Evaluation of the 28/1/19
In this rehearsal, we have managed to set up and get organised for our recording session. In this set up, we started on deciding on which song we will be recording that all of the instrumentalists can have a track in. The aim of this is for everyone to be able to record their own track and the mix the track afterwards.
When deciding on which of our known songs to record, we took into account of a range of factors including the addition of the flugelhorn (played by me) and transposition, the suitability of listening to the song afterwards as an actual track to upload onto sound cloud and other social media platforms and the knowledge of the song.
At the end of the recording, we will be publishing our song to sound cloud so it is important to make sure that the song is suitable and that others will enjoy listening to it.
The knowledge of the song from the beginning to the end is also good, knowing the structure and all of the different sections will ensure the smooth running of the studio session.
One of our other options were to do a song which features in a movie which is a short melody. The issue that had occurred with this is that it was just planned on the day an the vocalists didn't have anything planned for it and therefore there would have to be more practice and rehearsals, decreasing our recording and mixing time which is the aim of our project. The catchy melody also wasn't a full song therefore, we wouldn't have something realistic, like an original song to work with. In the real production world, practising in the studio would waste a lot of time and cost a lot of money.
In the recording of the song 'Seventeen' an original previously performed by the group, there will be an addition of the flugelhorn. The planning of adding the flugelhorn into this song was done well in advance of the recording session to make sure that the flugelhornist would be ready to the recordings. This included finding out the key of the song and transposing it into the key of the flugelhornist. The key of the piano, C transposed to the key of the flugelhorn, Bb is a tone apart therefore all of the notes played on the piano would be a tone up for the flugelhorn player. In this case, the key of seventeen is in B major, which makes my key C major.
The flugelhorn will be improvising in sections where the band will agree on.
As a group, we have also decided to carry out further rehearsals outside of college studio times to work on our project to ensure that we have enough time to record and mix.
To elaborate on this, I carried out some research online using the site called 'MusicinAfrica' which goes into detail about the essentials of beginning a recording in the studio including a few other things I didn't mention including practice, choices of studios and
In today's recording session, we focused on the setting up of the studio including the microphones-
What went well:
Taking on of previous knowledge of the setting up process such as the microphones and the mixer,
We began our recording session by listening to the song which we are going to record.
Opening and setting up logic was one of the first things we had done, creating a new track of audio files. When we had one this, we had to change the imput and ouput channels to the ones where we had connected the cables on the DI box.
What didn't go well:
One of the main issues in this recording session is that we didn't get round to recording any tracks due to the time it took to set up, using an hour and a half. This meant that by the end we were ready, however, for next time we would have to make sure that our set up runs quickly and smoothly so that we can start with the recording of our tracks.
11/2/19 Mixing day
Beginning the mixing of our recorded track called 'Seventeen'.
The track consists of the Drums 1 and 2, the bass, vocals and a keyboard track.
Firstly, to organise, I will be changing some of the colours in the track to contrast them.
I first listened to the track the whole way through to see of I could spot some aspects of the music which may need editing.
In terms of the vocals, the vocals are very breathy and they should sound cleaner. They also sound very close up when you listen to the vocals on their own. When the vocalist sings louder, the music is too loud. Together with this, the vocals are not an equal volume to the rest of the instruments.
From this I can get the idea of what I need to change specifically and this could be the volume of the vocals, balancing the out so that the volume is comfortable to listen to and so that the emphasised words don't get too loud.
Moving onto the other instruments in the track, I felt like the drums at the end were too abrupt due to how they come in suddenly. The drummer is playing a constant beat until the ending come in which sounds like a loud crash after listening to everything at one level. Fading could work well here or just turning down the volume of the track. I will try both to see which one works best with this song.
To check whether everything was in time, I put the metronome on to listen to the drum beat in particular. The drummer is playing a constant beat which I may need to quantise this to make them accurately on the beat.
The beginning of the song sounds very empty and you can hear background noise. There was some audio at the start of the track where the song hadn't yet started. The drummer was counting the other musicians in and there was a little bit of noise in the background.
At the end of the track, there was somebody talking into the microphone saying 'guys' which was not supposed to be in the recording. This may have been because the producers had ended the recording too late and not straight after the song had ended. Therefore I will be cutting this part off of the end while ensuring that all of he instruments in the song end together. To do this, I will be using the scissor tool with the key command of T/S?
There are many other ways to cut and trim down tracks in logic including...
One of the most recommended ways is using the marcee tool as it results in a much cleaner sound.
I will also need to cut out parts where there is no audio as if these parts are empty, they are not necessary to be there unless it is an instrument playing in the track. There may be some background noises that I didn't pick up on when listening but that which other listeners could pick up on.
I also overcame a difficulty where there was a small drum sound at the beginning of the track but I didn't know which track it was coming from. After a while, I solved this by using the mute button to mute the tracks and find out which track the noise was still on when they were all muted.
This also occurred when there was some reverb coming from the piano near the beginning of the track. I found this out by muting the tracks to find which stopped the sound when the track was muted.
There is an easier way to do this which I had discovered after
Things I took into account of while listening to the track:
When listening to the track for the first time, I made sure not to listen to it too loud and have it on a moderate volume as listening to music loud automatically makes is think that the music sounds better.
A compressor is a 'turning down' device which can be used for the vocalists track which consists of loud, soft parts and dynamics.
On the left hand side of the compressor there is an input gain which can be adjusted to go lower and higher. Although the compressor works to turn things down, we need to tell the compressor when to do this. This is done with a threshold. A threshold is a point where something changes such as a door which changes your environment from two places.
Some rules that apply to the threshold are, if the level of loudness is below the threshold, nothing happens to the sound. The compressor doesn't have to turn down anything as the sound has not gone beyond the threshold. However, when the level of noise gets louder, it goes above the threshold and when the sound gets too loud,the compressor turns down the sound before it goes any further
Linking to ratios, ratios are the comparison between two amounts where the first amount determines the amount in the second. Using 2:1 as an example, if the first number was 4, then the ratio would be 4:2.In production terms, the ratio is between the compressor and the threshold. Testing this out, going beyond the threshold caused the compressor to turn the volume down using the ratio. In other terms, the ratio of the threshold depends how much the compressor is going to turn it down by.https://www.quora.com/What-are-ratios-and-proportions
The EQ
Each band of EQ controls different frequencies. You can start making changes by what you are seeing on the waveform other than what they are hearing .
All of the different colours are doing different things but they are all working to balance out the sound. The different colours are there to make it easier to see whats going on in the track.
Another type of EQ is a filter EQ. In general terms, a filter is for the purpose of "extracting things" like a water filter. In production terms, An audio filter is getting rid of some aspects of the sound completely. A low cut filter is cutting the low frequency information and the high pass filter is letting high frequencies pass through.
Some things we may want to filter out is some of the low end audio as we know that there isn't anything there.
Lastly, on
the piano track, There is a lot of pedal on it which makes it sound
slightly like a kick drum which is not what we are aiming for with the
sound. Therefore, using the filter takes out the "kick drum sound" from
the filter.
To change the Perameter in real time, you would use automation.The parametric EQ means there are 'lots of controls to do one thing'. They have low and high frequencies which you can turn up and down as desired. However you can change how narrow or wide that effect is, making small or drastic changes.
To clean up the piano using the frequencies so that the track is more comfortable to listen to and less 'ear piercing'. Changing the type of piano we use also changes the tone together with the frequencies we have already changed. Changing the tone of the piano can help the producer to mix and create a track to make it sound more like the initial idea they had.
In this rehearsal, we have managed to set up and get organised for our recording session. In this set up, we started on deciding on which song we will be recording that all of the instrumentalists can have a track in. The aim of this is for everyone to be able to record their own track and the mix the track afterwards.
When deciding on which of our known songs to record, we took into account of a range of factors including the addition of the flugelhorn (played by me) and transposition, the suitability of listening to the song afterwards as an actual track to upload onto sound cloud and other social media platforms and the knowledge of the song.
At the end of the recording, we will be publishing our song to sound cloud so it is important to make sure that the song is suitable and that others will enjoy listening to it.
The knowledge of the song from the beginning to the end is also good, knowing the structure and all of the different sections will ensure the smooth running of the studio session.
One of our other options were to do a song which features in a movie which is a short melody. The issue that had occurred with this is that it was just planned on the day an the vocalists didn't have anything planned for it and therefore there would have to be more practice and rehearsals, decreasing our recording and mixing time which is the aim of our project. The catchy melody also wasn't a full song therefore, we wouldn't have something realistic, like an original song to work with. In the real production world, practising in the studio would waste a lot of time and cost a lot of money.
In the recording of the song 'Seventeen' an original previously performed by the group, there will be an addition of the flugelhorn. The planning of adding the flugelhorn into this song was done well in advance of the recording session to make sure that the flugelhornist would be ready to the recordings. This included finding out the key of the song and transposing it into the key of the flugelhornist. The key of the piano, C transposed to the key of the flugelhorn, Bb is a tone apart therefore all of the notes played on the piano would be a tone up for the flugelhorn player. In this case, the key of seventeen is in B major, which makes my key C major.
The flugelhorn will be improvising in sections where the band will agree on.
As a group, we have also decided to carry out further rehearsals outside of college studio times to work on our project to ensure that we have enough time to record and mix.
To elaborate on this, I carried out some research online using the site called 'MusicinAfrica' which goes into detail about the essentials of beginning a recording in the studio including a few other things I didn't mention including practice, choices of studios and
In today's recording session, we focused on the setting up of the studio including the microphones-
What went well:
Taking on of previous knowledge of the setting up process such as the microphones and the mixer,
We began our recording session by listening to the song which we are going to record.
Opening and setting up logic was one of the first things we had done, creating a new track of audio files. When we had one this, we had to change the imput and ouput channels to the ones where we had connected the cables on the DI box.
What didn't go well:
One of the main issues in this recording session is that we didn't get round to recording any tracks due to the time it took to set up, using an hour and a half. This meant that by the end we were ready, however, for next time we would have to make sure that our set up runs quickly and smoothly so that we can start with the recording of our tracks.
11/2/19 Mixing day
Beginning the mixing of our recorded track called 'Seventeen'.
The track consists of the Drums 1 and 2, the bass, vocals and a keyboard track.
Firstly, to organise, I will be changing some of the colours in the track to contrast them.
Primary colours
are usually used to label different instruments playing in the track
and different sections of the song. There are many advantages for this
which I will talk more about below.
I labelled the
tracks to make the whole track easy to navigate. There is also an
advantage during the recording of the track. When the musicians are
playing and recording, it makes it easier for the musician to see their
track according to the colour. For example, a guitarist recording their
part (an instrumental section) would
use the colour to help them to see when to start playing and when to
stop according to the parts before and after their part which is also coloured. This is where using colours can be convenient during a
recording sand after the recording for the mixing and editing of the
track.
I first listened to the track the whole way through to see of I could spot some aspects of the music which may need editing.
In terms of the vocals, the vocals are very breathy and they should sound cleaner. They also sound very close up when you listen to the vocals on their own. When the vocalist sings louder, the music is too loud. Together with this, the vocals are not an equal volume to the rest of the instruments.
From this I can get the idea of what I need to change specifically and this could be the volume of the vocals, balancing the out so that the volume is comfortable to listen to and so that the emphasised words don't get too loud.
Moving onto the other instruments in the track, I felt like the drums at the end were too abrupt due to how they come in suddenly. The drummer is playing a constant beat until the ending come in which sounds like a loud crash after listening to everything at one level. Fading could work well here or just turning down the volume of the track. I will try both to see which one works best with this song.
To check whether everything was in time, I put the metronome on to listen to the drum beat in particular. The drummer is playing a constant beat which I may need to quantise this to make them accurately on the beat.
The beginning of the song sounds very empty and you can hear background noise. There was some audio at the start of the track where the song hadn't yet started. The drummer was counting the other musicians in and there was a little bit of noise in the background.
At the end of the track, there was somebody talking into the microphone saying 'guys' which was not supposed to be in the recording. This may have been because the producers had ended the recording too late and not straight after the song had ended. Therefore I will be cutting this part off of the end while ensuring that all of he instruments in the song end together. To do this, I will be using the scissor tool with the key command of T/S?
There are many other ways to cut and trim down tracks in logic including...
One of the most recommended ways is using the marcee tool as it results in a much cleaner sound.
I will also need to cut out parts where there is no audio as if these parts are empty, they are not necessary to be there unless it is an instrument playing in the track. There may be some background noises that I didn't pick up on when listening but that which other listeners could pick up on.
I also overcame a difficulty where there was a small drum sound at the beginning of the track but I didn't know which track it was coming from. After a while, I solved this by using the mute button to mute the tracks and find out which track the noise was still on when they were all muted.
This also occurred when there was some reverb coming from the piano near the beginning of the track. I found this out by muting the tracks to find which stopped the sound when the track was muted.
There is an easier way to do this which I had discovered after
Things I took into account of while listening to the track:
When listening to the track for the first time, I made sure not to listen to it too loud and have it on a moderate volume as listening to music loud automatically makes is think that the music sounds better.
- The Key command for automation is A which deals with the loudness.
I also made sure to take breaks as this could refresh my listening and the music could sound different when I come back to it. Hearing the track over and over again could get tiring which is why taking a break is necessary to increase focus.
A compressor is a 'turning down' device which can be used for the vocalists track which consists of loud, soft parts and dynamics. On the left hand side of the compressor there is an input gain which can be adjusted to go lower and higher. Although the compressor works to turn things down, we need to tell the compressor when to do this. This is done with a threshold. A threshold is a point where something changes such as a door which changes your environment from two places.
Some rules that apply to the threshold are, if the level of loudness is below the threshold, nothing happens to the sound. The compressor doesn't have to turn down anything as the sound has not gone beyond the threshold. However, when the level of noise gets louder, it goes above the threshold and when the sound gets too loud,the compressor turns down the sound before it goes any further
Linking to ratios, ratios are the comparison between two amounts where the first amount determines the amount in the second. Using 2:1 as an example, if the first number was 4, then the ratio would be 4:2.In production terms, the ratio is between the compressor and the threshold. Testing this out, going beyond the threshold caused the compressor to turn the volume down using the ratio. In other terms, the ratio of the threshold depends how much the compressor is going to turn it down by.https://www.quora.com/What-are-ratios-and-proportions
The EQ
Each band of EQ controls different frequencies. You can start making changes by what you are seeing on the waveform other than what they are hearing .
All of the different colours are doing different things but they are all working to balance out the sound. The different colours are there to make it easier to see whats going on in the track.
Another type of EQ is a filter EQ. In general terms, a filter is for the purpose of "extracting things" like a water filter. In production terms, An audio filter is getting rid of some aspects of the sound completely. A low cut filter is cutting the low frequency information and the high pass filter is letting high frequencies pass through.
Some things we may want to filter out is some of the low end audio as we know that there isn't anything there.
To change the Perameter in real time, you would use automation.The parametric EQ means there are 'lots of controls to do one thing'. They have low and high frequencies which you can turn up and down as desired. However you can change how narrow or wide that effect is, making small or drastic changes.
To clean up the piano using the frequencies so that the track is more comfortable to listen to and less 'ear piercing'. Changing the type of piano we use also changes the tone together with the frequencies we have already changed. Changing the tone of the piano can help the producer to mix and create a track to make it sound more like the initial idea they had.
The
shelf EQ turns up everything below 400 hertz and turns up everything
below 400 hertz. Therefore, 3000 hertz would be turned down. This can
add a dull or full sound to the track, making significant changes to the
track.
You
can only use precepts when you know that the material is the same as
what the precepts has made otherwise it won't do what you had desired.
Comments
Post a Comment