TCOM 433: Recording Project

i started writing my blog in my calender after march 3rd because my computer broke, now here is the culmination of those days.

2008-04-28T20:03:00.000-07:00

April 21st

Finished all of the surround mixes and threw them into compressor. this program is such a pain in the ass because i never know what i'm doing and the final product turns out wrong. when i presented it in class, all i got was stereo even though i set it up as a surround sound mix.

April 20th

I finished up all my stereo mixes and started the transition to surround sound, the way i organized it was that the vocals were in the center with the reverb in the left and right. I made it so the guitars were mostly in the front and their reverb went to the back. I set it up so the drums were in the center and the bass was mostly in the front and sub with some leakage to the back. I really dug the sound.

April 17th

Met with Stan and he told me that my bass was too loud and didn't need to equalize all my drums. i thought it sounded awesome but he said it was too processed. We added compression to it and raised the high end a little bit. We did it to back down. He threw a noise gate on the guitar so it wouldn't hum and then bused it to a reverb channel to cover up the cut off. After this I made the same changes to all my other songs and got them sounding pretty loud. I like loud music, especially hardcore.

April 16th

I finished back down because i'm supposed to meet with stan tomorrow. I added the gang vocals and bused them to their own reverb channel. I bounced it out and plan on showing it to stan tomorrow as the one track that i have time for.

April 14th

I fished wasted youth, this song has to be the hardest one i had. there were so many changes musically and every time i would adjust levels, it would sound horrible so i had to readjust. i tried putting a noise gate on the guitars because there was too much hum, but i couldn't figure out how it worked so i just muted the guitar whenever it wasn't playing. I finally got it to sound mediocre and called it a song. Once i get some compression on it, it should bring the lower parts of the song up and lessen the dynamic difference between the softer parts.

Aril 13th

I finished up beaten down. on the rough mix it sounded like the vocals were too loud so i piped those down. the filter i used on the vocal overdub wasn't working right either, so i took that off of it. I had to mess with the gang vocals because they were too loud so i set them all to different levels and bused them to reverb and it sounded alright. This is my favorite song, so i'll try to get more out of it once i talk to stan.

April 11th

I opted out of drinking tonight to work on beaten down. I got all the levels set and ready. for some reason the bass on this song sound muddy and distorted but i don't think there is anyway to fix it because it's the actual track that came through in recording. Since we had a lot of trouble getting the timing right for this song i don't think it would be an easy task to overdub it again. I set the levels and threw on a sweet vocoder like plug in on the vocal overdub. I'm planning on finishing it up this weekend.

April 7th

i worked wasted youth and i was working on setting all the levels for it. this song has lots of dynamic change in it, so i had to go through and listen to the song about 20 times to get everything right for each individual instrument. I set up equilizers on all the instruments to get the tone i wanted out of them. I got reverb on the vocals by busing that out to an aux fader. I gave up on this once wrestling came on though.

March 31st

I started back down in my free time between work and wrestling. I basically just got the levels set on it because it's kind of a crappy day and i don't feel like hanging out in the studio. I set up the equilizers on the guitars and added a little bit more power to the bass because having a double track wasn't cutting it.

March 24th

I started beaten down and wasted youth tonight. I really just listened to it and muted tracks and doubled others. i was trying to give it a little bit more oomf and i got a rough version of what i wanted out of them. i bounced them out and burned them to cd to listen to them on my shitty cd player to see what i was going to need to add and take down. There was too much bass in general so i'll turn that down in my later mixes.

March 18th

I couldn't stick to my monday regiment of working on songs last night because it was St. Patricks day and i ended up at the bar. I went back to working on paranoia. I put compression on the master fader and bounced it out and took it to my cd player. It sounded fine but it seemed like i was getting some phase distortion. I turned down the reverb that i set up and it sounded fine.

March 10th through 16th

SPRING BREAK... WOOO!

March 9th

Set up reverb on paranoia and retaliation. The vocals sounded great but i needed to cover up the parts where the vocals weren't sustaining. I doubled the gang vocals on paranoia because it sounded weak on the mix. I bused that through the aux channel that i set up for main vox and it sounds great. I also bounced out my rough mix of retaliation and let the band listen to it.

March 6th

I started on all the tracks and set some of the general levels on the songs. I set up aux tracks for all the songs and doubled bass and bass drum because they sounded pretty lame. I got rid of all the excess tracks so i could clean up the mix window and make it look better. I set up some groups on all the tracks i doubled and paired those together so it would balance out better.

Culmintating all of the PAst weeks

2008-03-03T17:29:00.001-08:00

Well we recorded 2 weeks ago on wednesday and thursday. it went off without a hitch. we were planning on isolating both guitars but the lead guitar was getting some gnarly hum so we moved it into the studio and surrounded it in gobos. We recorded 10 songs and only have to overdub on one or 2.

I've got some rough mixes up on the bands myspace, but both of those mixes were done in less than an hour, which means there wasn't much care put into them. I was going to get some work done this past weekend, but i left my firewire cable in my dvd class and didn't get it back until today, setting back the process a little.

Equiptment list and other Awesomeness

2008-02-07T17:57:00.000-08:00

LEAD
Peavy JSX head-16 Ohm, 125 watts.
Marshall 1960 cab(4x12) - 16 Ohm, 300 watts

RHYTHM
Marshall JCM 2000 head-160 Ohm, 100 watts
Marshall 1960 cab(4x12)-16 Ohm, 300 watts

BASS
Hartke head - 4 Ohms, 100 watts
Hartke transporter cab(4x10)- 8 Ohms, 300 watt

DRUMS
Bass drum with double bass pedal
High tom with resonator head
Floor tom with resonator head
Snare
Cymbals - China, Ride, Crash, High hat

We were discussing how we were going to mic everything at practice and we brought up the idea of using 2 mics on the bass drum. One actually inside facing where the hammers hit the head, and one facing inside. The one on the inside is to get a pop from the hammers and the outside one would be to get a good thump.
Anyone have any experience with how this works? it sounds plausible to me, but i want some feedback on it.

Tracklist for Recording:

Fight like Hell
Beaten Down
Eat Shit
Back Down
Left for Dead
Paranoia
Territory
Retaliation
Wasted youth
and our untitled closer

we didn't think we had 10 songs until we practiced, looks like none of us can count.

more Progress

2008-02-07T11:48:00.000-08:00

Tonight I'm going to get all the information for the instruments. I need to know the types of amps that we're going to be using, the guitars, effects, heads, and all that jazz.
I'll have that by tomorrow and it's going to rule.

Orientation to the Project.

2008-02-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

Jesse and I are going to work together

The band we are recording is a 5 piece with 2 guitars.

Both guitars are going to need to be isolated because they get their tone with the amps.

I think we can direct box the bass, I need to listen how it sounds without the amp to see if it'll come out clean through a direct box.

We're going to need to use 8 mics on the drums:

2 overheads, 1 on the floor tom, 1 on mounted tom, 2 on snare, 1 on bass drum, and 1 on the high hat.

We tune our instruments to drop C and we’re going to have one song tuned standard, so we need to use compressors that will balance out the sound and not take out too much of the lower frequencies. I really have no knowledge of which ones to use, so we’ll have to work that out.

I also have no clue as to how to make the headphone mix work, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

For post production, I know we’ll have to have a compressor and some reverb on the voice. We’re going to record gang vocals as well, so we’re going to reverb that too.

I’m going to try a couple different things for the guitars. I am going to use different compressors in protools on each one and see if it works. The bass I’m going to use an equalizer to add more highs to the final mix. I’m not sure how the drums will sound so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

I’m going to try to work with my TCOM 350 class to produce the final DVD for this. So it should be really awesome. Eventually we’re just going to make a bunch of the DVD’s and hand them out at a show when I quit the band.