Recording solo artist - Song: Saturday

Date: 11/4/10
Duration: 4 hours

I visited the home of a solo artist I previously recorded for to help him record his material. I introduced him to Logic on mac and its many advantages and he took my advice and bought Logic express (Logic Pro Lite version) and has himself been doing some recording using his Mbox soundcard.

I was asked 2 weeks in advanced if I could come down and help him record, so I got in contact with the artist and asked him things he needed. I ended up taking several different microphones, extra xlr cables and my external hard drive.

When I arrived, we laid down the drum beat on which the guitars will be played over. We created the beat using Ultrabeat and tweaked the tempo and settled on 127bpm.

After recording the acoustics guitars, I had to use EQ to get them sounding more 'natural'. The on-board pre-amps on the mbox mini weren't great and I had to EQ the tracks quite extensively.
After tracking the acoustics guitars and bass guitar, the electric guitar was plugged into the mbox for DI and we used the guitar amp pro inside Logic.

After I briefly mixed the song using Logic's own plugins, I automated certain parts of the song for balance. I saved the project on the host HD as well as my external HD connected via Firewire 800. There was very little more I could do at the artist's home (no studio monitos, just pair of desktop speakers) so I left and once I returned, uploaded the files and tweaked the EQs and compressors til the mix sounded better.

After re-listening to the tracks back home, I was amazed how different the song sounded. Many fine details were not audible on the desktop speakers (such as buzzes unbalanced instruments). Then I realised the EQs I was applying back at the artist's home was not the fault of the actual recordings but that of the speakers. I was compensating for the lack of definition and frequency response of the speakers. It really brought home the importance of having a decent pair of monitors for tracking.

Our intention with the recording was not really to come out with a very polished piece of recording but to track the whole song so the artist can work on further and embellish is needed. I agreed (sometime during the summer holiday) to re-record the song at my place and couple other songs. I sent the mix (mp3 file) via email to the artist.

Here is a piece of the recording: