Recording (Take the Fall) band

 Date: 30 & 31 Jan 2010
Total Duration: 11 hours

 I've been approached via facebook from a band called Take the Fall. I know the members personally as I have played in different bands along side members of this particular band. I have stayed in contact with the members since and have previously discussed the possibility of recording for them. They are recently formed band and have not yet played live but would like to record some songs so they can upload it to websites such as Myspace. They told me they were unhappy with the audio quality of their own recordings and they had little experience of recording music.

The band is 3 piece, guitar, bass and drums. The guitarist is the main vocalist and the bass player does backing. They have recorded some songs in the past but lack of equipment and knowledge meant they couldn't achieve the standards that they wanted.

Planning

In the past I have recorded bands newly formed who were eager to record their songs but once they entered the recording stage they became unclear on what they wanted and songs weren't completed. Many times I have musicians say it sounded good in rehearsal but when it came to recording they were clueless on bar lengths and tempos they wanted.
These problems are more common amongst 'less experienced' musicians but I always discuss in detail with the band before we start recording about what they want. I'll discuss song structure, tempo, time-signature, drum mics, guitar overlays/overdubs, MIDI etc. Discussing the details before the recording stage allows us to save time and effort and allows us to just get on with the recording.

Knowing the members of the band made it easier to talk about how realistic their goals are. In any recording there are compromises and discussing these areas with the band made the whole thing run a lot smoother.

Recording

Drums were recorded first on which everything will be based on. We mapped everything we needed and aimed to achieve the best performance possible with minimal mistakes and keeping to the click track. We decided on using my in house drums because of the convenience and the drummer brought in his own snare drums and cymbals.

 

With the guitar, we reached a compromise to achieve the guitar tones he wanted from the rig I own. This is because the sounds from the guitarist's amp cabinet had a low hum and a slight but noticeable buzzing sound that could not be removed. After spending time tweaking the EQ settings and getting no where we moved on. 

We recreated his pedal board settings on my Line 6 M13 stomp-box modellerand ran two amps simultaneously. We experimented to find the best tones possible for the song and decided on a combination of valve driven amp and digital modelling.

Blackstar HT-5 valve amp

Line 6 Spider digital amp

Line 6 Pod XT pro

For bass the bass player brought his own rig. There were issues to begin with hum but everything was corrected. I used a compressor pedal (he didn't own one) to tighten up the sound. The bass player doesn't use a plectrum and therefore there are huge differences in dynamics in his playing which is generally a good thing but when recording it can become difficult without a compressor.

Bass amp similar model used for recording

The signals of both the bass and guitar was split and fed into the Line 6 Pod xt pro. The dry signal is recorded into Logic 8 and that can be routed back into the pod for fine tuning of sounds.

Vocals

Vocals were recorded on the 31st Jan but neither of us (me and the vocalist) thought it to be great performance vocally and we decided to record the vocals separately in the future again. 

I used the Focusrite Twin track pro for the vocals and I used the AKG C214 microphone to record it.

We decided it be best for me to work on the materials recorded so far and hand over a rough mix for the vocalist to practice with.

Rough Drum mix

After deciding on taking a rough mix home I quickly processed some of the drums and the guitar. The main thing I did was to reinforce the bass and the snare drum by triggering samples via MIDI. I did this inside Logic 8 by taking a length of recording (ie snare track) and going > Factory > Audio to MIDI groove templates.

 

 This generates MIDI notes according to time and velocity of the recording. Adjusting the velocity threshold allows to discriminate between different sounds in the recording (ie kick drum sound is picked up on the snare mic but it is much quieter so increasing the threshold will mean MIDI event will not be generated for this particular sound).
I did this for both bass and snare. I chose a sample which most suited the genre of music and created a MIDI track with all the notes. Now if I play back the audio the sampled snare will sound at exactly the same time as the real snare and this increases its presence and punch in the mix.

 

After few careful EQing and comping I handed the vocalist the rough mix to take home in a mp3 file format.

I will be posting a post soon in which I record vocals with the vocalist and do a proper mix on the song for which to publish to the band's Myspace page.

Note

While we were recording I realised the Shure SM57 microphone the guitarist brought with him was fake. I have in the past been a victim of a Chinese counterfeit of the same microphone and spotted the fake early in the recording. The fake microphone has harsh mid-highs and high frequencies. It is for the most part void of proper bass response.
Fake SM57 can be spotted by its capsule grill, internal wiring (real=colour, fake=black) and weight (real=heavier).
I advised the guitarist to seek immediate refund from the seller who apparently claimed it to be 100% genuine.