Live recording and PA duty

Date: 18/12/09
Duration: 8hrs

I was asked by a band I know to manage the desk during one of their performances. They were to be joined by another trio on stage as well as a singer on few of their performances. They never had to manage so many musicians at once so therefore they asked if I could do it for them. Their usual sound man is on holiday and they weren't confident enough to do everything themselves. I agreed to help them and asked if it was okay for me to record their performance for part experience and also to add to my portfolio of work. They agreed and I traveled to the performance venue (smallish pub/cafe) 10 min outside Nottingham city centre.

My equipment:

• Behringer XENYX 2222 FX mixer
• Boss BR-600 Recorder
• 2 Shure SM57 mics
• 2 Rode NT1-A mics
• Pair of headphones
• Assortment of audio cables

When I arrived there I had roughly 1 hour to do the sound check which is normally more than enough but complications with monitor placements and feedback, we were still not finished when the first of the audiences started to arrive. We had further problems when the band's PA desk ran out of inputs. Their mixer was relativity small and quickly ran out of mic inputs when it was revealed that the trio they were performing with were to use multiple instruments as well as backing vocals for the singer.
I overcame the problem (just about) by using inputs on my mixer and sending multiple instrument back to their desk in stereo. This obviously limits the flexibility of having one sound per channel but time was of the essence so we had to go ahead.

 Guitar cabinets were miked up with either my microphone or their own, there was a keyboard which went direct to the desk, and couple of microphone stands for the singers.

To record the performance I took the studio monitors out from the band's desk and fed it into my desk and the headphone outs from the desk which went into the line input of the Boss multi-track recorder. This process worked rather well (better than I thought) and I managed to capture decent quality performances.

A huge problem I faced during the performance was the fact that I had to sit pretty much in front of the speakers and near the band. This obviously meant I couldn't do my duties properly. It was hard to distinguish between the sound coming out of the speakers or the guitar amp and what the overall balance was. After a unnerving first half I managed to get a another sound check during the break. This time I managed to get a sound which both the band and I was happy with.
The second half of the performance went more smoothly with minimal glitches.

After the performance I quickly reviewed the recordings, some of which I was happy with and some of which I was sure could not be salvaged. I talked with the band members and talked about possible future performances and me managing the desk and doing a official live recording for the band. After packing up everything I headed back to Derby.


 Note
The picture at the top of the page is NOT from the date of performance. It was taken after returning home. I had forgotten to take my digital camera with me on the occasion. I took the picture above to demonstrate the setup used. If I obtain photos of the event from the band members, I will update the post or post a link to where these photos can be viewed.

The recordings made at the live performance will be posted on another posting soon. I will need to tidy them up and general enhancements.

Recording Samples for Presentation/Demo

 Date of recording: 11/12/09

 Date of processing: 12/12/09

Total Duration: 3 hours


As part of my module (Computer Music Systems) I have to do a presentation on a piece of music creation/editing software. Aside from doing an overview of the system I have to perform a demonstration showcasing the abilities of the software. The Software I'll be presenting is Pro Tools 8 and I decided to do a short demonstration of its Elastic time/pitch functionality. Demo showing the ability to shift transients and pitch of a piece of a audio fluently with minimal (hopefully none) artifacts.
To showcase this functionality I had to record a piece of audio which has deliberate mistakes in them (this case timing). This was easily achieved by playing the guitar to a click track most of the time but ignoring it at other times.
I used a classical guitar for the recording. I used a large diaphragm condenser microphone running straight into the soundcard. The song in the recording is a extract from the animated movie called the 'Laputa: Castle in the Sky' by Miyazaki (Ghibli studios) and the composer is Joe Hisaishi.

I chose a suitable tempo (95bpm) and arming the click track I hit record. I played it through once and I stopped recording. Judging the length of the track I went back re-recording the track several times (to get the best performance). However I was unable to get a take I was happy with (excessive string noise, weak notes & chords etc) I decided to break it in halves and record the separately. Unfortunately, when it came to joining them together they sounded unnatural and forced. I took an hour off and decided to tackle it again. I took few takes the full length of the extract and finally I managed to get a recording I was happy with.
The only processing the guitar track needed was slight boost on the gain (roughly 4~5dB) just to bring it up to normal level (peaks hitting 0dB or just under). There was no compression applied (that will probably be done at the presentation).

For the drum sample which is supposed to accompany the guitar, my initial idea was to record acoustic drum and process it at the presentation but due to time constraints I used one of the drum loops inside Logic 8 to save time. I chose a sample that I liked and which I felt fitted the guitar track and I loaded it into Sample editor. Here I highlighted a snare (downbeat) and I shifted it so it will go out of time. Idea is to for me to correct this at the demo section of the presentation for Pro Tools using Elastic audio.

Once I was happy with the results (samples sounding good but out of time), I aligned next to each other to see how they sounded together. There is a snare misplacement early in the song plus guitar comes in little late. Drum is fine through rest of the song except the guitar goes way out of tempo near the end which will be corrected in Pro Tools.
I bounced the faulty track in WAV format and I transferred them to my stick drive ready for the presentation.

Mixing & Mastering a Track (Parallel Compression)

Date: 4/12/09
Total Duration: 4 Hours (2hours Mixing + 2 Hours Mastering)

I got a request from a friend to mix a track he has been working on for a week. Fortunately he also uses Logic 8 so it was easy to bring the mixes to my place. He saved his project file along with audio files into a external hard-drive and uploaded all data into my hard-drive using Firewire.

I started by mixing the tracks (correcting level, EQing, compression etc) to give general balance to the song. I added generous amounts of reverb to the drums because the drums dry sounded unnatural and it didn't fit right in the song. Instead of using onboard reverb in Logic, I chose to use the reverb rack inside the Guitar Rig 3.

To do this I needed to create a auxiliary channel to tap off some of my original signal to send to the reverb fx.

The dry and effected signal (wet signal) was combined on a another Bus. I created a another audio stereo track where the input was the Bus where the 2 signals combined. This allowed me to record the 2 signals onto 1 stereo track (requires less CPU power running 1 application rather than 2).
After I finished with the drums, I mixed the guitars then the bass guitar. When I was happy with the final product, I bounced the track to a single stereo WAV file.




Mastering the Stereo Track

Using Parallel Compression

I thought of using this technique (also known as NYC compression) reading a article in a MusicTech magazine. I created a bus where the compression will occur and tapped off some signal from the audio. Idea is to create 2 channels with the same audio (one dry another compressed)and mix them to personal taste. The wet signal will have more extreme compression setting dialed in but this will be mixed with the dry signal to give the desired outcome. This create greater punch to the mix and raises perceived loudness.

I constantly watch the level meter to make sure the signal doesn't run too hot (go into digital clipping)



On the wet signal, I rolled back the high signals because it was running slightly too hot and was audibly unpleasant. After making sure the levels was correct and there was no inconsistency, I bounced the track. (The combined signal after eq was more pleasant)

The Blue signal is the original signal before the Parallel Compression and the White is after. Pictures show the dynamic range has decreased and audibly the perceived loudness has increased dramatically. It increased the punch and presence of the mix.

New Composition 29/11/09

Date: 29/11/09
Duration: 5hrs

New instrumental song created entirely inside Logic 8 (including 3rd party plugins). No external sound source was used in the composition of the song. Guitar and bass was plugged directly into the Line in of the Soundcard (MOTU 828 MK2) and using emulations/digital guitar amps.


Recording Guitar

I originally had few riffs I was playing around with which eventually I added more parts to it, turning into a song. But because I wasn't initially going to record a song, I didn't want to start miking up guitar cabinets and going through the whole process (plus noise issues). So I decided to play the guitar directly into the computer using simulations. I would normally reach for my Line 6 pod but unfortunately its on a loan to my friend so I had to settle for plugins.


Here are some of the plugins I used to record Guitar & Bass:


Guitar Rig 3 is a in-depth guitar FX and cabinet simulation. It allows me to combine loads of guitar fx such as reverb, delay, phaser etc along with my choice of Distortion. Cabinets can also be hand picked (they usually are loaded up with 'matching cabinets' but others can be combined. There are also options to change the miking position/s of the virtual cabinet (close, distant, angled miking etc) and therefore is very useful and adaptive to different projects I'm working on.
Unfortunately I only own the demo version which is a cut down version (and turns off automatically after 30mins) but offers great variety of sounds to work with.

Guitar Amp Pro is a in built plugin for the Logic 8 DAW system. It is no way as variable as the Guitar Rig 3 but has few decent settings. I used it to track overdubs for the guitar to thicken the up.
I also ran the Bass sound through it to add some dirty distortion on some parts of the song.












The simple 'Bass Amp' is also a onboard simulation with Logic 8. The sounds scope is limited and I usually will not use it unless I'm using clean bass sound (even then there are some distortion). I did however manage to obtain a good sound out of it eventually and I used it in conjunction with the guitar amp pro for some parts of the song.














Drums (Sequencing)

I used Ultrabeat found inside Logic 8 to create the drum parts in the song. I had ideas about the drum parts already in my head so it was just a case of entering the data into Sequencer/Piano Roll and adding to it. I added other embellishments after hearing the drums with the guitars (drum fills, odd half-time beat etc) to give it more interesting sound rather than sounding like a drum machine on a loop.
After making sure I had everything I wanted in place, I went about de-quantizing the drums (adding swing). This gives the illusion that the drums were played by a human being rather than a super accurate machine. When drums are too accurate, many people notices the clinical sound and instantly tell you it was a sequencer or a drum machine. Adding swing gives a slight human touch to the drums.


Finishing up

To finish, I listened back to the track many times and making sure nothing was out of place. I recorded overdubs mostly for the electric guitar and added extra snare drum to the existing drum just to add extra punch.
The track has only been briefly mixed so I will probably post another post going through the mixing of the track and possibly attempt at mastering