Week 15 – AA1 – Final Recording

I recorded a young three piece band named Unknown Truth. An eight hour recording session and everything got done. Apart from a little mishap with the routing of the headphone sends, everything went well. The recording itself went very smooth. Four takes were done and the final one was judged as having the best vibe. Only one quick drop in each was required for the guitar and the bass. The vocals were recorded in the live room. The guitar ended up being double tracked. Overall I’m pretty pleased with the recording, although I still feel I have a long way to go. The snare especially sounds flat and I probably should’ve used baffles more to tame the room sound. The band was extremely happy with everything so I am happy about that. They got to take a rough mix on CD home with them at the end of the session and got yelled at by some old man from Scott Theatre telling them to turn it down when they blared it in the parking lot. Ahh rock n roll.

The initial mix took around 15 hours. Much of this time was spent mucking about with the snare drum and the vocals. The snare doesn’t have any ‘crack’ to it and no amount of equalising, as I found, was going to help. The vocals (and the drums in general) have the room sound imprinted on the recording. Baffles around the back of the kit and around the vocalist would have helped. In the end I scrapped the first mix and started again with a fresh outlook. This time I used the room sound instead of fighting against it. This kind of thinking certainly helped and the mix went smoother the second time around and got it done in six hours.

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Finished Mix

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Preproduction

Recording

Production

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Fieldhouse, Steve. 2007. “Audio Arts 1.” All seminars presented at the University of Adelaide from Feb to June.

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