). Even though I was performing in the mixing room I wore headphones so that I could hear the track better. At the end of the best take I made a mistake so to remedy this we set a pre-role before the mistake so that I could play along and correct it without having to punch in or crossfade.

Once our drummer George had set up the drum kit how he wanted in the drum room we began to mic it up. For the overheads we used two AKG C414B’s, opposite each other to get the stereo.  We put them both in cardioid mode so that they were directional and positioned them at an equal distance with the snare in the middle. We chose AKG C414B’s as they are good at picking up detail (the whole kit) and they also have a bright sound which is good for the cymbals. We encountered a problem where we had to move the stands around till we got a precise stereo field.

We used an Audix ADX51 as a room microphone. We placed this behind the drummers head and pointed it towards the centre of the kit. This was for picking up room sound and reverberations.

We used two microphones on the snare; one on the top for bottom end and one underneath for the high end. On the top we used a Shure SM57 as it is robust, cardioid (so it only picks up the snare) and it can take a lot of SPL. On the bottom we used an Audix I5 which is a similar microphone to the SM57 and will serve the same purpose. We reversed the phase on the bottom microphone using the desk to avoid phase cancellation issues.

We used an AKG D112 on the bass drum as it is good at picking up low frequencies and has a good SPL. We placed it around the middle of the drum to get a balance between the click and the boom.

The drum kit had two toms so we put an Audix D2 on each. These are designed for use on toms as they are small, can take high SPL and are clip-on for practicality. They are also hypercardioid so the sound is very direct (so as not to pick up the cymbals).

We had two guide musicians (vox + guitar). For the vox we used an sEX1 with a pop shield and for the guitar an SM57 pointed at the amp. I was playing guide guitar for the session so I tried to make my tone similar to how to would be in the final mix (high gain, distortion, etc). Me and the vocalist performed in the live room. My job was to play along during the run-throughs and takes so that George new where we were in the song.

Each musician had headphones and we were all hearing the same mix as in the mixing room and using foldback A on the desk to control the headphone level.

All of the condenser microphones (C414B’s, Audix 51, sEX1) required phantom power to be enabled on their specific channels.

To set the input gain for each mic, the channel would be soloed to get the right level.

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