Mufaro: Recording in the Neve

Callum and Myself being our long awaited project last week, recording a local Brisbane artist 'Mufaro'. The experience was absolutely amazing, never have I worked on a song before that had me singing it nearly 2 minutes after the first listen. Our session was splendid, we began the night before (Friday 16th) setting up and finished at 2pm on Saturday (17th). We believe it was the attention to detail that really pushed our session forward, below I would like to discuss and reflect on the session in hopes to progress next session. I am going to split up the blog into relative session to make it more cohesive.

Session Hick-Up: Damn Cables

What Happened?

The Night before our session (Friday 17th) Callum and Myself had booked out the Neve Studio to give us sometime to prep the studio. We organized all of the I/O of the session, cleaned up the recording booth, set all the mic's on stands and to the side of the room, tied all the Cables and labeled them. This last step, labeling the cables, cause us our first major hick-up. We unintentionally were setting ourselves up for failure by not factoring the length in which the cables had to run. With the Drum kit sitting in the back of the room, most of the drum kit was able to be mic'd with the cables we had selected and labeled.

How Did This Happen?

I feel as though this was the result to a lack of attention. When we sat down to tied and label all cables, we factored the length in which the cables had to run to mic the Overhead's. We did not fully take into consideration how the kit would sit in the room and the distance in which we needed to travel to do so. Though this is a minor hick-up, it held back the session by 15-20 minutes before we could continue with sound check / recording.

What Was The Solution?

Luckily, we had a lot of extra XLR cables lying around for the session. Because we had taken over the unpacked session from Mel (sorry, cant remember her last name), we were able to leave spare microphones and mic's available for back up. Though this wasn’t due to a contingency, there defiantly ahs been a plan implemented since this incident. Hopes to incorporate cable laware of cable routing and the possible errors that can occur when working with limited gear.

Reflection:

I am very pleased with how our team coordinated ourselves around this issue. Though it did, as I said, bring the session back about 20 minutes, we were still able to achieve an incredibly high standard of recording. I am happy I considered the length of Overhead cables when in the tying process, though not seeing how much of an issue would be come is something to learn from. Callum himself was very capable and switched on when It came to completing the tasks at hand. I could always rely on him to complete any task at hand with quality and attention to detail, though e both have our own hick-ups, working together has allowed us to push forward together and learn from one another.

Drum Microphone Position and Techniques

What Were The Key Creative Processes?

When it came to recording the Drum Kit, we opted for a pretty simple set up but with a few little tricks. We placed a Rode M3 as Snare Top with a AKG 451 as bottom snare. We used the second 451 as the Hi Hat Mic also. For the Kick we placed a 57 inside the drum, facing the kicker with the outside being mic'd with a AKG D112. Finally for each Tom, we placed a sennheiser MD421 facing the rim / side of the tom.

Where our placement got interesting was with the Room Mics. We opted for a pair of Royar 121's in blumlein technique as the main overhead microphone's. This decision was made due to our previous class, setting up the blumlein over the drum kit resulted in some incredible sounding overheads. The other two options we were just told about, with little information but we decided to just try it out under the mind-set of "what the heck, lets experiment". The First was a simple AKG414 placed about a meter and half in front of the Kick Drum, Facing the center of the kit. Secondly was one 57 placed by the drummers knee, facing in-between the snare and kick drum.

What Worked Well? What Could Be Improved?

What worked well? Both experimental Mic placements. It was incredibly exciting to hear the result of the 57 placement, the comparison between each mic was very interesting but also very appropriate. The 414 was incredibly roomy with an incredible amount of clarity for all instruments. On the other hand the 57 had an incredible amount of tightness to the frequencies it received. The recording sounded very warm and 'woody' with the 414 sounded open and airy.

What could be improved? The blumlein and Hi Hat Placement. The blumlein in comparison to the 57 and 414 sounded very rough, as though it was accurately facing the kit correctly. With some EQ work in our recent Avid S6 session we were able to clean up the recording and get the blumlein to sound clean but I am still unhappy with the sound on its own. The Hi Hat also came through very rough, I feel as though our placement came was a massive letdown, thankfully, similar to the blumlein, some EQ was able to clean up the sound within the mix, but it would have been nice to get a better recording to allow for more options within the mix.

How Can We Improve?

Focus and Preparation. Giving ourselves time to adjust placement would have been very beneficial. That as well as the focus to understand and research what we are trying to do and achieve. Though the results were very successful, it was pretty misguided. We were not acting from research or knowledge about what are trying to achieve, merely acting from what we knew would work and experimenting with ideas.

Pre-Production Plan: The Secret to Success

How Did the Production Plan Help?

The Pre-Production Plan allowed us to push the session further then any of my previous sessions. Knowing what to do and why before even doing it puts such a large advantage on your time management skills. Though our session was held back a bit, we were able to get an absolutely amazing take of the track as well as the Piano Solo's. It also allowed us quick and easy management of the Pro-Tools session as well as the Console Itself.

How Closely Did We Follow The Plan?

The input list for the console stayed nearly exactly the same, only difference came with the loss of the Roland SPD for extra percussion, instead that became the single 57. As well as one of the backing vocals turned into a room mic (the 414). A few other things we added/ changed, took a tracking of the output of protools into a single stereo track, for a quick 'Working In Progress" mix. We created a reverb send for the Piano player, help everything feel a bit more natural and set up.

Reflection of the Plan:

To Look back on the Pre-Production Plan, I feel as though there was a little missing from the plan, reverb sends, etc. but the overall outcome and preparation was incredibly useful and accurate. Without the plan I feel as though the session would have fell apart. I think the next stage of the project will be more focused and accurate to what we are trying to achieve, having learnt from the couple of mistakes and changes this session brought, we can move forward with more focus and attention to detail.