Yesterday I helped out recording a very talented Jazz band!
Headed up and organised by Carissa Macfarlane, I jumped on board for this project as I have experience with recording and mixing Jazz.
My role in this project is very clear, I assisted with the set up and recording including assisting the operation of the DAW and console. After the recording session I'll be leading the mixing and mastering effort. Nell Madden also helped out in a similar role as me on the day of recording.
Band:
We recorded a three piece band, with Keyboard (Cleon Barraclough), Bass Guitar (PW Farrell) and Drums (Reuben Bradley).
Set-up and Team Coordination :
In the studio Carissa, Nell and I worked well together to get everything set up, communicating about everything so we were all on the same page. Carissa did an excellent job of managing the day, requesting for necessary things to be done and coordinating our assistance effectively. While Carissa set up the DAW and desk, Nell and I worked on micing up everything in the live room and making sure the artists were happy with the set up. We even pre-empted their need for music stands to read their compositions from, and had them ready to go upon their arrival.
When setting up the drum overhead I ensured that I measure the OH distances from the snare and made them identical to avoid any phase issues.
Signal Flow Mishap and Fault Finding:
After the set-up, we got the band to give us some 'time' (basically to play together for a while for testing purposes). During this sound check, Carissa let us know that our Right Overhead mic for the drums was not reaching the desk, and with the band ready to play, we were under some pressure to get this issue solved quickly. I quickly double checked her work by looking to see if +48V was powering the KM184 mic, and to see if her desk routing was correct. It was all good. This left a couple of potential point of failures:
1: Was the mic plugged in properly at both ends (dropbox and mic stand)?
2: The mic was faulty
3: the XLR cable was faulty
4: The Channel on the desk was faulty
After I identified these possibilities to the team, we systematically went through to find out which one it was. We re-routed the signal from the drop box from channel 12 to channel 16 - no solve, we checked that the lead was properly plugged in - no solve. We then quickly replaced the mic cable and Whammy! signal level at the desk!
Problem solved right? ... Almost.
A few minutes later into what turned out to be a bad take of the first track (thankfully), I saw that the ProTools session was still routed with OH R on channel 12. We weren't recording the right overhead! After that take wrapped up we quickly re-routed the input on PT and we were in business, with no other complications for the rest of the day!
What I'd Have Done Differently:
One thing that I'd have loved to have more time to do is mic placement and adjustment. Unfortunately due to our time planning, we did not have enough time to do any mic position changes and everything had to stay where it was originally set up without any room for change, therefore we couldn't make any improvements to the recording itself. Everything will need to be done in the mix. I don't believe this will be a huge issue because most of everything was sounding fairly good on the day, however I'd have loved the chance to experiment more to get the best sound possible especially for the drums.
To fix this issue next time I'd roughly set up and sound check all of the mics before the band even comes in, then fine adjust the mics position after the instruments were in place. If this was done, we would have hugely reduced our set-up time and even have found the cable fault earlier, then fixed it before the band arrived. The time saving on those two things would have been plenty to make a few adjustments to the mic positioning.
Conclusion:
After this successful recording, Carissa is kindly editing the session, then we are headed into the studio next week to mix these tracks! The bassist has requested to drop in for a while during the session in order to ensure that his bass tone is exactly where he likes it, which I welcome as I'm sure I'll learn something from his preferences and it will make for a happy artist at the end of the day! The tracks will be mastered the following week with the AVID S6 console and studio as well.
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