IMAGINARY PRODUCTION

I started by recording 2 MIDI piano loops into Logic Pro, for the drummer to use as a reference track whilst recording. I ended up with 2 different chord loops, an A and a B section.

To record the drums we started by micing up a drum kit in the IMW studio live room. We decided to mic up every drum individually as follows:

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Kick Drum Inside - AKG D112 - This dynamic microphone is great for low-frequency and loud sounds and is perfect for recording kick drums. We placed the microphone inside the drum 3 inches away from the beater to provide a louder attack.

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Kick Drum Outside - Electro Voice RE20 - Another Dynamic microphone placed on the outside of the kick drum to capture the whole sound of the drum.

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Snare Top and Bottom - Shure Sm57 - A workhorse for any studio robust and dynamic usually seen recording drums, vocals, guitar amps, and acoustic guitar.

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Hi-Hat - AKG C451 - We used our first Small Diaphragm condenser microphone for the hi-hat, condenser microphones require phantom power as they rely on they do not generate their own power, this would be applied via the SSL console when we entered the control room. 

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Tom Drums - Seinheiser MD421 - We used 3 of these microphones on the floor, mid, and Hi tom drums. We chose these microphones for the toms as they are very directional and have a full-bodied frequency response enabling us to better isolate the individual drum sounds from the rest of the mix in post.

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OverHeads - AKG C414 [Stereo Pair] - We used two of these large diaphragm condenser microphones to act as overheads, recording the drum kit as a whole. The C414 allows the user to switch between different polar patterns allowing the versatility to record in different directions. In this instance, we set the microphones to a cardioid polar pattern that focuses primarily on the front of the microphones and directed them in front and above the kit to capture the full stereo field. Overheads act as a stereo pair, with this in mind we positioned them equidistantly from the snare drum to prevent phasing issues with frequencies associated with the snare. we did this by simply taking a long XLR cable held one end to the center of the snare drum and the other touching the left and then the right microphone and positioning them accordingly.

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Room Microphone - Rode NT2 - We set up another large condenser microphone to record the sound of the live room. As we wanted to capture the full sound of the room we set its polar pattern to omnidirectional this pattern allowed us to capture the full 360-degree sound of the space.

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Talk Back microphone - Shure SM58 - To allow us to communicate with the drummer from the control room we also set up an SM58 to act as a talkback microphone.

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After all the microphones were set up and in position, we connected them all to the console using XLR cables wired into the D.I. box in the live room and thus directly into the corresponding channels on the SSL console.

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I took note of what instrument was connected to what input on the di box and which instruments were using condenser mics as those channels would require phantom power on the desk.

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We then moved into the control room and labeled the channels on the desk to their corresponding instruments in the live room. Making sure that all the levels were at zero we enabled phantom power on the channels that were connected to condenser microphones.

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Then inside Logic Pro we created 11 audio channels and made sure their audio inputs were set to the corresponding outputs on the SSL console.

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We also added the midi keys that I had recorded earlier into the project and set a click track so the drummer could play in time.

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We then set then asked the drummer the play along with the loop in logic to allow us to set the levels of each channel on the SSL console, this can be achieved using the top red knobs on each channel strip.

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Once all the levels were set and we observed no audio clipping it was time to record.

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I asked the drummer to play along with the backing track. I was looking for a hip-hop/amen break style drum pattern which we recorded over a series of takes.

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Once I had the recordings I saved the logic project and imported the project to my personal computer.

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I then used Logic Pros Flex time feature to quantize the drum recordings so that they adhered to the grid and were better in time. I then exported the stems into Propellarheds Reason Studios to edit them further on my PC and prepare to do further recording at home. I used the razor tool in Reason to cut out 8-bar loops that I liked and then arranged them alongside the Midi keyboard parts. I also increased the tempo of the project from 120 bpm to a faster 140 as I felt like I was lacking energy.

Whilst at home I recorded a bass guitar line for the project using my Tascam US-16x08 USB audio interface connecting my bass guitar to one of the jack inputs in the device. I then switched the input level to 'Instrument' input to increase the input level of the instrument.

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I then created an audio track in Reason Studios and set it to input 10 from the audio interface. I made sure that the input wasn't too hot going out of the interface and into the software by setting a reasonable level of input both on the Tascam and then on the mixer inside Reason.

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Once the levels were set and I could see no clipping, I tuned my guitar with the aid of the tuning fork feature inside the program.

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I then recorded two different basslines for the A and B sections.

After recording the Bass guitar I replaced the MIDI keyboard parts with recordings from a real keyboard. I initially wanted to replace the parts with piano sounds but whilst browsing through the sounds on the keyboard I decided to record a selection of the sounds and see what worked best.

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I recorded the keyboard parts from my Casio Privia PX350 Digital Piano at my rehearsal studio. I used a Rode AI-1 Audio Interface. As it only had one input I was limited to recording in mono so I connected the Headphone output from the keyboard to the XLR Combo input of the interface using a balanced Jack cable.

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I then set the input levels so that there was no clipping and proceeded to re-record the piano parts using the different sounds from the instrument.

I finally recorded some vocal parts and harmonies for the song at my rehearsal space. The studio has quite a bit of soundproofing so it was an ideal and convenient environment to record in as there would not be much background noise in the recordings.

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I again used the Rode AI-1 Audio interface combined with a Rode NT1 large diaphragm condenser microphone. I used a Shock Mount and pop shield to prevent any noise from ground vibrations and minimize any sibilance and plosives when recording.

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I connected the microphone to the interface using an XLR cable, as the NT1 is a condenser microphone I enabled phantom power on the interface and as before set adequate input levels both on the interface and inside the software. I monitored my vocals via headphones connected to the interface.

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Once I had everything set up I recorded a main vocal part over the a section, and then a few harmonies on different tracks to thicken out the sound.

Now that I had harvested all of my recordings I took to forming them into a cohesive arrangment.

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I sketched out two 16-bar sections using the Reasons Blocks feature to serve as a visual guide and to help divide the production into distinctive parts to work on.

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I then took the two drum loops and used them to serve as the rhythmic foundation of the A and B sections. I built out the sections further by adding the bass guitar recordings, sifted through all of the piano keyboard recordings and decided to use the marimba part for the main harmonic theme across the sections.

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I made sure that all of the recordings were better quantized to the grid using the Reasons slice edit feature and quantizing all of the slices to snap to the grid.

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To prevent any popping between the starts and ends of the audio clips I used fade-in and out effects on each clip. In some of the piano parts, I compiled multiple takes using the Comp Edit feature and prevented any transitional audio artifacts by using crossfades.

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Once I had arranged the A and B sections I created a striped back intro section using the Vibraphone audio clips recorded from the Casio Privia PX350.

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I then layered on the Main Vocal parts and harmonies and used the pitch edit feature to make sure all the vocals were perfectly in pitch.

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I then duplicated parts of the intro section to create an outro for the piece.

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Now that all the audio clips had been arranged and edited I made some gain adjustments in the mixer, added delay, compression, and reverbs to the individual tracks, and added some light compression to the whole song.

I enjoyed working on the imaginary production project, however I feel as though I could have streamlined my workflow better by working within one DAW.

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I also feel as though in the arrangement stage of the production It would have been more beneficial to work within the parameters of a clearly defined genre or style in mind as I recorded a lot of material that I later discarded as it didn't fit in with the final concept.

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I found it insightful to work and arrange a production completely using audio recordings as I would ordinarily use software instruments. The process forced me to focus on editing.

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I enjoyed learning how to record using the SSL Console and look forward to learning more in the future.

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