B&W audio Recording (CIU212)

Gathering and demoing Ideas for next trimester recordings sessions.

I 've been recording demo ideas on my iPhone and sending the ideas to Phil so that we can start constructing the songs for the B&W Funk Brothers. Phil and I have also been sharing videos so l can get a vibe on what Phil's influences are and the funk aesthetics in the music he listens to as well. Phil and l have found that since we are unable to meet face to face because of COVID-19 along with social distancing laws, we have had to turn to technology to keep our communication open. We use Slack, Zoom, mobile phone and an email connected to a shared Google drive to transfer any files through and for keeping up to date on our project.

Communication Breakdown.

• Zoom - we use for a quick face to face meetings and it also gives a chance to visually chat.

• Mobile phone - if it is really urgent or important to have a chat.

• Slack - to chat online and demonstrate video influences and play demos.

• Email - to make ideas accessible to each other. l have started using the shared Google drive to upload any ideas for rough Funk songs. (guitar riffs, bass guitar patterns, and vocal ideas)

Demo I sent Phil to listen to through Drac"s Empire Slack account.

How are we going to record the songs we create?

I will be recording all the guitar, bass guitar and vocals (one-half of the songs) from my home project studio, and Phil will be creating the other half of the songs at his own home project studio. We have created a shared folder on google drive or alternatively we can share the wav files with email links. Between the two of us, we should be able to record all the songs from the tracking through to mastering.

B&W audio.

This is my project studio, below (which you can see below) is where l will be doing all of the B&W Funk Brothers songs from.

One half of B&W audio - project studio.

Phil and I are using Pro Tools as our standard DAW software to record this project on, this will make it a lot easier to get through the sessions, once we start the recording process for the songs. We can help each other out with any problems.

Just a quick note on the Milestone Planner.

We have had to make some changes to our milestone planner. Since social distancing laws were introduced to our lives, (in the hope of controlling the spread of COVID-19), so this planner has now been updated due to the changes at SAE.

SAE has just announced that the campus break period has been extended by 3 weeks. I can use this time to make sure all the songs are demo ready to a high standard, and we can start tracking the songs quickly.

Recording Process.

Throughout the recording phase, l will be using a preamp to create an strong line-level form recording all the instruments plus vocals. Depending on the microphone, I will gauge how much gain I need to increase the preamp by, boosting the signal to an acceptable recording level, this can range from 30dB to 70dB depending on the microphone, if it's a condense or dynamic. The signal-flow will be routed into a compressor to help even out the transient gain levels. The compressor will also help with stopping bit distortion as I'm recording the track through the interface into the DAW. The preamp helps to raise the microphone level to line level.

For my DAW recording level, l will aim to keep it between 18dB and 10dB and create a nice wav transient without getting any bit distortion through any bit rate clipping. If l have trouble with the volume levels being too radicle from soft to loud, then I will add little more compression to even out the clips transient signal.

To record the electric guitar, I will be using a Shure SM57 microphone on the amplifier speaker between 150mm to 300mm distance away from the cone. I will listen through a set

of Beyerdynamic DT770 PRO Closed Studio Headphones - 250 Ohm to listen for the right tone that I feel will be best for each song's aesthetics.

I will also be experimenting with the proximity effort even though the Shure SM57 has been designed to attenuate this effect. This microphone is great for rhythm guitar recording as it exaggerates the frequency between 3kHz to 12kHz, so between the Laney amplifier and the Shure microphone, we can theoretical be able to get a good funk rhythm guitar sound with all the aesthetic present.

The other option of getting a great sound is by using microphone speaker placement techniques. The centre of the cone gives a bright representation of the guitar's tone and the more you move away from the centre of the cone to the side of the speaker, the more mid-range frequencies start to come through. It all depends on what I feel will give each song its own identity, to where I place the microphone.

DI Box. (My get out of jail card is the DI Box.)

Parallel Outputs

The DI Box is used to convert high output impedance signals to low output impedance signals. For example, a guitar is high impedance and a microphone is low impedance. DI Boxes also helps lower the high impedance nasty hissy single-coil pickup noise.

The DI Box can be used in a couple of ways:

1. main recording or backup tracking.

2. create some aesthetic tones for the microphone tracks.

The bass guitar is going straight into the DI Box as I don't have a bass guitar amplifier.

Different bass guitar string frequencies can spike a lot higher than others, so l will add just a tiny bit of compressor to stop the transient clip wav from distorting. I only want to add a tiny amount of compression. I have already started experimenting with using an outboard compressor to create more of even transients. I'm still working on my compression skills.

Bass Guitar wav

Editing and mixing the songs.

After each recording session on the milestone planner, we have allocated editing weeks during each recording session. For example, once we finish the guitar tracking for the allocated week, the following week I will be editing the guitar tracks and getting them prepared for mixing. It could be checking playlists recordings, and fixing up clip gain problems that require adjusting prior to mixing. The editing has to been completed in the allocated week to keep to the milestone planner right on track.

By us managing the editing as we go, will cut down on a vast editing session we would have to accomplish before we started to mix the songs. Once we have finished editing the tracks and double-checked them, I will make copies of the sessions and render the tracks so l have a fresh mixing platform to work from. The rendered copies of the songs will only have the render track in them, so the CPU isn't struggling as I don't want to have worry about CPU and RAM performance.

Mixing

All songs by mixing time, should be prepared to ‘only’ mix. I'm sure there still could be areas that need to be tweaked during the mixing, but I'm hoping it will be the minuscule. For example, the vocals should have:

1. all the editing done.

2. Cleaned up all the noises like lip smack, breathing, and words cleaned up, plus

3. all the clip gain basically adjusted correctly.

I'm looking forward to mixing and shaping the songs and giving each song its own individuality and identity, through aesthetic flavours throughout each track. I think mixing can be so creative and can make the mastering even better by making sure the mixing is well crafted (sizzling hot).

Mastering

I've only done mastering once and l didn't do a very good job on it at all, so l will be working hard on my mastering skills so I can bring the songs up to a professional standard.

Outsourcing Project - Coroda

With the outsourcing project 'Coroda', we have received all the information to do the project. The sound effects list, sound effect notes (referring use to a demo) of the sounds they need to complete their animation short film, which has reference audio sounds they require. The Coroda team (Samara Fouche & Daniel Santander Osorio) also have a reference to the sound track they would like us to compose.

With the current new ‘world order’ regulations in place with COVID-19, it is restricting us from collecting some of the live samples which we ideally need, to complete our project i.e. this project needs a lot of ‘sea’ samples, for example; sea waves splashing against the side of a boat. It looks like the bathtub is going to be very creative.

References

Huber, D. M., & Runstein, R. E. (2013).Modern recording techniques. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com

Lellis, C. (2013).Music production : Recording. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com