Day after Recording Imani Republic

The first recording session of Imani Republic.

The Band - Imani Republic (Christian Band)

It was a full-on day in the Neve studio, trying to get everything set up to record Imani Republic Band with a limited booked time available for the session. I created a microphone input patching sheet as a guideline for us to follow and give ourselves a quicker setup time. I listed all of the microphones we were going to use the night before the recording session. I researched what microphones were going to be dedicated to what piece of the drum kit and what position to place the microphones. I also researched what microphones would be best to use on the amplifiers the band was going to use, and where to place the microphone when directing towards the speaker cone. The input dropbox patching sheet worked ok, but l really needed a blank sheet with only the input numbers and the rest of the sheet blank, so l could plan the session better.

We ended up adding more microphones to the drum kit, and that decision increased our set up time, plus scribbling all over our microphone run sheet was a pain.

Setup Time

Changes made to microphone input dropbox patching sheet

The setup time blew out to over 3 hrs, so we had to make some compromises quickly. It didn't take us very long to set up ProTools for the session and to have the Neve studio up and running. The main problem was changing our microphone setup and making sure all the microphones were in the right inputs.

The Imani Republic recording session in progress

Lessons I learned on Saturday.

• If a piece of equipment isn't working the way you want it to, Fix it on the spot and don't do any recording. The stereo DI Box wasn't working because l was unfamiliar with how a stereo DI Box worked (I should have fixed it asap instead), I started recording the session as we were running out of time and I thought to myself l will fix the DI Box later, huge mistake, as I missed out on some good audio recording.

• If it's a short live recording session, and the band is quieter than the drummer, you are better off to use partition baffles straight off.

• I needed to ask the bass guitarist and guitarist if they could turn up their volumes on their amplifiers, as I wasn't getting their instruments balanced correctly through my mono overhead microphone. My backup plan was to use the DI Boxes, (that is where l let myself down), as l should have had the stereo DI Box working at the beginning before we started recording.

• Using the patch bay compressor Distressor EL8-X compressor worked great. kick drum pedal broke through a song and there was not a replacement kick pedal for him to use. The drummer managed to fix it, but that took up valuable time when we were working to the clock.

• It was good to have the bass guitar patched into the compressor (Distressor EL8-X) and see it working.

• All the headsets were working and Phil used a talkback microphone to communicate with me about headset levels for each member of the band.

Distressor EL8-X compressor working bottom left.

First-time jitters

On recording a live band, I think it went pretty well. I really need a lot more experience in this type of work, and to learn more about recording techniques and alternative problem-solving.

Research the Night before the recording session

l did some research on how to save each recording take into the Playlist by using a short cut keyboard command. My objective was to give Phil and his band as many of the takes of the songs and spend less time on the computer and more time recording, so they could (mainly Phil) go through later and pick out the best version/s. The only downside of the recording on to the DAW was the band didn't want to play with a click track going.

Conclusion of the day's recording.

It was a great experience in learning how any unforeseen situation could have an impact on a project. Learning quickly how to resolve any problems and coming up with a solution quickly can keep the vibe of the recording session on track.

We wanted to record 2 songs with the band's rhythm section which we did, and next, we are working towards getting the vocals down.

I visited the YouTube tutorial below to help make the ProTools workflow quicker for recording the band Imani Republic.

Pro Tools 11 - #15 - Comping Takes, Playlist Recording and Editing.

https://youtu.be/kq5_yM63FtQ

Reference

Pro Tools 11 - #15 - Comping Takes, Playlist Recording and Editing. (2015, June 23). Retrieved November 15, 2019, from https://youtu.be/kq5_yM63FtQ.