MUSIC PRODUCTION PORTFOLIO BLOG
Negotiated Skills Development - Studio Recording & Engineering
Negotiated Skills Development
During my master's program, I am embarking on a studio engineering project to develop my recording skills. My goal is to create a portfolio webpage documenting the recording process.
This blog will detail my progress, thoughts, ideas, and research, serving as a guide for my decisions regarding recording techniques, organization, and engineering practices for each session.
The Videos that accompany this project can be found by clicking the link below. They do not include the mixed final audio for the project; just the draft balanced recordings.
8th March ‘23 The Project
I’m planning to conduct a recording project that focuses on a contrasting of recording approaches whilst working with two very different artists. I have two artists booked:
Prima Star Power (Band/Session 1)
A five-piece 60s revival rock n roll band (FFO Karen Dalton / 60's Stones / Leonard Cohen / The Byrds). With a line up of electric guitar, electro-acoustic guitar, electric bass, keyboard, drums, two lead singers and a backing vocalist.
Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band (Band/Session 2)
A 26-30 piece big band jazz ensemble (FFO Duke Ellington, Sun Ra, The Rajasthan Express, Count Basie, the Art Ensemble Of Chicago). With a dynamic line up depending on the event, but for the purposes of this recording session will be: Lead vocals, 3 backing vocalists, 4 trumpeters, 4 trombonists, 6 saxophonists, a flautist, two drummers, a bassist, two electric guitarists, a pianist (grand piano), a percussionist and a conductor.
I plan to approach it with a live-recording philosophy, meaning all the musicians will be recorded together, and so player positioning, bleed, line-of-sight, microphone positioning, and foldback are all vitally important areas to get right. Each of the sessions will challenge me in different ways as a recording engineer, session 1 with it’s complex arrangement of vocal microphones in the context of rock n roll music, instrument positioning and bleed control (i.e balancing a rock drummer in the same room as vocalists and an acoustic guitar).
Session 2 will let me explore a whole new range of microphoning techniques for instruments that I have never worked with before (i.e brass and woodwind), in a genre that I have little experience in and a fundamentally different recording approach used by big band session engineers. It’s going to be quite a challenge logistically with arranging and organising so many players, as well as technically challenging in its operation with mic placement, console mixing, gain staging and acoustics problems to address throughout.
15th March ‘23 Drum Microphoning
When beginning research into microphone placements for different instruments I came across a very interesting alternative take on a classic drum mic’ing technique. ‘The Reverse Glyn Johns’ (RGJ).
To give some context, Glyn Johns is a legendary recording engineer most famous for his work with The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, The Who, Led Zeplin, Eric Clapton etc. Amongst studio engineers one of his most famous contributions is his drum microphoning technique that is named after himself.
Diagram: John Pickford (Musictech.com)
Recording engineers have critiqued the technique as introducing too many phase issues across the kit, particularly when dealing with cymbals placed close to the floor tom (i.e crash or rides). This is because as the cymbal rocks side to side the microphone continuously goes in and out of phase with the sound source (cymbal). Other critiques include general phasing issues with other microphones, for example when introducing a snare close mic (resulting in an uneven snare image), and an uneven frequency balance of the drum kit as a whole; with the left side of the stereo image typically containing more low frequencies and the right higher frequencies. You essentially get a lot more kick drum in the left channel with this method, which isn’t balanced.
There’s a few ways to address these issues, one of which is to move the left overhead (audience perspective) adjacent to the drummer looking into the snare drum and adjust so that the microphone is higher. But the best way I’ve found (through experimentation) that preserves a great stereo-image of the tom drums and doubles up as a close mic for the floor tom is to move the microphone closer to the floor tom and below any cymbal close to the floor tom. As cymbals emit sound at a 45º angle from its edge, moving the microphone below the cymbal (essentially into phase with the sound source) helps to negate the cymbal rocking effect that causes phase issues (due to the microphone being situated in a node).
Diagram: John Pickford (Musictech.com) altered by Benji Antonio
Finally, I’ve come across this idea of mixing with the mics (as in microphone positioning) that I first heard about through recording engineer and producer Nic Hard (Snarky Puppy) in his 2016 MixCon appearance.
Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bR1n88OIDg
The practice seems to be echoed by other recording engineers, namely Ryan Earnhardt whom maintains that cymbal tuning can be achieved through mic placement in their proximity and phase relationship to a microphone. With a mic’ing technique like the Glyn Johns technique it’s important to consider the dynamic and tonal balance between the drums and the cymbals based on mic positioning, which is a factor I had completely overlooked in the past, attributing dynamic and frequency control mostly to the mixing stage with EQ, compression and levelling, It’s important also to keep in mind that the aesthetic of the cymbal rocking effect and phase imbalance can also have a desired aesthetic to it, that may be an option when recording with my 60s revival artist in session 1.
16th March Room Placement & Live Recording
Part of my motivation for choosing this project was to challenge myself with the live approach to studio recording. The vast majority of my experience within the studio environment has so far been with the overdub recording approach; recording instruments, sounds and sources individually or to a scratch/rough track. There are certain genres and ensembles however in which taking the overdub approach may not give the best the representation of a performance. Jazz, classical, folk ensembles that rely on musician and collaborator interactions benefit from a recording approach that is more conducive to capturing the essence and energy of a musical performance or take. Even rock bands of a certain sonic aesthetic, perhaps that are live-show-orientated or are encouraged through an often intangible positive recording atmosphere, may benefit from the live-performance approach. The magic lies in the ability to recreate the raw emotions and artistic nuances of a live performance, resulting in a vibrant and authentic audio reproduction that showcases the true talent and dynamics of the musicians involved.
However, this presents a major complication to the recording engineer: the meticulous arrangement and synchronization of various sound components. They need to ensure each instrument, voice, and sound is flawlessly captured, each microphone perfectly placed in regards to phase and environmental acoustic characteristics, and manage the slew of audio signals at various gain stages, all simultaneously.
Through my early research both in the studio and through reference material I’ve come across a number of ways of managing these issues well, which I’ll begin detailing below. Some of the main reference materials I’ve used through secondary research are also detailed below:
. Owsinski, B (2017) The Recording Engineer’s Handbook 4th Edition. Burbank, CA, USA: Bobby Owsinki Media Group
. Everest, A. & Pohlmann, K.C. (2015) Master Handbook of Acoustics. 5th ed. New York; London:
McGraw-Hill.
. Parsons, A and Colbeck, J (2014) Art And Science Of Sound Recording. Milwaukee, WI, USA: Hal Leonard Corporation
Spill
Firstly let’s talk about spill. Arguably one of the most important engineer-controlled aspects of a live ensemble recording, that essentially comprises mic placement and source placement/output. Recording engineers refer to spill (bleed or leakage) as sound that is picked up in a mic that isn’t intended for that microphone. For example, recording piano and a drum kit in the same room but the close mics for the piano are basically acting as a room mic for the drum kit. The drum kit as the loud instrument in this case has the better signal to noise ratio as the direct sound is much louder than the piano further across in the room. However, the piano is much quieter and so the signal to noise ratio for the piano mics is less in favour of the direct sound of the piano, picking up more of the drum kit.
There’s a number of ways to tackle this problem, ranging from complete isolation all the way to acceptance of spill as a tool for saturation in a recording. With my live-recordings I want to find the right balance to have a strong direct sound, but still accept an amount of spill from neighbouring sound sources to facilitate this idea of saturation promotion (The idea being that some ambient and non-direct instrument sound recorded in neighbouring close mics for other instruments will add to the overall level of that instrument in a mix, and make each instrument “gel” better together, something mix engineers commonly refer to as “glue”). So how can we achieve this?
Nat Quartet EP Recording Session - December 2022
I had this exact problem in one of my first full band live-performance recording sessions with jazz-fusion band Nat Quartet. Drums and grand piano in the same room. My first thought was to mostly just embrace this, spacing the piano and drums quite far apart in the room and flipping the piano so that the opening was facing away from the drum kit. The baffle was added to shield the piano’s room mic whilst the close mics were tucked away close to the strings. This worked okay, but there was still a more desirable signal to noise ratio that I could achieve. No matter, another bafle was added to reject more of the direct kit sound and thus the problem was solved.
Baffling can be a very effective way of controlling sound in a room when isolation is not possible, or desirable. But the more types of instruments and sound sources that are added the more complicated things become.
Let’s imagine now that we have a full band in the room. Drums, guitars with amplifiers, bass guitar, piano and vocalists. The first thing to consider here is the volume of each instrument, we want to group instruments together based on their volume in the room. Bass guitar can be captured through direct input, as a build up of strong bass frequencies may hinder capturing quieter instruments. As for sound omitting instruments, the quieter instrument groups will need to be placed in the room based on the positioning of the louder groups, so it’s best to build from the louder ones first.
If you have for example a drum kit and a guitar amp playing at similar volumes, you’d be forgiven for placing them at opposite ends of the room with close mics for each source. The signal is very loud for each so you’ll get good signal to noise ratio, and because of this we won’t have to worry too-much about the sound of each instrument being too present in the opposite one’s mics, great. But now what we have is two very loud instruments filling essentially the entire room, where do we put the quieter instruments in this scenario without them being drowned out?
A better approach is to group the two loud instruments in very close proximity, as they have good signal to noise ratio for their close mics we don’t need to worry too much about ambient noise from their neighbours. Placing them closer together also removes the time-of-arrival difference that you would get if they were further apart. Now we have a very loud end of the room and an end of the room that is filled with the dissipating direct sound and reverberant sound of the drum kit and amps. A much more appealing environment for a quieter piano to be recorded in, perhaps with some baffling and positioning techniques I mentioned earlier.
A vocalist may be best placed in an isolation booth, or if necessary, grouped closer to a quieter instrument (e.g piano), using a tactically positioned directional microphone that rejects sound from it’s surrounding and focuses on the singer. If the vocalist is not playing another instrument then as much distancing and baffling in a “single-room situation” is preferred. But there’s options for instrument playing vocalists also. A high-quality cardioid microphone with a low sensitivity such the Shure SM7B or Sennheiser MD441 has the qualities we’re looking for to get the best separation.
Line of Sight
The next most important thing to consider is often overlooked by the recording engineer concerned mostly with the best possible sound of each instrument. And that’s the issue of how the players comfortably perform in the room, with good communication and atmosphere. Line of sight is very important to consider amongst ensembles that take visual cues from one another relating to musical events (changes in tempo, meter, key, parts etc) and want to have constant feedback with their peers to be able to feel the “vibe” of a performance. If each player is happy and able to effectively communicate in the room with each other, not obstructed by any baffles and preserving the positive atmosphere conducive towards good group performance, then we can move onto mic placement. As engineers our first job is to capture the best quality recordings we can within the limitations of the room, equipment and players. But it’s often imperative to compromise on aspects of the “ideal” to accomodate for the requirements of the artists, thus contributing to a better musical performance, and in turn better recording.
Mic Placement
I want to briefly talk about mic placement in a macro approach, leaving behind for a moment individual techniques that would be good for each specific instrument which I look to research further in the coming weeks. Mic positioning is a critical aspect of any recording session, resulting in what will be captured from the room and recorded onto a record. But in a live-performance scenario where many sounds are competing and mixing in a room, how do we go about achieving our desired signal-to-noise ratio for each instrument (and room mic).
Through my research and practice I’ve found that a staple of mic placement is to use the mic’s polar pattern and in effect null points to tactically target the sound source you want whilst rejecting neighbouring sounds and instruments. Proximity to sound source can also play an important part in this, with close mics improving signal-to-noise ratio and room mics giving time-of-arrival differences; thus creating space in a recording. The reverse can also be effective, aiming a sound source to minimise spill into vulnerable mics. As I mentioned earlier with the grand piano and drum kit scenario. Having an arsenal of good-quality microphones with different purposes for different situations, and the knowledge and understanding on when and where to use them is just as important.
A good recording engineer knows how to use all these tools in a room to craft their desired mix of direct sound, ambient sound, spill in each microphone and tonal characteristic of a sound source.
Processing
Finally let’s visit processing as a tool for signal-to-noise tuning. Whilst most, if not all of the methods I’ve detailed above and very much centred around acoustics and performance, processing is a powerful tool that can be used as a final approach to achieving great separation from a live-recording. Whilst in my opinion it shouldn’t be used to rely or fall back on (“We’ll fix it in post”), it can be used in conjunction with everything else as a final polishing on a recording in regard to signal-to-noise tuning. In order to achieve the best results from recording instruments and sound sources, especially as part of an ensemble, relying on processing alone for separation would be near-impossible. Some simple but really effective ways could be EQ LPF, HPF and band pass filters to control frequency content, compression to control RMS to peak ratio and noise gates to help control unwanted noise in a microphone.
25th March Pre-Production
I’m a firm believer that the key to achieving great-quality recordings and conducting recording sessions that are timely and well coordinated begins with organisation. Pre-production is the foundation in which this organisation sits and should be used to its full advantage in order to run a well-planned and informed session, helping to minimise logistical and technical issues. The more that you understand the requirements and wishes of a client, musician or producer, and the more that they understand how the recording process will work with attention to detail, the easier the sessions will be to manage and in turn the better quality performances and recordings you will get from them.
Through my research I’ve found some interesting thoughts on pre-production, mostly all advocating for starting as early as possible and with as much detail as possible with regular intervals for review. Some producers and audio scholars even suggest that the pre-production phase blends into production and is a non-linear process in which a composition moves towards completion through rigorous stages of scrutinisation and re-evaluation.
Many resources such as Richard Burgess’ ‘The Art Of Music Production: The Theory And Practice’ (2013) and Justin Colleti’s article and podcast series 'Sonic Scoop’ '[Why Pre-Production is the Key to Great Records (2021)] detail the importance of pre-production. But in the book ‘What is Music Production?’ (2010), mastering engineer Russ Hepworth-Sawyer and music production academic Craig Golding present a system to pre-production that I’ve found interesting to inform my practice.
© Focal Press. Hepworth-Sawyer, R & Golding C ‘What is Music Production?’
Although these ideas are helpful they are more focused on the role of a music producer as opposed to a strictly recording engineer. Given that audio professionals commonly work as recording, mixing and/or mastering engineers under the label of a music producer, they are useful nonetheless considering the overlapping responsibilities of both/all roles
With this in mind I have been working on refining my own pre-production process that is detailed in the graphic below:
27th March Prima Star Power Pre-Production
One tip that I’ve picked up whilst working with clients is to record the pre-production meeting (with the client’s permission). This makes it much easier to refer back to the initial ideas and requirements of a project and sets a foundation for which to cross-reference your ongoing planning with during the re-evaluation phase.
Today was the pre-production meeting for Prima Star Power. Using my process above we discussed the project in detail and I was able to get a first idea of an overview of what was involved with the project and release plans, the band-line up and instruments involved, choosing a location and recording approach, the sonic aesthetic and reference material that the band were going for, begin to sketch out a plan for player and instrument positioning, mic choices and equipment choices, and early logistics.
Meeting Excerpt
This audio excerpt of the roughly 30 minute telephone meeting gives insight into the topics of conversation and pre-production.
Channel List
From this meeting I was able to put together a preliminary channel list and room plan
Timestamps:
00:00 - Overview
02:22 - Band Line-Up and Instruments
05:19 - Location and Approach
08:41 - Sonic Aesthetic
09:19 - Mic Choices
10:26 - Logistics
Room Plans
Track 1 - Wax Modelling: Lead Vox x2, BV x1, Electric Guitar x2, Bass Guitar x1, Keyboard x 1, Drum Kit x1
Track 2 - New York City Ballet: Lead Vox x1, BV x2, Electric Guitar x1, Acoustic Guitar x1, Bass Guitar x1, Keyboard x 1, Drum Kit x1
Considerations
My main concern about this session is having the vocalists in the room with the drum kit as they may be drowned out or have to compromise on quality with a low sensitivity dynamic microphone as opposed to a sensitive large diaphragm condenser that picks up a better high-frequency representation, so I aim to research the best positiong to help with this. This is particularly an issue for track 1. Due to the band’s plans to record a live video for the session and limitations with cameras we have to work within this single room. This however is part of the challenge as it means I have to adapt my plans to serve the situation.
I’m hoping to achieve good separation with a partial baffle in the isolation booth between the guitar amps on track 1, and again with the guitar amp and drum kit grouped together on track 2 as my research has indicated.
I’ve also began research into some methods of recording an acoustic guitarist/vocalist live and have settled upon a technique that uses mic positioning and polar-patterns to achieve suitable signal-to-noise ratios for each mic. There’s techniques that involved a single omnidirectional microphone placed midway between each source, a stereo configuration for the acoustic guitar and spot mic for the vocals, and simply having the acoustic guitar on a direct input. But I’ve found through research one of the best methods is to have a large diaphragm condenser for the vocals, angled up towards the source in the cardioid configuration from below. And a small diaphragm condenser close to the 12th fret of the acoustic guitar and positioned looking down at the guitar in a cardioid configuration. The option of using an omnidirectional microphone/config for the acoustic guitar would help add some saturation to the guitar track with the vocals and also give a roomier sound, picking up some of the reverberance around the room. However I’ve opted to use a third mic as a room mic for both sources, so that I can blend it with both spot mics and achieve similar results, but with more control. For this I’ll use a Neumann U87 roughly 10cm away from the vocalist, a Neumann KM184 for the guitar at a similar distance, and an Audio Technica AT4081 ribbon microphone as a room mic for its colourful properties placed at least 1.5m away.
28th March Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band Pre-Production
Today was the pre-production meeting for FIBB. Again following the pre-production process I’ve outlined I was able to discuss at length about planning for the session, as well as ask questions that will allow me to target areas to specifically research before the session. The meeting went very well, but It’s quite daunting to think about running such a large session as the potential for technical issues is high with so many players and again with the amount of sources there is to record it is going to be very challenging to get a high-quality recording of every instrument, especially in regards to separation and signal-to-noise ratio
Meeting Video
The meeting was recorded and shows me running through the space with the artist and discussing the best ideas for positioning, logistics and technical requirements amongst sonic aesthetic and reference material. The video below shows most of the full meeting, but please feel free to skips between the timestamps as it is 27 minutes long. Open the video in a new tab using the button below.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Overview
1:15 - Location and room tour
2:35 - Positioning early plan
06:50 - Channel list & positioning
07:50 - Tech spec & band line-up (also see tech spec below)
11:00 talking about the perc bringing vibe to the performance
13:30 Further positioning
15:00 - Sonic Aesthetic and vibe
16:55 - Line of sight and positioning / Piano
18:38 - Monitoring
19:50 - Various instrument set ups (Guitar, Bass)
21:20 - Video element cut?
21:33 - Logistics
23:39 - Drums
25:10 - Further logistics
Preliminary Channel List & Tech Spec
Room Plan
Considerations
My main considerations at this stage of production and planning are based on logistics, foldback, line-of-sight, and player/mic positioning.
Logistics
One of the largest challenges for a session like this is logistics, making sure that everybody knows exactly when/where to be and how the session will run. It’s unclear how many members of the band will be on the session at this point, but it will be in the range of 22-30, which is quite a large range to deal with. Therefore, I’ll research and plan for the maximum number of players and alter plans based on how many are available for the session. A large amount of organisation of the players will be done by the conductor, my main point of contact has been with Ferg (conductor) himself. I’m also considering hiring assistants for this session to help with set-up, get-out and running. With so many people in the room, likely all with questions it’s a good idea to have somebody who can run to and from the live room to help troubleshoot issues whilst I base myself at the console after placing my microphones. With all this in mind I’m planning on putting together a call sheet and information package for everybody involved.
Foldback and Talkback
With a limitation in headphone mixes and number of headphones, only a certain number of the band will be able to have foldback. I’ve narrowed this down to a section leader for each horn section, trumpet, sax and trombones respectively, the conductor, flautist, backing vocalist, drummer, pianist and bassist and guitarist. The lead vocalist will either monitor through headphones or through the control room monitors. Each section leader of the horns will also be my point of contact for soundcheck and monitoring issues for their entire section. I won’t have any dedicated talkback mics, due to the 24-input limitations of the SSL AWS 948 Delta mixing console we’ll be using. There are of course work arounds for all of these but it’s best to work within certain limitations in order for smooth running and speed.
Line-Of-Sight
I’ve positioned each player according to what I believe at this stage to be the best layout for acoustic and recording quality, and secondly accommodating for ample line-of-sight between the players. Each player needs to see Fergus the conductor at all points, so he is central in the room layout between the main baffles. This includes the lead vocalist who can see the conductor through the window of the control room on the mezzanine floor above (beginning where the ceiling height change is). Most of the players can also see the bass player and at least one drummer. These are the players that have been prioritised for line-of-sight, as for the horn sections, the section leader will be prioritised for line of sight and will be able to communicate to their section second hand. If the lead vocalist is using the control room monitors for foldback then he will be able to use the visual monitor with cameras for his line-of-sight to the backing vocalists and conductor.
(6.09.23 update - we did use the control room monitor for the line-of-sight of the lead vocalist which worked very well!)
Player & Microphone Positioning
I’m yet to finish my research on the best methods for each instrument as there are a lot of new instruments I have never recorded on this session, namely horns, woodwind etc. I’m also going to be experimenting with a few new (to me) mic positions, particularly with the vocalists and drummers that I hope to detail in this blog in the coming weeks.
The main positioning considerations from pre-production will be following the principles I’ve detailed above in my research on the subject of signal-to-noise ratio and neighbouring instrument interference. This is to group the rhythm section together behind the moveable baffles with added T-Bone baffling (see below). Comprising two drum kits, the bass guitar (D.I), the guitarist and his amplifier and the percussionist, this will likely be the loudest area of the room. The second grouping will be the horn sections in the centre of the room, and slotted behind this will be the grand piano and flute that are relatively quieter. The backing vocalists will be isolated in their own booth either around one mic or between a stereo pair, and the lead vocalist isolated in the control room with myself and my assistant engineer.
There will also be a second electric guitar played by the lead vocalist in the control room, with the option of an amplifier in the air-lock room adjacent to the control room, or plugged directly into a jack-tie and into the desk.
T-Bone Baffle
The T-bone baffle is an ad-hoc solution to baffling, it’s fairly effective from experience and also allows players to see over the top so line-of-sight is preserved. As long as the sound source is below the sheet or foam then you can achieve good separation results in conjunction with microphone choice and positioning. I plan to use a number of these on both the big band and Prima Star Power sessions for various scenarios.
(06.09.23 Update - T-Bone baffle example)
6th April FIBB Call Sheet and Correspondence
Update on the FIBB session, we’ve now confirmed the amount of players attending the session and I’ve booked two assistant engineers for the day. The line-up is now confirmed as the following:
27 members - 1x Conductor, 2x drummers, 1x percussionist, 1x bassist, 1x guitarist, 1x pianist, 4x trumpet players, 4x trombones, 2x alto Sax, 3x tenor saxophonist, 1x baritone saxophonist, 1x bass saxophonist, 1x flautist, 3x backing vocalists, 1x lead vocalist/electric guitarist.
I’ll also be working with assistant engineer Yvonne Mutemi for set-up assistance before soundcheck and assistant engineer Xanthe Sparke from soundcheck onwards for assistance with running, artist liaising, and general engineering assistance.
We now also have a videographer Kyle Brumpton who will be filming both the Prima Star Power and FIBB sessions.
I’ve been in regular correspondence with everybody and have now sent out a call sheet/information package. I’ve sent the band’s demo to the videographer and assistant engineers, and both assistants have been sent the preliminary channel list.
9th April Prima Star Power Live Concert
Yesterday (8th) I had the chance to go and see Prima Star Power in concert at their single launch in Leeds. This was really helpful as it was my first time seeing the band perform. It allowed me to make an in person judgement on the musical and performance style of the band, and also see how they interact with each other on stage. I watched them play both the tracks they’ll be recording with me, and was really able to to focus on each element, which has given me a better idea of the types of microphone choices I’ll make for my session.
I highly recommend going to see an artist live prior to your production or recording session as it gives you a different perspective on their music. Unfortunately I wasn’t available for Ferg’s imaginary Big Band album launch earlier in the year, which also would have been very helpful to attend!
Sonic Aesthetic
With references provided by the band I’ve now made the choices for the recording approaches to each instrument. As an overview the band want a sonic aesthetic that’s synonymous with that of late 60s/early 70s rock/pop bands. The Beatles, Karen Dalton, 60's Stones, Leonard Cohen and The Byrds are great references for this sound. Particularly the drum sound of the Beatles and the vocal sound of Leonard Cohen. For a more modern recording reference I have been listening to the album ‘The Car’ by Artic Monkeys. The blend of the kick, snare sound and bass guitar in particular in this album is a great reference for the rhythm section. I’ve also been listening to early Father John Misty records ‘Fear Fun’ and ‘I Love You, Honeybear’ for the interaction of keys and acoustic guitar that will appear on the band’s second track ‘New York City Ballet’. In general all these references give an aesthetic of live-studio recording with an embracement of bleed and space, and tonal characteristics shaped by the instruments and room characteristics as opposed to processing. With this in mind I’d like spend a good amount of time at the beginning of the session experimenting with and instrument tones and rehearsing with the band before recording
12th April Prima Star Power Session
Yesterday (11th April) was the the Prima Star Power session, I made my final preparations with all equipment booked and research completed. The session was a great success with both tracks recorded in a day. The band did about 22 takes and we had lots of time before and during tracking to tweak instrument tunings, tone, mic placements etc. By the end of the session we had refined the sound we were looking for. Below are some of the points of interest in regards my mic choices, positioning and notable events.
Drum Microphoning
I used a method of drum microphoning that I have been developing over my time studying my master’s degree, that primarily focuses on the tonal and dynamic variation and balance of the instrumentalist as opposed to shaping this balance in post-production.
The drum sound is based on the reverse Glyn John’s array, that gives a good stereo image or the kit and fairly balanced representation. This will be a pair of Neumann U87 large diaphragm condenser microphones and will make up the main sound of the drum kit.
As this array gives a left-biased kick drum image, we’ll use close mic array for the kick drum itself. The main spot mic will be the AKG D12VR for the kick in, it will provide most of the low end for the kick and punchy sound. This will then be blended with an SE Electronics RNR1 ribbon microphone, that will be suspended on the upper shell of the kick drum, close to the drummer’s knee. As ribbon mics are bi-directional is will be pointing at the shell of the bass drum and the ceiling, also picking up some of the cymbals. I find this blend of kick drum very unique and very effective for giving a sense of room and saturation in a recording. As the generally flat responsed RNR1 has a roll off around 3kHz, you get a dark but smooth sound. It adds an airy, spaced sound to the kick that when blended well with a good punchy close mic can yield great results.
For the snare drum we used another mic array of a top mic and snare-shell side mic. The darker properties of the Sennheiser MD441 worked very well with muted snare tone we settled on (towel) and when blended with the airier snare-shell sound results in a bright, crisp, but still full bodied sounding snare drum. For the shell we used the AKG C451 small diaphragm condenser
Vocal Positioning
The two lead vocalists were placed perpendicular to the baffles and drum kit on track 1, with their U87 mic’s in cardioid position. The idea was to use the side rejection to target only the vocals and not get any slap back of the drum kit in the vocal track. This idea worked to an extent but I believe there was a better positioning we could have achieved. Perhaps further still from the drum kit, or avoiding the single room tracking altogether and opting for more separation. However this was done mainly to account for the band’s video requirements.
On track 2 we had a much better balance of the band overall, partially due to the lead vocal now being in the booth. With the electric guitar amp now next to the drum kit in the main room and sounding good, perhaps a technique that put the two vocalists in the booth together and the amps in the main room would have worked better sound wise. However, still accounting for the video this was the limitations we had to work within.
14th April Final Preparation and Research for Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band Session
Today I’ve been making my final preparations for the big band session, concluding my research on different recording approaches for specific instruments. I’ve found some good resources on trumpet, trombone, saxophone, flute, piano and vocal recording that I intend to use as part of my session. These were from Owsinski’s ‘The Recording Engineer’s Handbook’, Parsons’ and Colbeck’s ‘Art And Science Of Sound Recording’ as well as resources on microphone shootouts on YouTube. All these resources were great at teaching me specific techniques for close mic’ing brass and woodwind instruments, but many of them lacked in information about recording these instruments with microphone array techniques, with the instruments in sections.
One of the main resources I found that had great information on microphone array recording techniques was a fascinating documentary called ‘The Art Of Recording A Big Band’ featuring legendary producer-engineer Al Schmitt. The other good resource for this was ‘The Recording Engineer’s Handbook’ ‘s producer-engineer interviews with Bruce Botnick on orchestral recording, Michael Bishop on jazz/classical microphone selections and Al Schmitt himself on bleed/leakage when recording an orchestra, mic positioning for horn sections and some other notes on line of sight/player positions for big band recording.
‘The Art Of Recording A Big Band’- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wHupSQvR2w
These resources mainly detail fairly simple stereo microphone techniques but have specific notes and tips for recording each instrument in regards to proximity and targeting certain parts of the instrument which was very helpful.
21st April Ferg’s Imaginary Big Band Session
On the 17th April the big band session finally took place and was a great success. The whole day consisted of around 11 hours work for myself and my assistants, with the band arriving between 16:00 - 18:00 for soundcheck. We weren’t tracking for very long with only 6 or 7 takes and around 4 full takes, but that was testament to the quality of musicianship, arrangement of the band and the hours of logistics and planning that was put into the session. This meant that the session could just play out according to the plans and technical difficulties were kept to a minimum. Some changes were made to my original plans based on the soundchecks and the aspiration to tweak positions etc for optimum sound. But the band were very happy and I learnt a lot from the session.
Positioning Changes
The main changes in player and microphone positioning was with the horns sections, backing vocalists and lead vocalist.
Brass & Woodwind
The horns were the most challenging aspect to position correctly, as they were all so close together but I wanted to get a good degree of separation between them. My original plan had them positioned in an L shape, but I realised that it would be better to position them in a V-shape to avoid slap back echo from other instruments and also help with polar-pattern rejection over a much larger stereo configuration area than previously realised. This also worked better for the videographer, and the conductor who now had the brass and woodwind both together. I realised early on that the trombone section would have to be at the front due to the physical length of the instrument, something I had earlier overlooked. This worked well in the end also switching the trumpets to go behind the trombones as the louder instrument. I place the better microphones (CM67SE Valve Large Diaphragm Condensers) at the front of the trombones in spaced pair stereo configuration, this then picked up both the trombones and trumpets. The trumpets then had their own spaced pair of MD441’s.
The Saxophones were picked up with a pair of AKG C414’s in an X/Y configuration with a spot mic (Beyerdynamic M160 Ribbon) on the baritone sax. The flute mic changed from the AT4081 ribbon to the MD441 as the former was slightly too harsh sounding.
Vocals
The lead vocals position changed to face the monitors with added acoustic isolation attached to the microphone stand. Alongside the polar-pattern rejecting the sound from behind and keeping the studio monitor volume relatively low this yielded a very good separation. The vocalist Conall then used the studio monitors for both audio and visual foldback. The Neumann FET U47 was an excellent choice that complimented the jazz vocal style very well.
The backing vocalists sang around an omnidirectional Neumann U87, which picked up a 360º mono signal. We positioned each vocalist to blend volume wise in the room, effectively beginning the mixing stage during tracking.
Guitar
Finally we recorded the second electric guitar that had a solo directly into the local jack-tie of the mixing console, this gave a very unique dry and analogue sound and negated the use of another separate use for a guitar amplifier.