Week 8

wednesday 15th May

Planning & Objectives

Today I am going into the studios to finish my recordings so harry can mix them and give them back to me next week. I was able to book three studio sessions which should be plenty of time to record everything. My plan is to record bass and guitar for my fist song in the first session so it is finished so the only song we have left to record is the third song. Due to the fact we have a limited time in the studio and the song has to be finished today I was going to do a live studio recording. Even though it won't be the greatest quality it will also be best for the time we have. It also will make the song seem less changed when being recorded and I personally prefer this kind of recording. I will also be able to get multiple takes to try and finalise everything. Im also going to start the day by talking to everyone so they know whats going on.

Daily Project Blogs

I started the day by sitting everyone down and explaining to them what is going on and when im going to need them. I was able to do this as my studio session didn't start till 10 so i had a hour to sort everything out. I spoke to both billy and lucie recording in that session and that was perfectly fine and as billy didn't get into college till 20 past we agreed to record him second as lucie said that she would be able to record the bass without vocals and guitar as long as we gave her cues. There wasnt anyone in the studios before are session so I started setting up the equipment as that way we could use as much of the studio time as we could. I initially thought we would DI the bass however I thought I would double check with harry just to make sure and he told me no and to mic up the bass amp as that way we will be able to get a more organic sound sand the bass amp in the studios is amazing and we have good microphones to record it with. After he told me this I went into the studios and set up the D112 microphone that more information on it can be found on my research page about microphones. I set it up in the correct space and plugged it into the mixer ready to record. I then set up the computer however had to wait for Harry my producer as he has the logic project on his memory stick. After it turned ten I got lucie to come in the studio and all she had to do was practice the song while we set up everything else and got the logic project up on the computer. Harry asked me to set up the headphones that way while lucie practices with the track we could make sure we have the correct levels. Today harry understood we had a lot to record in. a short amount of time so we were on the same wave length when it came to saving as much time as possible just in case there were any problems. After everything weas set up we asked lucy if she wanted to hear the vocals or not. She then asked to hear the vocals and that way she wont need help to stay in time as she knows the lyrics and it will help her when it comes to changing sections in the song. After hearing this we gave her one practice run and we then threw her in. The first take she made a few mistakes however its ok as we have a lot of time as she was very likely nervous and worried about the situation but it was ok because we asked if she understood those sections and she said yes so we went from there. After two more takes we were able to get a perfect take that had no mistakes and she stayed in time throughout which was perfect and me and harry were really happy with the outcome. We listen to it back twice to make sure she stayed in time throughout as we've had problems in the past and this would be are last chancve to change them.

After this we had some time before billy got into the studio so we decided to set up the majority of the mics as when recording acoustic guitars its very different to elects as you use double the amount of mics and not a amp. Due to billy not being there we couldn't put them in the correct place although we were able to set them up ready to be moved. About half way through setting up Billy arrived which was perfect and we were able to set the mics up in the right place which meant we were able to save around fifteen to twenty minutes of studio time which was perfect. Due to billy knowing the song really well he didn't need much practise and we were able to get straight into recording after Harry my producer had sorted out all the inputs. We decided to go for a two SM57 set up which can be seen in the picture here. We decided to go for this as even though it is very simplified to the original layout we used for billy originally harry explained it will produce a very similar sound for half of the effort. I did ask him if it would pick up the treble and the finger picking as this is something i really wanted to show in my recordings. Harry explained that the second SM57 towards the neck of the guitar will capture this and he explained he's used this set up specifically as it worked extremely well in the past when hes been recording.Thanks to billy knowing the song so well the first recording was really good however we noticed there was a large amount of bass coming through which was affecting the bass track we recorded with lucie and over powering it. We asked him if he could focus more on the treble and less bass although after he did this it was a bit to pitchy so we asked if he could keep trying and recording to try and find a good mix of both and after three more takes we were able to get it and it was exactly i what i wanted. After this we all sat in the recording room and listened to the track so we were happy with it so when harry is mixing he didn't have any problems.

After listening to it everyone was happy and i was aswell so we went to go talk to george to sought out the live recording. When going up stairs and talking to lucie and the others we realised we had a problem. (Everything i'm going to talk bout in this section will be explained more in my problem solving section below.) After asking george when he would be ready to record he informed me he wasn't free in POS as he agreed to help perform and so was lucie and we needed to have everyone there to do a live recording after hearing this i went to my teacher and informed him to give it to someone else.which he did which was very good. Luckily we had a hour break before are next rehearsal so i had some time to sought everything out and after talking to them they made sure they were able to make it for this recording session which is good. However I forgot to ask billy and it turned out to be he had a guitar lesson which i found out five minutes recording After hearing this i had to take some action so i asked george if he could try to record the drums however we were struggling but luckly billy joined us shortly after explaining to his teacher the situation they agreed to let him record and do it after as they had another slot which was good. After this we quickly set up all theequipment which can be seen in the video. We then had 30 minutes so we got as many takes as we could till we got a perfect one and everyone felt comfortable so we went in the recording room and we listened back and we were all really happy with it so i helped pack down and asked harry if he could mix them over the weekend and he said he would sent them to me after this which was perfect. One thing i was worried about was the vocals were not the best quality as it causes problems however harry explained that he will be able to change this in the post production which was perfect.

Problem solving

Today I had a huge problem with my collaborations and them telling me they were free and this problem also came from bad communication. This problem evolved from all of my collaborations not informing me they had made agreements earlier that week and this caused to two of the members not being free in my Lunch session. This meant that we were now going to be rushed as we only had one more studio session to finish a whole song and even though it is a live session this was a lot more rushed than I wanted. However I did only inform them that we were recording today and I didn't give them specific timing which is were the main problem came from. I had to be creative to try to solve this problem, the way I was able to deal with this situation was first got to my peers and inform them as studio time is really hard to get hold of so they could try to give it to someone who needed it and i also asked some students if they wanted to use it. I then tried to figure out how i would be able to shorten the setting up time of the equipment for are next session as that way we would be able to get as much time to record as we possibly could. So i had to figure out if anyone was in the studio before my session as there was a hour gap between are lunch session and my last one as i thought it would be nice to give the people helping me a break to eat and whatever they like so they are not getting bored of this whole situation.

What I was able to do was go in the studios 15 minutes before my studio as i spoke to the production students that were using it and they were only using the computer which meant that I was able to set everything in the recording booth while they used the computer. This was extremely helpful as the main problem we had was setting up the equipment was going to take up the majority of the time of my recording session and we wouldn't have much time to record but just because I went around and spoke to people trying to change there plans and thanks to that it went extremely well. We then had another problems that billy had a guitar lesson when we had are studio session. This was a huge problem as it was are last chance to record and he wasn't there and to do a live studio recording you need to have every instrumentalist there. I then had to make a decision whether to try to get another rehearsal room or do it without him. In that moment i had to use my creativity and overcome this problem. I decided to try to record the song not as a love recording and separate and find time to record guitar. However george was confused although we were able to overcome this with billy getting out of his lesson and we were able to do the live recording in the end.

Research

I conducted all of my research for this week into distribution apps and equipment as we were doing a live recording and I wanted to know how to make it sound the best as its completely different to normal recordings as you have to worry about bleed and I researching distribution as I am using an app for this to release my music next week.

Conclusion & Evaluation

Even though today I came across a large amount of problems I was able to achieve what I wanted to which i believe was very impressive as we ended up having to give away one of are studio sessions as the others were not free. If I was going to do it again i would have spoke to every member of the band and made sure they were free and also explain to them how important this session was. I'm also looking back and thinking that I was able to resolve a large amount of the problems very well and that is one reason im very happy with this studio day. However it was rushed and we possible could have got some better takes however i was happy with the final outcome but could have been easier to get there if i had changed a few things.

Sunday 19th May

Planning & objectives

Today i am releasing all of my music with distro kid which is a distribution site and then I am showing it to some fellow students to see what there thoughts are on my music.

Daily project Blogs

As soon as I started the day, I started to upload all my music to Distro kid. This is because the longer I wait the later my music will be released, and I wanted it to be finished by the time I got to show it to some people and get some feedback. I made sure that everything was correct before the release as I would not have time to change it after releasing it because I only have a week left. As soon as I uploaded it, I asked some friends if they would be willing to get in contact with me so I could have an interview with them and. All of them said yes or said they would send me a message regarding this. This is good as it means I do not have to fill out a survey which will take a large amount of time, and I can just have an in-person interview or a voice message of people's thoughts on my EP. I'd already been given some good advice after the performance when everyone heard my new music, however, it is completely different when you release online on streaming platforms. This is because live music is different from recording it. For example, my second song acoustic version on the record, but when played live has both drums and bass so that straight away is it going to create a difference when people here either of them. However, the live studio recording won't be much different, but I'm not interviewing people to see the sound it's more about which song they like the most because the most popular is my modern country song Left and Right.

I was very lucky, and my iPad had already been released within two and a half hours of the streaming platforms, and these were the most popular on speaker, Amazon music SoundCloud and Spotify. As soon as it came out, I listened to want to know went over to all of the people that said they would be willing to be interviewed and ask them what they think honestly. Everybody I asked for an interview. I knew you be completely honest with me and wouldn't just tell me they enjoyed and the first person I interviewed was Tom Capon. The reason I wanted to interview Thomas he's very good with production regarding the fact he is a performance student and I really wanted to hear about his thoughts on the mix. Also which song enjoy the most, as I know, he doesn't actually listen to country music and the first time he listened to a country sing in a very long time was at my performance for Billy’s gig. Explain to me after listen to all three tracks that he really did enjoy the variety in genres and his favorite song was the second one cold beer buzz. His reasoning was, he believed it was extremely upbeat and Dancy and was able to bring up his mood almost instantly after listening to it which is extremely positive. However, he did two negatives on the EP. The whole track or album was ever so slightly quiet and he was able to notice this by after listening to the track. He had to turn off his music while listening to it. However, afterwards he had to turn all of the music down as it for some reason was a lot quieter than the rest of his music. I literally found out this was because different streaming platforms quanta size your Music which makes it quieter and we forgot about this in the mixing faze. His other point was in the first song the vocals were at the same level in volume as the other songs which made it sound distant which I noticed but apart from that he loved the tracks. Many other people had the same advice but most of them preferred my first song left and right.

Evaluation & conclusion

In my eyes today has been a huge success as I have been given loads of amazing feedback from people who enjoyed my music and can't wait to see what i want to do next.

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse