Studio Work

 College

Been A Long Time Gone

https://soundcloud.com/jordi-shevlin/be-a-long-time-final2

This track was recorded for Music In Context.

The genre was American southern blues

The song was written by me and performed by 4 members of my class including myself. I began researching some of the lyric content about what blues songs have based their music on, so for example generally sad times, or depression. There were social, cultural and political issues that I could have based the lyrics on, but decided to base them on social issues. The lyric content of the song is about relationships, whether it’s friendship or more; the first part “Been riddin this long road, don’t know if ill ever get home”, this refers to the relationship itself and the length and time you spent with the person or people. “There was no tracks keepin’ me straight, I veered right off and hit a big black gate, an’ I lost everything I had.” This was from a personal experience of my own about a relationship and how quickly things can go wrong in a short space of time. The chorus is fairly straightforward “Been a long time, be a long time till I’m on my feet again”. With writing the lyrics for this song there were no real difficulties as the lyrics came together relatively quickly, since they were based on a personal experience, so it was really the way I felt at that particular time. Once the lyrics were finished I then started focusing on the instrumentation and different sections of the song. I then decided to have other members of my class to play on the song as I wanted to recorded it and have the live feel. Matty was playing rhythm, Luc was playing drums, Oran bass and I was lead guitar and vocals. Firstly we tried playing the song with acoustic instruments as we all were learning the song and parts to it but it didn’t really fit as we felt the song needed more of a drive to it. So we then switched the acoustic instruments to electric, this worked really well as it gave the song more character to it and really managed to bring the song forward. As the lyrics in the song have a sense of sadness so we need to emphasise this.

Stupor

This song was recorded as part of Music skills competition.

Recording Process

The main studio room is where were recorded the bass guitar, rhythm guitar and the lead. The other two studios the drums were recorded in the drum both of to the side of the main studio. As for the vocals they were recorded in the vocal booth.

Drums – Luc

Recording the snare drum we used the Shure SM57. There was no difficulty choosing this microphone, as it is a dynamic microphone with a cardioids directional pattern. It doesn’t need phantom power and it records what you point it at and rejects leakage from the sides and from behind. Because of its size and shape it can be  positioned easily in the drum kit and in this case we positioned it on the top of the snare pointing at a downward angle. The Kick drum we used the Electro – Voice RE20 microphone for the recording. We used this microphone as it remains smooth across a wide range of frequencies; it also has a super cardioid polar pattern which is effective in isolating sound sources while also reducing the background noise as well.

We had Over head microphones two of them placed behind Luc. They were C421’S, placed there to capture the sound of the whole kit and the cymbals.

We used AKG C414 multi-pattern condenser microphones, to capture the sound of the room. This offers a choice of different polar patterns to choose form, for example figure of eight, omnidirectional.

 Bass Guitar – Rory

The bass guitar we used an AKG D112 microphone which was placed close to the grill cloth of the amplifier but slightly off to the side. The reason we used this particular mic for the bass was because the mic diaphragm has a low resonance frequency, so it would be able to maintain a solid and powerful response below 100Hz. Also the mic is most commonly used for kick drums and bass guitars. We also used a DI box as well as the mic. The technique that Rory was using was Phil lynott’s technique which he did on parisine walkways. D112 plugged into live room B input 1 into the 3^rd input in the c24 digital desk we also used the DI box it was plugged into also to live room B input 2 then sent from the live room B through to the 4^th input in the c24.

Rhythm Guitar – Myself

For the rhythm guitar the sound that I was going for was a clean sound as I thought it fitted the song more and blended in well especially for the rhythm. The amplifier that I was using was the Black star stack. We used two microphones to record the guitar, the Shure sm57 and the Sennheiser MD421. The microphone technique that I was using for the mics was one that Bruce Springsteen used in his recording of Born in the USA. The microphone was placed about two to three inches away from the grill cloth of the amp and pointed at an angle. Firstly I positioned it in the centre and then slowly moved the microphone around until I was happy with the sound. The two microphones which we chose to use where dynamic. We had a few phase issues; this was down to the mic placement of the microphones, as they were placed at different distances away from the sound source. How we corrected the problem was we just used the sm57.

Lead Guitar – Robbie

For the lead guitar the microphones that were used was Sennheiser MD421 which was close to the amp grill and angled down towards the amp as it was placed on an amp stand. The other microphone that was used was the Sigma ribbon which is a condenser microphone so we needed phantom power for it. The microphone is sensitive so there for it was placed a few feet away from the amp. This was one of the mic techniques that Robbie used it was David Gilmour’s. There also was a baffle wall placed around the amplifier and microphones.

Vocals – Channel and Myself

For recording the vocals we used the Rode NTK microphone. We chose this as we previously used this microphone to record before and as preference we liked the sound of it. You get a nice room sound from this mic as well. The microphone required a power supply for the mic to work. We used a pop shield while recording the vocals, this aided in minimising plosive sounds for example ‘P’, ‘B’, ‘T’, sounds that produce a sudden jet of air which can cause the capsule to produce a pop sound.

Harrison Tweed

https://soundcloud.com/harrisontweedofficial/down

So this is one track of our latest album, it was recorded in the garage with our own equipment, we recorded the guitars and the mandolin through DI and with a microphone. The drums was recorded with sure drum mics, and also a room microphone. The main two vocals was recorded separately and the backing vocals was recorded separately with all of us standing in front of one mic.

Sun Rise Funk

This track was recorded for our album for our project in college. The project is composing and album fundraising and then taking the album to Rome and then booking gigs in venues in Rome and performing some of the tracks.

The track was heavily influenced by James brown and other funk artists as I used there tracks as a reference track for both composing and mixing. With this track I also had some other members of my class play on the track as I wanted to have a live feel rather than just record each instrument separately.