Mufaro Session #2:

From Friday the 14th at 7pm, till Saturday the 15th at 5pm, Callum and myself were in command of the Neve Studio, reasoning? MUFARO

Friday. 7-11pm.

Special Thanks first of all to Jonny Bullpit for booking out the Neve on Friday 7-11pm to allow us this opportunity to record Mufaro. We took his allocated Neve time to set up and start recording the rest of the Mufaro EP. So at 7pm, we stormed into the Neve studio with much anticipation we got to work, first on the agenda was setting up the studio. We got an absolutely fantastic result from our last session so we opted for the same Drum Kit setup, but with a few tweaks.

Setting Up the Drum Kit:

The Microphone choice was changed up a little from out first session. We opted to grab the Sennheiser MD441 for the Snare Top as our previous choice, the Rode M3 captured a very ugly harmonic from our Drummers Snare. Next was the Kick Out Microphone, we changed it from the AKG D112 to the Electro Voice RE-20, this was done due to pure fascination, we had been told about its use as a Kick Drum microphone, so we gave it a go! The Overhead Microphones were changed from an ORTIF placement into a standard AB placement, though we did tweak that to get a bit nicer stereo field. Lastly, we removed the C414 room microphone from the List and just opted to keep the SM57 by the knee, as what I'm calling a "Compression Microphone", simply just a microphone made to boost the Snare and Kick within the mix.. Through absolutely nuking it!

When it came time to setting up the Kit in the Live Room, we decided to change its position to save ourselves the cable conniption we had last session! We placed the Kit near centre of the room, orientated to face the control room, with bass to his right and piano to his left. This was a decision I made once entering the room, I realised that if he was placed closer to the front, there would be less cable fuss while still being able to keep the studio clean. This was a smart option as setup was a lot simpler because of it, though we ran into our first complication early... The Snare Top. Our Drummer had placed a new Tom onto his kit that sat in nearly the exact position we hoped to place the MD441. We had to result in placing the snare top microphone above the toms, facing directly towards the snare. There seemed to be no way around this situation, though the drummer had said "I don't need it, but if it was there I would use it heavily" it was pretty much code for "I need it".

The overall sound of the drum kit was incredibly good, to much of our surprise! The Snare came out sounding incredible, though there was some phase between top and bottom snare, it sounded great! That, along with the RE-20 on the kick produced an incredibly nice Snare / Kick combination. The Knee 57 was also out of phase with the kick and snare, though once that was in-sync with it all, the kit was sounding great! Everything was on point, till the Rim Shot... We realised how frequent the drummer would plan rim shots, which lead us to grabbing another 57 and setting it up underneath the Ride cymbal for a Rim Shot microphone. We ended up running into countless problems with the microphone, no cable or port seemed to work in the multi-core. Which was an absolute shame, as having a Rim Shot microphone would have greatly improved out possibilities when it came to the mixing stage of the project.

Running the Session:

After the Kit was set up, all the gain structures and protools session was functional, including reverb sends and headphone's run, we began recording. We started to record their jamming and made sure to get everything running a-ok, but before we could start recording actual takes, we had to set up a control microphone for Mufaro himself. This of all tasks was the most confusing, we ended up having to try 7 different microphone inputs to the Neve desk before getting one that actually worked properly. I believe this became an issue through the lack of knowledge to the console, i.e. The fact that it is a University Studio. Being unaware of the complete signal flow of the desk, or at least not having a fluent understanding of the console stops our instant problem solving skills to take place. I found that my memory was holding me back when setting this microphone up, forgetting that the microphone line runs into protools before re-entering the desk halted the session till it worked. This was not the only issue with this procedure though, as though the actual inputs, that didn't send to protools didn't work either? This is something that made me realise how much more time I need to spend just working with the console and making sure I understand all its quirks.

There was only two hours left until the session was over, in that last two hours we tried to record the first on the list, "Don't Come Back (Games Pt.2)". We started to record and instantly Mufaro was finding trouble being comfortable with the tempo they were playing at. This lead us down the rabbit hole of making a Click Track, Mufaro tapped out the tempo at 85 BPM. We ran a few attempts at recording to the click track but something was off, Callum and myself got talking and both agreed that the Click track was holding back the band, restricting their natural flow together. We both then, made an executive decision as the engineers that we will be recording without a click track. After describing our reasoning and informing them of the good intentions, they were all fully behind it. This decision was difficult, but not in the standard use of the word, Callum and Myself found it difficult to bring this up to Mufaro as we were not acting as producers, something we did not want to impose over him. Making sure we used the right words and describe our intentions was incredibly important to make sure he knew where we were coming from, this also allowed it to come to his attention and get behind the decision.

At the end of the Friday session, we had set up a great sounding Drum Kit, got the whole studio in running order and started our recording. We decided to come back to "Don't Come Back (Games Pt.2)" as, in the words of Callum "Either its the fact we are recording at 10:30 on a Friday, or that we have been recording the same song for an hour and a half, but something is off", and off it was. Bring on Saturday!

Saturday. 15th. 9am-5pm.

9am, we got into it. instantly. "Don't Come Back (Games Pt. 2)" was first on the agenda. We got into the studio and absolutely tore through it! Within the first 40 minutes we had the song recorded and moved right onto the next track, "Games Pt.2". Before we started to record, we played the song back to the artists. The only critique we got was from the bass player, he wanted a less abrasive high end on the bass. The high End was a result from an EQ we set on Friday night to get a better High Tone, but it came across a bit too intense in the mix, so we toned it down. This sort of play back / feedback sessions have been so incredibly helpful to both Engineers and Artist's, as I pointed out in this Blog here (CLICK THIS LINK) having such an open channel of communication is making Callum's and My own job a lot easier. This also comes back to the session, because we put in the effort to make a good sound and set up in the studio, the first half of the recording was incredibly effective and straight forward. There was barely any communication needed between the artists and engineers apart from "alright, another take" and "Lets have a listen to this".

File Organisation:

Between 9am and 12:30pm we recorded all tracks and had enough time to listen over all songs, because of how straight forward this part of the session was, I will go over my technique on file management. To make the session run quickly and effectively, I opted to keep all files within a central hub folder called "Mufaro Session #2". I saved the first track as this title track, once the song was recorded and the final take chosen, I would save it as the name, i.e. "Don't Come Back (Games Pt. 2)". Then re-open the "Mufaro Session #2" and delete all clips on the timeline, the starting the recording session all over again. This technique has a few positives and negatives, but I chose this tactic over others due to the time constraints we had. It allows the session to run incredibly quickly, having to only save and reopen files to start a new session, though the pain comes in the post editing and file size. I took it upon myself to sort out the files, as it was my choice to take this route of tiles management, It involves taking the one session home, duplicating it as many times you have songs and clearing out all the unused files of each project. Though you don't need to do this, I had to due to Callum and myself splitting the work load. Looking back at this tactic, It was not the best option available as it has taken the files away from Callum for me to split them up, while also taking up my entire hard drive for an hour till I sorted all files out.

Post 12:30. Overdubbing, Vocal Takes and Reference Tracks

At 12:30pm we saw the departure of the Bass and Keys player, though the keys player was coming back, the rest of us saw fit to go down to the local pub and have some lunch. While down there, we all bonded over our connections to each other and discussed the project as a whole. Mufaro spoke a lot about the flow of the project, how it would work as a cohesive piece and the message behind it. I decided to talk to him about the Reference tracks for the songs, to further his ideas. I mentioned that having reference tracks for every song gets us one step closer to being able to clearly see his direction and artistic statement. The reference tracks in the link below:

Easy Access: Mufaro Reference Tracks

Once we all grouped back up (apart form the Bass player) we started on the Overdubbing process for some of the songs. First in-line, "Games Pt. 1".

Games Pt. 1:

We were giving all the songs a listen over once we got back into the studio, we discussed the overdubs we would be making to all the tracks. We gave "Games Pt. 1" the first listen and all started clicking along, Mufaro opted to take this as a sign and put it into the track. I entered the Live room and moved the Overhead Royars into an upright position near the front of the studio. We positioned each band member, plus myself around the stereo set up and tracked away our clicks. Mufaro was incredibly happy with the outcome, though we couldn't play the whole track perfectly, so he has left it upon Callum and myself to chop up all the clicks and place them in time. Mufaro then wanted the band members to record some backing vocals for the track, so this time, instead of having a professional singer come in and track backing vocals, Mufaro wanted a "Jam Room" vibe with only the band members involved. He has since told us that he wants his lead vocals to sit along side the backing vocals to further this concept.

Don't Come Back (Games Pt. 2):

After "Games Pt.1" we moved onto Pt.2. This was another straight forward process to the session, Mufaro wanted a piano solo / lick to highlight his singing in the second verse. We started to track the Piano Solo and in the meantime we got the Drummer to pack up his Kit. This is another instance, similar to our first session, where we utilized as much time management we could, by having the Keys DI'd it allowed us to pack up the live room and still record his takes. Though, this is not always an assured thing to do, we had asked permission of the Keys player if he was ok with this to happen before doing so. Letting the performer to be in complete control of his surroundings is very important if you wan the best performance possible, the last thing you want is an artist to feel uncomfortable.

We followed this up with a shaker overdub to the Bridge. Once again, we used the Royar 121 to pick up the shaker, we did so due to the warms and strong mid range of the microphone. Something we were after as we didn't want the shaker to be piercing in the mix, and having more midrange response is important. We also recorded the shaker in Mono instead of Stereo, although a stereo shaker would have definitely been a cool addition to the mix, it is something we can do in post, also Mono allows us to bypass the troubleshooting difficulties that can arise with phase.

Vocal Takes:

To end the session we got Mufaro's Lead vocals of "Games Pt.1" We opted to use the Neumann U87 for the lead vocal takes, this was due to the subtle singing that Mufaro was doing on the track, and the large dynamic range he was singing with, unlike closer (which we used the EV RE-20). The first thing Mufaro wanted was the lights off in the control room, although we were already putting this into place during every recording take, he was wanting the lights off due to his performance. He decided to follow his "Jam Room" idea by having him "Talk to the Band" in his performance. This started off incredibly loose and off-putting, but as Mufaro got a better hold on the groove and timing of the track, it really started to come together. You can hear the final result of the song at the end of this Blog, under "Scratch Track"

Reflection:

To conclude, this session was awesome, I learnt so much about running a session and the perks of being prepared. Being able to walk into a studio that is already prepared and ready for your session is a blessing! It really goes to show how important planning is to a good studio session. The result of the session is remarkable, Callum and myself have recorded songs that almost need no mixing! For example "Games Pt. 1" (the scratch track below) sounds incredibly clear and balanced while being completely at unity. This comes back to Callum's and myself decision to alter the drum microphone setup, as well as the Bass EQ. This result is exactly what you want from your studio session, A clear and crisp recording that allows you to easily manipulate the sound into the exact mix you want.

The communication and team work between Callum and Myself is improving greatly, though we did have an incident this past session. I was getting a bit too into the session and was in a joking around mood, I ended up blaming Callum for one of the problems we uncounted, which is never good. Callum called me out saying, that I cant just go around blaming things on him when I am letting him take control. This snapped me right in-line, Callum was completely right, I was pushing him around for absolutely no reason even though in my mind I was joking around, sometimes I need to constraint myself to let the studio flow better. It doesn't make it better that this happened within the last 2 hours of the session. I realised the bad atmosphere I had created and seeked to mend it, I apologized to Callum and made sure he knew I was being serious about the apology. After I would let him have as much control as possible, I did this because I felt like I was undermining his ability by constantly calling him out, so by putting him above me I was trying to remove that mentality or atmosphere. I feel as though I was able to resolve the issue this way, though I don't think Callum took it as seriously as I did, I still felt like I needed to fix this as a tear in the group dynamic could ruin the project. All in all, the session ended on a huge high note, with both team and artist feeling happy and accomplished.

Scratch Track:

Below is scratch track to "Games Pt. 1", this upload hasn't had any mixing done to the track, all levels are at unity. Enjoy!

#Mufaro #TeamWork #Session #neve #Reflection #ProTools