Slow Down World

Slow Down World

I was lucky to bag this project, as many people jumped on the advert offering there service. It just happend to be me who was first. Luckily for me i already new twig and rob from my 1st year, after being asked to drum for them. (story for another time).

I was once again in the dark with this band, as i had very little idea what style of music the band played in. Metal is a broad subject :P

So onto recording. The band had specified they wanted demos rather then a polished ep, like many others wanted to record live. Being in the smaller studio meant i only had 12 tracks. 

Set Up list.

Drums:

Kick. Ev 20 in the middle of the kick without the front skin on.

Snare: Tried many microphones here, started with a m201 didn't quite cut it, used a sm58 which also seemed to miss the marl. settled with a sm57. After playing around with position it ended up pointing directly at the center of the snare drum. I used a small senhiser condenser microphone on the bottom pointing at the center of the snare wires.

Toms: I have always been a fan of drum mic pack tom microphones. I guess they have been designed  for one purpose so it makes sense to use them. I didn't bother with the clips, i placed them on mic stands. Pointing them at the center of the toms just like the snare, though resting just above the rim.

Hihats: I have never had much luck with hihat micing, i used a small pencil condensor from the senhiser kit pointing away from the kit between the rim and center. Sadly this got knocked around when recording so ended up being unusable. 

Overheads: once again these where changed from whats in the picture to a generic spaced pair of c414s.

Note the photo was taken during set up and position of mics are not what was used.

I belive this is a later photo as more stuff seems to be plugged in. Note the position of the hi hat microphone.

Bass:

Never before i have use a microphone to record bass i normally just use a di box. Instead i used a d112 on a small ampeg bass amp with a 12' spekear. Close to the rim was where the d112 was placed. I used a di box as well and mixed the result 10:2. The d112 gave the bass so much more punch and character  though sadly there was a fair bit of bleed.

guitar:

After trying an sm57 and sm7b i swapped them out for a single neumman u87 placed between the cone and rim. This resulted in a lot of bite. The only place the original guitar recording can be heard is in "sunlight", as the other tracks were replaced using a better amp. However i do like the sound character present in sunlight.

Vocals:

In a seperate session the vocals where done. The set up was a double microphone set up. I used my fav combo of a u87 around 30cm from the singer, and a sm7b. The u87 was raised up so the singers head would be back slighlty helping him to hit the higher notes. The sm7b was lower down pointing up at the singer and was used as a reinforcement microphone.

guitar re-record:

On the second session i set about doubling the guitar takes. In reailty we just replaced the previous takes. Having the time to experiment i used 3 microphones. 

Mixing

Ok the first thing i allways do is mix drums. I spent a lot of time fiddiling here. 

Ok so we have 2 samples here, i was rather happy with the basic kick sound. The bleed for me wasent too much of problem given the fact i was recording a demo. A fair chunk of compression and a tad of eq brought the sound out a bit better

Something im not so pleased with was the snare drum, as you can both hear and see by the waveform, there is a huge amount of hi-hat bleed. Using dual compression and reducing the hi-hat mic level, i sort of brought the sound of the snare out. It doesent sounds as good here as it does when put with the rest of drums. And that leads us on too....

And the drums soloed bit mixed :)

Bass Guitar:

You will need good headphones or a good sub to benifit here, but this is the sound of the bass amp with a d112 in front of it :)

Same part again but a dry Di signal
(you can choose which sounds better :))

Electric Guitar
So on the re-record i chose to use 3 mics and blend the 3 :) here they are as solo tracks.


Single Shure sm57 in front of the speaker.



Single Akg D112 in front of the speaker.

Single Akg C414 in front of the speaker.

When double tracking not a option a good blend of mics and panned tracks can give a thicker result in my opinion.



Thats it folks! I need to add some photos to this post when i find them! And if you would like to listen to the final songs check em out at the band (slow down world) Soundcloud.

Slow Down World