Recording in Pro Tools & mixing in Logic

Date: Recording 20/3/10 & Post-Production 25/3/10
Duration: Recording 5 hours + Post Production 4 hours

I recorded band named Enable Submarine along with two other friends at a project studio (not mine) which had a Protools LE system. No click track was used for the recording because the drummer was not confident she could play along with it. This made mixing outside Protools harder but since all tracking was done starting at the beginning it was not too difficult to import into Logic.

Recording

Acoustic guitar and vocals:

• Vocals were recorded using large condenser microphone
• Acoustic guitar recorded using 2 AKG C1000s, one on the front and another on the back
• Vocals and guitar also utilised 2 ambient microphones AB configuration (AKG C214s)

Bass guitar

• Played over the drums. Headphone mix created inside protools
• Bass was recorded DI and cab was also miked. The two signals give more option when mixing.

Drums

• Recorded over the vox/guitar track.
• 2 overheads (C214s) XY configuration, D112 for kick and SM57 for snare. No tom miking was necessary as drummer didn't use it for this particular song.
• Re-recorded several times to get the timing right. Drummer advised to play hihat open with more stick etc

Electric guitar

• Rhythm/lead guitar was recorded using 2 mics (C214 & Rode NT-1a)
• Mic side by side comparison, ended up using both together for fuller tone.
• Solo guitar was recorded using same configuration

 Post-Production

After the session, all necessary data was transferred to my external hard drive and transported to my project studio. As there are no method to save project files on protools to be opened inside logic, I had to manually import them and name each track, colour code them and pan them to necessary positions.

  (individual files had to be tested and compared to the bounced track from the protools session)

After importing all necessary files into Logic, I went about sorting the levels out. One of the problem that was immediately spotted is the overall low level nature of the recordings. Under the circumstances in recording, the levels seemed reasonable but after being transferred, it seemed to have drastically dropped in volume. I went about inserting a gain insert on most tracks to solve the problem.

(as you can see, many of the channels have a gain insert in them to solve this low level problem)

I treated drums, bass guitar, acoustic guitar with parallel compression. This boosted their presence in the mix and made their sounds punchier. The inserted compressor inside the parallel bus is dialed in with normally extreme settings and gradually mixed in with the original signal until desired results are achieved.

(above shows the drum parallel compressor with hard-ratio dialed in. There is also a HF shelf boost to make the hi-hats shimmer more in the mix)

The vocals were treated using two compressors after one another. The first compressor to tame the high energy transients and the second one to balance the overall body of the voice.

All reverb featured inside the mix was handled by the external Lexicon MX300 rack with a custom settings dialed in.

All compression and most EQ was handled using the Focusrite Liquid mix 16

There were problematic areas in the song were signal was running too hot and it was going into digital clipping (with the limiter in place). I manually drew in automation areas concerned and tweaked the levels (mostly the vocals)

After finishing the mix I reviewed it several times to make sure the balance was right then discovered couple of areas where the drums suddenly dropped out (problem with automation) was fixed quickly and the mix was done.