Recording Phil's Christian band IMANI

This Saturday Phil and I have booked the Neve Studio to record his band 'IMANI'. The first session we are doing is recording the rhythm section live. The rhythm section consists of drums, bass guitar, keyboard and we are hoping the rhythm guitarist can make it as well.

I have made a floor plan of where to place the band's amplifiers in conjunction with the drums. When you are dealing with recording a live band, you have to consider the effects of the instrument's sounds spilling through all the microphones and keeping the spill to a bare minimum.

The idea is to have the sides of the amplifier to be angled facing the drum kit so that the speaker's sound won't be pointing at the drum kit microphones. I'm really looking forward to this technique. You also have to be prepared to shift the amplifiers a little to get the right positioning to stop so much spill from occurring. The only way you can actually know what is going on in the live room when you are in the control room, is to set up an overhead mono microphone, which will be set up over the drums. Once that is done, you can sit in the control room and listen to the balance of the instruments from the live room.

It is great that Phil and I have teamed up to do the session because it will cut down on setup time and we can communicate with a talkback microphone and a set of headphones and make minor adjustments when needed.

Once we have the microphones positioned the amplifiers set so there is not too much spill coming from them, and the overhead listening microphone sounds balanced. l will go searching for a good position to place the room microphones for recording.

I would like to see if l can create a really nice stereo effect by just moving the room microphones around by using the mono listening microphone and the 2 room microphones by themselves along with switching between microphones to get a good balance.

Setting up the Drums

Once we have set up the drum kit, we will be double-checking all the microphones positionings and check out all the microphone sounds. We will also make sure the overheads microphones are the same distance apart from the center of the snare drum skin, then check out the drum kits sounds balance in the control room.

How we are going to record the other instruments

We will be only using 1 microphone and 1 DI Box on each amplifier, as we want to blend the signals together. If the sound from the amplifiers doesn't sound too good, we have the opportunity to re-amp the signal we have recorded form the DI Box and feed the clean signal into another amplifier if needed.

Signal flow for Bass guitar

I need to talk to Phil about the bass guitar signal flow, along with thinking about putting the signal that is going through the DI Box and use the dbx 160A compressor on the signal flow route. Before it goes into the DAW, I just to make sure that the transients are more on an even dB level, while we are recording by stopping any clipping in the red and have a nice clean sound,

Session 1 / Record the band's rhythm section

The picture of the ProTools mixing console below, shows the Microphones we are considering we should use on the day's recording session, as long as they are available to do the recording session.

Vocal microphones will be entered before session 2

Left - I have also make a microphone run sheet for the session so we can quickly plug in the microphone cables into the Input patch box on the day.

First video below

How To Record Live In Studio

I found a couple of videos that l can use as a reference to get the most out of the session on the day. without using baffle partitions.

Second video below

Recording Your Band Live In 1 Room

The second video demonstrates how to use baffles. If we find the band is too loud, then we will use baffles of some kind.

First video below

How To Record Live In Studio below

Second video below

Recording Your Band Live In 1 Room

Below is Earth Wind and Fire - song September, Imani is using this song as a reference track, for their first song titled Give.

Below is the reference track for Imani second song titled -I Praise The Lord.

Reference song - Milestone

I Care 'Bout You

The Song titles may change later on as we get further into the recording sessions.

Milestone Business Planner

We created a Milestone planner to keep us on track. Details on the planner will probably change as we get into our project.

I'm looking forward to the finished product and see how l can improve on my skills.

References

Sound Lab, C. (2016, February 2). How to Record Live In Studio. Retrieved November 7, 2019, from https://youtu.be/lzXXHoY4x2U.

Studio,Inc, U. (2017, October 17). Recording Your Band Live In 1 Room. Retrieved November 7, 2019, from https://youtu.be/Ud-Le19No4U.