unit 9 and 25 write up

Daisy Grace Wakefield Unit 9 and 25 Write up February 2015

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Unit 9 and 25 write up For units 9 and 25, I was put into group F with Ross and Harry and during the first three weeks we all worked together in creating three MIDI tracks and working on a given a daft punk track to practice our editing skills. When it came to the assessment period, Harry wanted to do a completely different song, one done by Muse called ‘Time is running out’ as he felt more comfortable with this one as he could play the bass line and Ross and I stuck with one of the three we created in the first three weeks. We asked Richard to play the drums for us on our tracks as no one in our group could play the drums and it was said at the start of the assessment period that Rich was one of the options for getting someone to play the drums for our tracks. Harry wanted to ask in people from outside of the college, which was another option for drums and also other instruments for example guitar, but those people in question were unavailable on the days we planned to use the live room. Direct input (DI) Harry was used on my track to play the guitar and bass, as he was able and comfortable in playing what I wanted on my track. This was also an easy way to get a live guitar and bass recording on my track and he was in my group and therefore had easy access to him instead of wasting time asking other people, I was able to DI (direct input) the guitar and bass and record when in the imac room and in studio B. I also felt that using a DI would have also been easier than waiting for our live room session and setting up a microphone in front of a guitar and playing it with it being picked up by a microphone, though the sound card. We had to book in another live room session as with our first session it was too early to try and ask someone to play the drums for us and the live room was also being used. We made sure we had access to the appropriate microphones for miking up the drum kit and we made a time lapsed video of all three of us setting the microphones for a drum recording. Recording the Drums We all decided that we would place the kick drum microphone in a position where it would pick up as much attack as possible and so Ross placed it as far into the kick drum as he could. We positioned the rack and floor tom microphones as close to the skin as possible, again to catch as much attack as possible. And we did this also with the top snare. We could not position the bottom snare as close because the microphone stand used would not support the microphone and would slowly fall down but was still in a reasonable position. The overhead microphones were placed in a ‘spaced pair’ set up meaning that the overheads were both equal distances from the centre of the snare drum on either side of the drum kit. We did this to catch as much reverb from the room and to sound as natural as possible. Planning Each time we had a session we would each talk about what we needed to get done in the session afterwards so that we stayed on target and did not fall behind. Once we all had what we needed, live drums, guitars and bass, I made a copy of my own track and the track given to us to edit so that once I was finished I could compare the difference between the two. Once our individual tracks were done, we all decided to split off and focus on our own tracks and also work on our own version of the track given to us. I also took screen recording of my editing process so that I could always look back to see what I had done and had left to do. Once I had finished with my screen recording, they were time lapsed.


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Own track Mix

BPM (Beats per minuet) With my track I wanted a fast BPM with a fast drum beat and a simple guitar and bass melody to it but I did not want it so fast that drum beat I wanted was near impossible to play, although if the BPM was not as fast it would not be as complex. Getting the floor tom volume just right was essential as the floor tom was the loudest out of all the drums, rack tom second. The floor tom is the most dominant drum in my track and so I needed to reduce the volume enough so that it did not stick out and bury the other drums. Once I was happy with the floor toms level I repeated the same procedure, lowering the volume until it was at a reasonable level. I soloed the rack and floor tom together so that I could get a similar level. With the kick drum also soloed, I used the toms as a template to adjust the volume so that the kick drum did not over power the mix. Once this was done, I proceeded to alter the volume of the top and bottom snare and guitar and bass. I knew that through adding compression and altering the EQ, I would have to slightly alter the volume. Panning The overhead microphones were panned as if it was from an audience member’s perspective, not the drummers. The kick drum, top and bottom snare were not panned as these drums are mostly central. The rack and floor toms were panned, again to an audience member’s perspective so that it encompasses all directions of hearing. EQ (Equalisation) The EQ on the kick drum was firstly boosted at the lower end to give more bass, as I wanted to give the track a darker and deep feel. I cut the higher frequencies to allow higher frequencies in other instruments come though. Due to this edit, the fader was turned down slightly. The rack and floor toms were next and like the kick drum, the lower end was boosted and higher frequencies cut to add to the deep sound. The rack and floor toms’ fader was subsequently turned down slightly to avoid clipping. The EQ for the top snare was cut in both the top and bottom frequencies and the lower frequencies on the bottom snare were cut while the frequencies between 100 and 1kH were boosted slightly for more emphasis on the beads. After these edits, the rack tom fader was turned down further. The left overhead higher frequencies were cut to add more to the bass of the track but the right overhead was slightly increased in the higher frequencies as most editing had been to add to the bass and nothing was done to the higher frequencies, but the lower frequencies, 200 to 500 Hz, were cut to compensate for the alteration in the higher frequencies. The higher frequencies in the bass were cut, as the bass cannot play that high and so it can make space for the higher frequencies in other instruments. The lower frequencies in the bass were boosted to emphasise the deep sound I wanted for my track. There are times when I would loop a certain part of the track and just listen to see if anything needed adjusting before I moved on and the floor tom needed to be tuned down. Lastly, the guitars frequencies were cut on both the low and the very high end with a boost between 100 and 1kHz. Cutting the higher end smoothed out the plucking sound of the strings which is not what I wanted and boosting between 100 and 1kHz added to the bass and emphasised the frequency range. At this point I double-‐checked the fader volume and I turned the guitar up slightly and decided to boost the lower frequencies of the kick drum.


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Reverberation (reverb) Reverb was not used in my mix as I felt adding the amp to the guitar and controlling the amount of fuzz used gave the impression of reverb and I did not want and reverb added to my drums. Compression The kick drum was compressed, as there were times when the attack was too overpowering and so needed to be compressed as to cut away the louder hits of the drum. This was the same issue with the floor tom. As the floor tom is probably more dominant than the kick drum in my piece, there were times when the skin was hit slightly too hard and therefore took control and so needed to be compressed as to even out the sound. The top snare was compressed and comparing the sound to before and after compression, you can hear that before, the sound is weaker and there is very little attack and after, the volume in increased and you softly here more attack, but not too much. Again with the bottom snare, comparing before an after compression, you could hear a deeper sound when not on bypass and more vibration of the beads. The guitar was compressed because before compression, the guitar had a softer, lighter sound and after, it made it sound brighter and gave it some life. Compression was added to the left and right overhead microphones to give the sound more energy and sound stronger as on bypass the signal was fainter . Piano There is a MIDI piano in my mix and I left this completely unedited, so no compression or reverb for example as when I was experimenting with the piano, anything I applied to it altered the sound too much as I wanted it to sound as natural as possible and I decided leaving it as it stands was the best thing to do. Amp I added an amp to the bass and turned the gain up slightly and turned up the ‘bass’ feature and made sure it was not clipping. I then compared this sound to the bypassed version and the amp version had a much deeper sound and due to the slight increase in the gain, was also louder. Before, my bass line was buried in my mix and adding the amp was enough for it to be heard. For the guitar I wanted to add some sort of amp and started with ‘happy face fuzz’ but this was too heavy and so I tried ‘Rawk distortion’ and turned the ‘crunch’ feature down until I felt there was enough effect on the guitar and was not overpowering. Comparing the guitar before and after adding the amp, the amp gives the guitar character and more power. Afterwards, the guitar fader was turned up. Busses and Auxiliaries Auxiliaries and busses were not used, as I did not have a vast amount of instruments, ignoring individual drum tracks, I wanted to edit each one individually using the mute and solo buttons to help me compare and contrast sound and edit to appropriate levels. If I was to do it again If I was to do this task again, I would make sure that the guitar and bass were in time and there were very few if not, no mistakes played in. I found it very hard to be happy with my mix as I kept leaning toward the imperfections with timing and bending of strings. I had to listen to instruments individually or all drums together, then all strings together and get the sound I wanted and then play everything together and concentrate and imagine that it was all in time.


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I also would have positioned the microphones differently when setting up the drums for my track. I would have positioned the kick drum microphone, Audix f6, further out of the kick drum. Although I did want a lot of bass and depth to my track, I felt there was too much attack and through editing, I could not effectively reduce this. It potentially would have been better if the microphone were further out to pick up more resonance instead. I also thought that the rack tom and especially the floor tom microphones were too close to the skin and therefore, like the kick drum, there was too much attack and not enough resonance. Lastly, if I had time to do so, I would have also recorded the drum kit again but using the ‘XY’ set up of the overheads to compare the differences in sound and to see which set up would be best for my track as potentially, using the ‘XY’ set up might have been a better set up for my track.

“I feel fine” Mix Faders and Panning Just like my own track, I started by turning down the faders on logic to avoid clipping as with some instruments, like the room cymbal, they were so overpowering, it buried other instruments as they were just so loud. I panned the left and right overhead microphone, rack and floor toms, I initially panned the hi-‐hats and room cymbals but found that there was not the right balance and it was all one sided so I returned them back to the centre. The drums were panned from an audience member’s perspective, just like with my own track. I kept the main vocals in the centre but panned the backing vocals either side. As the harmonies were doubled, I panned the lower harmonies, one left and the right, and with the higher harmony I did the same thing to give a surround sound and allow the main vocals to be in the centre. EQ The kick drums EQ was cut in the higher frequencies and boosted in the lower to give lightly more bass and attack but not too harsh. The bottom snare drums lower frequencies were cut to make some room for the kick drum. The top snares lower frequencies were cut at the lower end to minimise the pick up of the kick drum and the top snare frequency range between 200 and 1kHz was boosted to help emphasise the snare hit. The rack tom drums higher frequencies were cut to reduce the hi-‐hats and room cymbal sound picked up and the lower frequencies were slightly boosted to aid the kick drum. Like the rack tom, the floor tom’s higher frequencies were cut to avoid the bleeding of room cymbals and hi-‐hats, the very low end of the frequency range was cut but between 50 and 500Hz it was boosted. The hi-‐hats lower EQ was cut as it was picking up too much of other drums and the higher frequencies were slightly cut to take away the sharpness of the hi-‐hats sound. The room cymbals lower frequencies were cut and the left overhead higher frequencies were cut as they were picking up too much of the cymbals and hi-‐hats and they were still too powerful. Same as the left, the right overheads higher frequencies were cut as it was picking too much of the cymbals but the lower frequencies were boosted in the right overhead. The bass’s higher frequencies were cut from 1kHz to 20kHz to leave some room for the cymbals and hi-‐hats and boosted lower frequencies. Although there has been a lot of cutting around the higher frequencies to try and reduce their levels, I did not want to completely cut them out or make them so quiet they were non-‐existent and cutting from 1kHz plus also made room for the vocals. The guitars frequencies were boosted between 200 and 2kHz and the higher and lower frequencies were cut to help bring out the frequency range that was being played and the amps higher and lower frequencies were cut.


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The main vocals ‘Andy1’ were boosted between 500 and 8kHz as there was room to bring out the slightly higher frequencies. The lower and higher end 10kHz to 20kHz were cut. The second main vocal ‘Andy 2’ had the same areas cut but it was not boosted as it was to loud and so needed to be turned down via the faders. With the backing vocals, track labelled ‘Rich 1’ the higher and lower ends were cut and the middle range was boosted, as the vocals were lost under everything else and using the fader as not improving the level. The second backing track ‘Rich 2’ had the ends cut but was not boosted, as this was not needed. The third track ‘Rick 3’ had the middle range boosted but the ends cut like ‘Rich 1’ and the last backing vocal ‘Rich 4’ had the higher and lower frequencies cut but he middle range boosted to make all four backing vocals even. After adding EQ and looping a section to see how it all sounded together, the guitar fader needed to be turned down as this became dominant in my mix and the boost in the guitars frequencies was then taken out. Also the kick drums higher frequencies were cut and the boost was removed, as after editing the guitar, the drum was too powerful. Compression I did not use compression on the kick drum, rack tom, floor tom, top or bottom snare, over head microphones, solo guitar or the amp because using compression on the kick drum too away too much attack I used compression on the vocals, main and backing, as there were certain parts where note were sung too high and this interfered with the overall volume and so compressing the vocals gave an overall clearer, more even volume sound. This was the same with the bass and guitar, the bass needed to be slightly louder and the guitar needed to be a little softer and just turning down the volume would not have been enough as there were certain times when the bass was not heard or the guitar dominated, so compression seemed to be the best solution. Adding compression to the bass also added to the deeper sound. I also compressed the hi-‐hats and room cymbals as relying on just the faders to control the volume was not enough and they still stood out from the mix and they needed to be blended in and so compressing them helped to smooth out the higher frequencies. I also did not want to out any compression on the overhead microphones as I wanted them to catch everything as it happened and so to be as natural as possible. Reverberations (reverb) Reverb was only added to only one of the main vocal tracks (Andy 1) and two of the backing vocals (Rick 2 and 3). I initially added reverb to both main vocal tracks but even having reverb on a low level, there seemed to be too much. So by only having reverb on one track and the other natural, reduced the about of reverb and gave it a more natural sound. I did a similar thing to the backing vocals, only adding reverb to one of the lower and higher harmonies so that there is some reverb, but it is not overwhelming and does not have too much of an echo. Amps, Busses and Auxiliaries I used bus 1 and auxiliary one to add an amp to both the guitar and solo guitar. I thought it would be easier using a bus so that I could just apply the same thing to both in one go instead of having to waste time adding and editing the amp of one an then doing the exact same thing again. Adding the amp I used a pre set and changed some of the setting which gave a more gritty sound and also added a slight reverb to the guitar.


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If I was to do it again If I was to do this again, I would have experimented more with the reverb on the voices and used different reverb options and compare how two differ and which one was more effective rather than choosing one at random and playing around until I was confortable with the sound. Looking back and after listening to it a few times, I would not have as much reverb on the main vocals as I think it still sounds a bit too unnatural and less would have been more.

unit 9 and 25 write up

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