A Great Recording Session, with artist Alex Mills

On Friday in Studio S6, we recorded an artist who writes his own original material. Alex Mills is a great example of how a seasoned singer songwriter can make a difference when it comes to keeping a session going smoothly.

The session started off with setting up the microphones we had discussed about a week prior to the session date. For this session we used:

Vocal

A Royer R-121 microphone and a Shure SM7B microphone sitting side by side with 2 popper stoppers. One was constructed with a metal mess grid design and the other was made of nylon material. The idea is to be sure to eliminate unnecessary sound while capturing the vocals.

Guitar

For the guitar, we used a Neumann KM 184 on the neck and it was aimed at the 12th fret. For the body sound of the guitar, we aimed the AKG C-414 at the body of the guitar. Alex was making sure the guitar microphones were positioned correctly so to record Alex Mills guitar sound.

Alex Pierce making sure Alex Mills is comfortable and ready to go.

For the ambiance

We were using the mid-side recording technique that uses 2 microphones. One microphone is set on a figure 8 setting and the other on a cardio setting. View the picture below to see how the microphones are placed.

We had trouble with a preamp just before recording Alex Mills, so we didn't get to use this technique though.

The microphones we were going to us were:

Royer K 121 (Figure 8 setting)

A Neumann KM - 184 (on cardio setting and placed above the Royer)

We thought we had a microphone problem with the Royer and replaced it with an AKG C-451. Guy worked out it was a preamp problem.

Equipment Gremlins

When we started testing all the microphones to get correct recording levels set, we unfortunately found the equipment was not working properly and we had to rethink the session.

There was a preamp problem that we were going to use for our ambiance sound and also a faulty DI Box which we had to exchange. Luckily we had Guy Gray who is our lecturer on Friday's. (A seasoned audio engineer veteran guru) Guy quickly diagnosed the signal flow problems and started re-routing the signal flow so we could start recording Alex Mills who had just arrived for the session. It was a great example of what can go wrong and how to work out solutions in a hurry.