On the weekend Mike and I recorded the last band for LOCAL ANIMALITY YAY!
We have been anticipating this recording since march this year. We have had out pre production plan since February as well. It was interesting to look back at this plan and see how our recording process has chance since then. The drum set up was pretty different to what we concluded would be the most effective way to record drums. The guitar mic set up in the original Pre Production plan was pretty similar to to how we have been tracking guitars. Only we haven't been using room mics just getting a nice stereo AB pair that we can pan and layer easily has been working really well so we decided to stick with this too.
I had to run sound for an event on the Friday night before recording so Mike went in and set up the drums and mics with Lewis from the band.
When we went in on Saturday it was pretty easy to get the guitars and amps in so we were set up and sound checking around 10 am. The guys were all so helpful it was one of those really chatty sessions where the band were asking us a lot about what were doing. This is something I really like to do as it shows me what I can teach and what I still need practice at.
We were tracking drums, bass and scratch guitar and vocals for a few hours in the morning before working out how were were going to run the rest of the afternoon. We had a few guitar layers to track and we had a few different mic set ups that we wanted to use for the different amps they brought in. They had a Fender Hot Rod and a Vox AC30 for lead and rhythm as well as an acoustic guitar that they wanted to track.
We decided that we would use the classic guitar mic combo that we had been using on one of the guitar amps for the rhythm guitar and tried a different combo for the lead on the fender amp. Our classic guitar mic combo is a MD421 and a Royer 121 as a spaced pair. We were planning on using a different mic combo for the second amp but the guitarist REALLY insisted that he knew best and wanted us to track with one mic. I eventually gave up and we just tracked the second guitar part with one mic this was super annoying but in the moment I really didn't want to argue with this guy and it sounded fine!
We used a spaced pair of C451b's on the acoustic guitar which were nice a full and bright like we wanted! We had a few issues with tracking that as the guitarist moved around a lot which then changed the phase and the volume of the two mics. We did a few takes and managed to get one that was consistent.
The next week we went in a did a vocal session with the lead singer and their bass player who was there for moral support. This session was super interesting as the vocalist has a very unique voice and sings pretty flat consistently however has a super unique tone. We struggled to get takes that were in pitch. Mike and I knew that we would need to use Melodyne to fix these notes up. It was interesting to have this conversation with the band and we all agreed that that is what we needed to do to fix these few notes.
All in all this was super successful session and we are so stoked to be finally finished tracking and keep mixing this thing!!
Stay tuned!!
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