Week 9 Photo Challenge: Producer's Choice

This was one of my favorite projects. Something that I have been trying to do lately is work on my live audio skills. This recording was done with a friend’s band. It was suppose to have vocals but the vocalist couldn’t make it, so it became an instrumental. We recorded two songs. The plan was to do a scratch track as a reference then track them individually to the scratch track. In theory, this seems simple.

First was the set-up. Since there were no vocals, we had a drum kit and an acoustic guitar. I miked the guitar with a stereo pair of microphones.  One was aimed at the hole for the direct sound and the other at the frets to pick up some of the fret noises. For the drums, we had another stereo pair for the overheads, a SM 57 on the snare, another stereo pair on the Toms and a Beta 52 on the kick. There were eight tracks total. I had to patch the 1-2 DAW outs to 23-24 monitor inputs to be able to monitor in protools. I assigned a master fader, and after some fiddling with the Aviom system, we were in business and ready to begin.

The scratch track went well. I ran into problems when we tried to record the guitar. The guitarist had trouble keeping rhythm. I decided to create a click-track and had to tap out the bpm. I thought that would have been the solution to that problem but he was still having trouble. I decided to let him fly solo and have the drums track to his solo. That proved to be troublesome as well at first. Then he eventually was able to get into the groove.

After a few tribulations, the session was over and it was time to edit. I listened to it raw a couple of times for the best takes. I decided to go with the second one. It kept the rhythm the best and the two of them seemed more in tune. From my initial analysis, it was drum-heavy. I needed to create a space for the guitar to shine and breathe. I did some fine-tune EQ-ing and listened again.  It sounded better and just needed to be brought up in the mix. I added a delay to the guitar to make it sound more spacious and full. That was the presence it was lacking and that instantly made a difference. One last listen and it was complete.