Band Recording #1 - Progress

Li Tong
Oct 22, 2018
3 min read

Last Friday (19th of Oct), we managed to record the drums, bass, lead and rhythm guitars. Though we have planned to organize each instruments to different sessions (within 3 hours) in order to get the recordings efficiently done and covered, we however only managed to record three instruments. There were also several things that didn't go as planned which lead to change of plan on the spot.

1) We initially planned to mic up both the drumset and the bass amp at the same time.

- After setting up all the mics for the drum kits, we realized that we do not have enough suitable mic stands (smaller screw heads to attach the mic) to mic-up the bass amp. We then proceeded to use a passive DI box instead to record the bass as using DI was our "backup recording" for the bass.

2) Placement of mics for the drum set

- Not many changes happened for the placement of mics that were planned, however, few things that I've learned to be more attentive to would be making sure the cable of the mics do not touch any of the kits, especially the cymbals, as well as watching the drummer to play in full potential to make sure no cymbals hit/touch any mics or cables in the process.

- We planned to mic up the kick drum close near the skin, however, we had difficulties trying to set up the stand in the position that we wanted so we ended up placing the mic as deep as the mic stand allowed.

3) Musicians lost track of where they were in the song.

- The first two players to record are the drummer and the bassist. Initially, we were advised that playing the original song as the backing track through their headphones would simply help since they are the first ones to be recorded. However, the drummer requested just the metronome in order to be more precisely on time. They were also able to hear themselves through headphones. However, we had to re-record as they were lost at some point of the song, so we had the vocalist to sing/guide them from the control room talkback mode.

- Later on while recording for the guitars, we realized that both the drummer and bassist had missed playing 4 bars in the beginning of the bridge. We then took some time with the help of the band/seniors to cut and duplicate the recorded same phrase in order to slide it back into the missing section (this worked because the bridge was having a recurring pattern/bass line).

SETUP OF DRUM SET