Monthly Archives: October 2017

Week 6 Luke Pickering

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This week we had Luke Pickering come in to have a talk with us about his job at Church Studios in London. Luke is the Assistant Engineer to Paul Epworth, the in-house assistant and engineer for the studio and he also taught us for half of a semester in our first year.

Luke began by explaining that his career began at Church Studios by contacting Miloco and offering to complete a month of work experience there. During his first month, he didn’t really get hands on with much of the technical and creatives aspects of the studio and instead, was doing mundane tasks such as making drinks for people, sweeping the studio, emptying bins, filling fruit bowls etc. However, Luke made a strong point that completing these seemingly mundane tasks to a good standard is a vital part to moving up the ladder in the studio. If the producer can’t trust you to provide good cups of tea how can they trust you with all of the expensive equipment? It took him two years of being a runner to acquire his role as assistant engineer.

To get a job as a runner in the first place, he explained that its best to explain why you’d be a good runner and not to call yourself an ‘engineer’ or a ‘producer’. This is because they are looking for a runner and not an engineer, it will probably annoy the person reading it and producing is probably still a hobby at this moment in time. Whilst you are there as a runner, you need to have a strong initiative, be switched on, not annoy the other people working there and have an understanding of what people above you want.

Luke explained that the way it works at Church Studios is very traditional and that there is definitely a hierarchy there. You have to being willing to prioritise it over almost everything as it is more of a lifestyle than a job. You have to really want to do it as it involves working for as long as the producer/artist wants during unsociable or unstructured hours, working for poor pay, working long hours on your own terms as well as for people in different time zones and being prepared for almost anything.

I found this lecture very interesting and useful as I would love to work in a studio like this one day and getting this insight into the studio really provided me with some good knowledge of how get my foot in the door.

Mixing Masterclass with Chris Lord-Alge

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At the end of October, Chris Lord-Alge did a live webinar for Waves where he shared some of his own mixing tips and although i’ve implemented the majority of my research in my recording session posts, I wanted to make an individual post about this piece of research as it touches on quite a few aspects that relate to my project and my learning outcomes. Specifically, learning outcome 2 and 3.

The first thing that Chris made a big point about was having an organised session for mixing. Here are some of the key points he made around this topic:

  • Try and make your session as condensed as possible without making compromises. This way the session will be lot more manageable, it’ll be easier to navigate and it’ll be easier for you to make the necessary changes.
  • Colour code the tracks to what works best for you.
  • Use queues/markers to you can easily identify different sections of the song.
  • Give tracks short names so they are easier to understand.
  • Ensure that all of your tracks have the correct gain structure so they work correctly with your plugins.
  • Make comps of tracks where possible to reduce the amount of tracks in your session and make it more manageable.
  • Organising is the most important part of mixing. If you can’t manage your session efficiently then you’ll struggle to get a good sounding mix.

Chris also gave some tips on how to get vocals to sit in the mix:

  • Make a lead vocal comp onto one track (two if it over laps), ensure it is the same level through out and then consolidate it. This will make the lead vocals easier to mix.
  • In terms of processing, he suggests cutting some of the low end to remove rumble, increasing the top end to add shine and then compressing with the CLA-76 to give it more character. He then runs it through the CLA-vocal plugin adding more top end, reverb and delay which also makes the track stereo.
  • Using EQ before compression reduces the chances of sibilance and decreases the need to use a de-esser.

From implementing these techniques into my work, I am already finding it easier to navigate through my sessions and make adjustments where necessary. I will continue doing so all the way up until the mix stage where I will also use them to prepare all of the sessions for a mix. I will also use comp and consolidate my vocal tracks to also make them easier to manage when I reach the vocal recording stage.

Drum editing

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Since my last recording session with Dave, I wanted to make sure that all of the drum takes I recorded were edited in preparation for bass tracking.

Before beginning work on some of the slight timing issues in some of the drum takes, I wanted to make sure Dave was happy with the drum takes I had comped together. This is mainly because I had chosen the best bits from each take and merged them into one solid drum track. Keeping this level of communication between myself and Dave is important as it means that we are both on the same page and we know what part of the project needs to be completed next.

Once I had been given the all clear, I began going through all of the tracks making sure that everything was in phase using the pair of overheads as the main focus point. I then began to tighten the drums up by using elastic audio, setting the close mics to the rhythmic algorithm and the rest to the polyphonic algorithm. And although the majority of the drum takes were already tight and in time, going through and ensuring that all of the key hits were quantised exactly to the grid really made them flow a lot better. It also means that it would be easier to incorporate any electronic elements.

Choosing to do all of the drum editing at this stage means that everything I record from here onwards will match the correct timing of the song and save me from editing everything else when we’ve finished the recording process. It will also allow the bass to lock in with the drums more efficiently and give me less things to worry about when I come to the mix stage.

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Here is short example of how the drums sound for the track ‘Wake Up’ after editing.

 

 

Tutorial – Week 5

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Now that my aims, objectives and learning outcomes are all signed off, the main topic of discussion for the tutorial was my first recording session for this project and the research that I needed to include in my blog.

When discussing my drum recording session, I told Ben how I’d incorporated the use of some outboard compression and EQ from the desk into my recordings. We also discussed how successful the session was overall as well as some of the things that didn’t quite go to plan. (e.g there was a lot of bleed coming from the live room into the control room which prevented me from utilising as much hardware as I’d liked). Ben also suggested that it’d be a good idea to include some of my previous tracks so I can benchmark my previous drum sounds against these ones.

We then discussed in depth the research I needed to include in my blog. From the Spotify playlist I had made, we looked at some of the reference material for this project and looked at Jacquire King who had produced James Bays debut album. We found a lot of great stuff which covered my learning outcomes and the articles we found also had links to many more. Ben also introduced me to a website called allmusic.com which is a great resource for looking at other producers work as it shows all of the albums they’ve been credited on.

We also looked more in depth at creating a production plan as well as looking at other research resources such as Pensados place and Recording Revolution.

Drum tracking

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For todays session, our main focus was to track all of the drums for this project. Ensuring that i also covered my first learning outcome, I wanted to make sure that I incorporated the use of some outboard compression and desk EQ when recording into Pro Tools.

Prior to the session, I spoke to Dave about the kind of style he wanted for this project as well as some of his influences. I also asked him to send me some demos so i had a rough understanding of how the songs already sounded and how we could evolve them in the recording sessions. These demos also provided essential reference points for the session drummer and really aided the efficiency of the drum tracking session.

When mic-ing up the drum kit, I really wanted to make sure that I added a room mic down the bottom of the corridor outside of the live room. Due to its reflective nature compared to the live room, this added a nice ambience to the sound of the drums and when compressed, provided a lot of excitement to the overall mix.

Once I had mic-ed up the drums accordingly, I began to incorporate the use hardware compression and EQ to mould the sound of them. One thing to keep in mind here is that the majority the of choices I made here were subtle for two reasons; there was a lot of low end spill bleeding into the control room from the live room which made it difficult to the perceive some of the frequencies I was hearing. Keeping them subtle would also give me more room to make further dynamic and EQ changes in the mix stage when i’m in an environment where I am able to hear different frequencies more accurately.

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With the kick drum, I began by sweeping the frequency range to remove some the ‘mud’ and ‘boxy’ sounds within the drum. This is a technique also applied by Joe Chiccarelli but instead he uses an API graphic EQ as oppose to the EQ on the desk. I then used a similar technique for both snare drum mics however this time it was to eliminate some of the ringing and overtones coming from the drum. This is a technique I found on drumlessons.com and have found it very effective in improving the tonal qualities of the snare drum. For the toms, I used reductive EQ on the lower mids but also boosted some of the high end to give the drum more ‘point’ and attack. This technique is also utilised by Victor Guidera at drumlessons.com. Finally, when it came to the using desk EQ for the overheads, I applied a HPF to both of the mics at the input gain stage and then applied a slight boost to the high shelf at around 12khz to give the overheads a little more air.

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When it came to using hardware compression, I decided to use the Sony srp-l210 on the kick drum and snare drum and use the Drawmer DL241 for the far room mic. From my research, I have found a lot of ways that producers utilise hardware compression into their production and I chose the best ones to suit my scenario and the project. Jacquire King, producer of James bay’s debut album, spoke to sound on sound magazine about his use of compression on the kick and snare and how he used it to help the drums sit in the mix better. He uses a low ratio with about 3db of compression to prevent sucking the tone out of the drum allowing them to be more stable whilst adding focus. With this in mind, I also used this method to control the dynamic range of the snare and the kick drum.

Kick drum compression:

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Snare drum compression:

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For the far room mic, I kept the ratio more or less the same however I decided to be a little more aggressive with the threshold. This resulted in the room mic slamming a little more and when mixed in with the rest of the drums, not only did it add ambience, it also added a lot more excitement.

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Recording a band with Joe Chiccarelli https://youtu.be/rjFPQFjIEdo

How to EQ a snare drum – Drum Lessons https://youtu.be/a2jgOOOp6UI

How to EQ toms – Drum Lessons https://youtu.be/L3r87s002nM

Jacquire King: Producing James Bay https://youtu.be/mz7ycZzAIoU