I'm a Music Producer/Musician from Leeds.
Chris siegel
The Vocals were very simply recorded, i used a Rode NTK with a Pop Shield and an SE Reflection filter to capture a clean yet quite warm vocal signal. I made sure that the Vocalist was happy with his levels in his headphones after an initial trouble with him hearing himself due to me having the fader turned down.
We recorded 3 vocal tracks to make sure that we had a good range of vocal options to choose from, then we recording some backing vocal harmonies all within half an hour.
During the Mixing Stage the vocals where the most heavily edited with compression, reverb, delay, adaptive limiting and EQ. The vocals were also put through a pitch correction system (Melodyne Essential) to correct any of key notes to help it blend in with the instrumentation.
Here is a Picture of the vocal Setup;
The guitars came in three parts, there were two rhythm guitars and one lead guitar part. Before i came into record the band i decided to use a standard dynamic instrument microphone (Shure 57 Beta) and a high end condenser (AKG 414) to get a wide range of frequencies within the spectrum.
The first rhythm part consisted of the main guitar riff within the song and chord changes, these were being played on a Les Paul type guitar with hum bucker pickups through a Marshall special edition valve combo amplifier.The recording at first sounded quite bass heavy and with a high treble gain so i suggested to back off the bass on the EQ and bring up some mid. This gave a good sound that suited everyone. After checking the levels and practicing a couple times the track was laid down within two takes.
The second guitar part was straight chords and the guitarist wanted to play the same guitar with the same amp with the same settings to lay the second track. I didn’t want this as it would just be doubling the take and i wanted to create an interesting stereo image with two separate sounding guitars. I then suggested to the guitarist that we use a Fender Telecaster with single coil pickups and a Vox Valve amp combo to create more of a tinnier crunch sound to change the timbre of the second guitar track. after getting the right sound we recorded this track within five takes.
Finally the last guitar part was Lead guitar, this was done using the first configuration but using the bridge pickup on the guitar to give it more treble. This sounded great as it was the guitarists personal set up and he was very familiar with the settings. We finished this track within 3 takes.
During the mixing stage i did very little to the guitar parts other than EQ, I used a Match EQ in Logic 9 to invert the phase between the microphones as they were placed quite close together altho as shown in the picture i made sure to move the AKG further back to prevent this.
The Lead Guitar Part had an additional short reverb and echo and a little boost with a compressor.
The bass for this track was very simple to record as we just needed a warm sound with a little treble to accentuate the guitars.
To achieve this i used the same AKG D112 microphone as i used on the kick drum earlier to mike the the cone of the Hartke combo bass amp. This is so i could get the natural tone of the sound coming from the speaker. Then i used the DI output on the amp itself to get a smoother representation of the sound coming from the standard Fender Mexican Jazz Bass.
When it came to recording the track it was ver simple and the bassist did it in 2 takes with no mistakes and the sound of the setup was very promising.
when it came to mixing the bass track i did very little but use the standard compressor in logic and used the standard EQ for its low pass filter and for a little bit of a gain bost for the lower frequencies.
This gave it a sound slightly reminiscent of a upright bass;
This is the first band i recorded totally un-aided in Studio 4 at Leeds Metropolitan University Recording Studios.
The first thing i decided to do was listen to previous recordings they undertook earlier in their band career. This was to get an idea of what sound they liked and who they sounded similar to so that i could listen to similar artist who have had high quality recordings done and established producers.
After listening to their tracks and talking with the members of the band i found they are heavily influenced by songs by Oasis and some of the song written by Lennon and McCartney.
This gave me an idea of the kind of sound they wanted, very similar to the full brit pop sound of the nineties with minor reverb and delay added to give it a richer feel.
When we arrived in the studio, after deciding what microphones i needed beforehand, i set up the drum kit very simply with this spec:
Kick Drum - AKG D112 - Placed just in the sound hole to achieve that deep yet airy sound.
Snare Drum - Sennheiser 441 - Placed to the edge of the drum skin as i have very nice sounding results with this microphone in the past.
Toms - Shure sm57 beta - I used these as i think they have a warm quality but also have nice tone at the higher end of the frequency spectrum to get the initial attack of the hit.
Ov/Heads - I used a matching pair of lipstick condenser microphones that came with a set of microphones put together by the technicians at the studio, but as all these microphones do they served their purpose capturing the high end frequencies (Cymbals).
After all was set up i did a standard sound check listening to each individual drum and checking their levels coming through the desk and also coming into Logic Pro 9. I then got the drummer to play what he would in the track. The initial sound was great and didn’t sound like it needed much doing to it.
To help the drummer get the feel of the track, not only did i use a click track sent through a set of cans, i DI’d the rest of the instruments in the mixing room as well as using another Shure vocal mic to capture the vocal so that the drummer would have a reference to the song. this was also so that there was no bleed from any other instruments whilst recording the drum tracks.
We got the final drum track after 3 takes which was very productive.
During the mixing process as i was already pleased with the sound i got from the drums i used very little effects on the tracks. I used the EQ to cut any frequencies that sounded off and boosted the frequencies that would help each track stand out.
Here are what the drums sound like after mixing.
For this project we had to record and generate sounds to sync to a video we made in video production using all the techniques we learned in the tutorial sessions.
Firstly as a group we had to collect some field recordings and uploading them in adobe audition using the techniques i learned in tutorial 3 with batch processing making it easy to separate the individual sounds to import them into other programs.
We then decided to use Logic Pro 9 for out editing because we are all very familiar with the program and had access to it at home which made it easy for us to work on it in our own time. We used the techniques from tutorial 1 and 2 and applied them in logic like looking for cue points in the video and using volume envelopes. This helped greatly;
We also used techniques from tutorial 4 to make sure that our rhythm was in time by making sure that we used a sync sheet for the video. Logic also helped us to do that because it also had a time ruler as well as a beat ruler.
We also aimed to use some Sound Generation techniques we learned in tutorial 9 but didn’t find a place for it in our rhythm which we should have incorporated.
We only didn’t use any of the features of cubase in our project as we felt we could do what needed to be done in just Logic 9 and Adobe Audition.
Feedback; When receiving feedback from Tom Bowers he told us that our music with our video weren’t together in terms of sequence and didn’t have that choppy edit sequence we needed to get a good mark. So we changed the way the video was edited and we collected some more field recordings and video footage to add into the video we had already.
Here is the finished Product ;
For this tutorial we had to generate sounds in Adobe Audition by using a mixture of noise and tones.
The first thing i did was open adobe audition and open up the edit view. I needed to make a wind noise so I clicked on Generate/ noise and selected 10 seconds of pink noise. This gave a waveform like this;
Next i selected Effects/ Amplitude/ Envelope and selected a ADSR preset to make the noise resemble the wind in the trees. I then selected the spline curves option to make the wind noise sound more realistic.
I then selected Effects/ filters/ Graphic EQ i used this to accentuate the bass frequencies to make it more present. I also added A reverb effect unit to make it sound more sinister.
This then sounded like this;
After this i experimented with using tones to create a space ship landing sound. The first thing i did was create a new waveform and clicked Generate/ Tone and this window appeared.
I changed the duration to 10 seconds and the base frequency to 50hz and and each of the frequency components to 59, 44, 46 and 76 on 2,3,4 and 5. i then de-selected ‘Lock these settings only’ and modulated the base frequency to 20hz. This made my tone sound like this;
I then experimented with my own tone generation making my own sounds changing the modulation settings and frequencies. It then sounded like this;
For this tutorial i had to to import audio into Logic 9 and make a simple beat from field recordings taken from tutorial 3.
The first thing i had to do was open logic pro and create a empty session file the program then prompted me to add some tracks. After adding 4 audio tracks i then had to import my field recordings so i selected the media icon in the top right hand corner of the arrange window. I then went into the Bin tab and imported my field recording files.
I then had to change some settings the first thing i needed to do was change the amount of bars in the piece from 130 to 41 so that the piece would finish at 1 min and 20 secs. Then i had to change the snapping settings to ‘Beat’ so that i could snap my audio to the grid more accurately. I also had to zoom the arrange page using the sliders in the bottom right hand corner of the window. This is so that i could be more accurate with my audio placement and editing, i could also make my rhythm more complex.
I then started making my rhythm taking 4 - 5 sounds and using the grid to place them in the correct place accurately. I decided that i had several of the same samples in a row and decided to loop the sounds. First i highlighted all the audio i wanted to loop and pressed ‘Crtl + B’ and it opened this window;
I then pressed ok and it made a single file and muted the other files i highlighted earlier. After this i dragged it along to double to make it two times longer.
Here is a sample of the rhythm i made;
In this tutorial i had to change the speed and quantise a midi bass part to fit with a audio drum loop in Cubase 4.
First i had to open a halion synth module and route it to my midi track using the VST instruments window and selecting it as the midi out in the track inspector. I then had to double click on the midi track to open the piano roll window and change the quantise grid to 1/16.
I then changed the tempo to 100 bpm by turning the off the master tempo on the transport bar and selecting 100 bpm. The length of the loops changed and did not match making the two out of time with each other. Needing to stretch the audio track to match the length of the midi i selected the Tool icon and used the drop down menu to select ‘Sizing Applies Time Stretch’
I then dragged the audio to the same length as the midi which then stretched the audio to the same length. I then double clicked on the audio to open it in the sample editor. selecting audition/ audition loop to loop the audio, i then pressed ‘Edit Hitpoints’ so that cubase could see where the main hits are which allowed me to create a groove by pressing ‘Make Groove’ in the left menu.
This made a different selection in the quantise menu of the bass piano roll; ‘audio 1’ this allowed me to change the 3rd, 7th and 8th notes of the bass riff to the groove of the drum audio which made it sound like they were playing in sync.
For this tutorial we had to open up Cubase 4 session files and make them sound more realistic by using quantisation.
After opening the Tutorial7a.cpr file i found that there were 3 midi drum tracks and a midi bass track. I noticed that they weren’t routed to any synth modules so i opened 2 Halion synth modules by pressing F11 and selecting them in the first two boxes. I then Used the first one for the the drums selecting a drum patch and the other for the bass selecting a simple bass guitar patch.
After doing this i double clicked on the bass track opening up the piano roll window, i made sure i had selected the click track and soloed the track. Listening to the track i found it was slightly out of time so i started changing the quantise values changing them from 1/8 to 1/16 this did not rectify the tempo.
Selecting the Midi Menu/ Quantise Setup this gave me a window allowing me to change the swing, magnetic area and the quantise grid. I also selected the ‘Auto’ box which allowed me to preview the sound before i changed it. After adjusting the swing and changing the quantise grid to 1/8 the bass moved into time and i clicked on the ‘Apply Quantise’ button to apply my settings.
Next i moved on to the drum tracks, i highlighted all three tracks and double clicked on one of them which opened all three in the same GM Drum Map which allowed me to edit them together. I then decided to try a different type of quantisation like non-quantise and random quantise but felt they didn’t give me the tighter feel i needed so i decided to use iterative quantise which moved the midi hits as close to the grid as i wanted to. This worked and made it feel more realistic and kept in time with the bass riff.
For this tutorial i had to import the sounds from tutorial 3 and create a rhythmical track with synth accompaniment in Cubase 4.
For this i created a new empty Cubase project, i then needed to add 4 audio tracks to add my audio onto. To do this i had to right click on the track list and select ‘Add Audio Track’.
The next thing i needed to do was import my audio, i did this by going to File/ Import and selecting all the files i needed. i then used the Scissor tool to crop my audio to only have the hit.
I then added a midi track into the track list and selected the Halion synth module and routed it to the out of the midi track. i then selected a Rich Sawtooth Patch and recored it to the beat making it more interesting.
Audio and synth by Chris Siegel
(Here is a sample of the beat i made with the audio from tutorial 3 and the Halion synth module)
