D8 Skills #36 & D9 | Unit E | Recording Band, Loft | Session #10
While we were setting up for recording bass for the new cover, 'Blanckenship' I searched through the files to find the Lead Guitar track that had gone missing in 'Soul Pog' (see last paragraph of this post). I found it very quickly and lined it up with the track.
We set up a Radial J 48 DI box along with an Audix D6 on-axis pointed towards the centre of the bass amp's cone, and an SM57 in the same position as the D6 but over to one side, so off-centre to the cone. We made sure that they're the same distance away from the amp so that we avoid phase issues. I suggested to my team that we switch around the D6 and the SM57 because the SM57 rolls off bass whereas the D6 boosts it, and they both boost highs. Since pointing a microphone off-centre to the speaker rolls off the top end (and so it'll be recording mostly lower frequencies), I thought the D6 would be better in this position than the SM57 since the SM57, as well as the roll-off of high frequencies because of the position, also rolls of lows because of its frequency response. My team disagreed.
Below on the left is the SM57's frequency response and on the right is the Audix D6's:
While recording bass, we used the click to count in 4 beats before the bassist has to come in and then because (after asking him over talkback) he didn't want the click playing throughout the whole track, we muted it when the music started.
We did a few takes, creating multiple playlists, and then comped up the best takes with the bassist in the control room with us.
We then moved onto rhythm guitar...
We set up a Sontronics STC-2 about a foot away from the amp, on-axis pointed towards the centre of the speaker. We also used two SM57s, and after setting gain (so that I and the people in the control room could hear accurately), I moved one of the SM57s forward and backwards very slowly until both I and the ones in the control room thought it sounded best. We were adjusting the phase - which frequency was being cancelled out.
After rhythm guitar was done, we moved onto lead guitar using the same setup and process.
We then moved onto vocals...
We set up a Neumann U-87 with a pop shield in front. One member of my team wanted to set up another microphone behind this to later put reverb on that, rather than on the Neumann. We used a Sontronics STC-2 for this further back mic.
While setting gain, the STC-2 was picking up a constant signal even when the singer was silent. The Neumann was not. After recording a bit of this, it sounded as if it was bleeding from the singer's headphones, however, this was extremely strange as I would have expected this to be coming through the Neumann as it was right in front of her face, not the STC-2 which was much further away. We realised that it must have just been because the gain for the STC-2 was set very high, so we lowered it.
We recorded the vocals into Pro Tools, and then over-dubbed a harmony on top. I suggested to the band that we layered multiple tracks on top of each other to create a spacey, wide sound since this is how they wanted the vocals to sound. I played the band the vocal stem from a track I had made employing this technique and they all agreed that this is what we should do except for the singer who said she couldn't be bothered, and sadly we didn't do it.
Here are the vocals I played to the band:
