TMC: Scratch Track

I finally had the pleasure of running in the Neve, having three members of The Mailbox Crew in to the studio to lay down some scratch tracks. The session definitely tested my knowledge of signal flow, and I got to test some new recording techniques...

Matthew, Mercedes, and Kaleah from The Mailbox Crew were a pleasure to work with; passionate, talented musicians who were open to my suggestions. To capture the rhythm of the track they played keys, bass, and drums respectively, wanting to focus on their instruments with respect to the click track rather than vocals as well. Trying out some new mic'ing techniques, I took the opportunity to get to the studio early to set up all the mics in case there was time at the end of the session to begin overdubbing.

SETUP

Initially I worked on the acoustics of the live recording room; arranging reflective panels at a slight angle behind where I aimed to position the drums to prevent unwanted slapback.

As there are also inbuilt reflective panels on the roof I aimed to position the drummer in the centre of the room directly underneath one.

To create a sense of comfortability, and allow them to better communicate with each other, I then decided to position the keyboard towards the drummer, with the bass on the left side of the room.

To prevent confusion each of these cables was simply labelled with some masking tape, neatly run out of the way, and rolled into coils where possible.

As I had another eleven cables ready for drum mic'ing later, keeping everything organised played a helpful role in the session's fluidity.

Signal wise, I set up ProTools to receive three channels, one for each instrument, arranged as follows:

• Keyboard: connected via MIDI out into a passive stereo DI box, in turn connected to the live room dropbox

• Bass: connected via a passive mono DI box, into the dropbox with XLR

• Drums: AKG C414 was positioned about 2m from the Kick Drum and central in height, to capture overall drum sound

RECORDING

The Neve desk has definitely become my new favourite toy. I enjoy the layout of it much more than anything else I have used previously, and it certainly has a lot more options for routing and monitoring. Though it will still take some practice until my sessions are as time-efficient as I'd like. Arranging headphone mixes with differing levels, including a click track, for three people, with two headphone outputs, proved confusing at times. Below is a short clip recorded during the session demonstrating the basic signal flow.

OVERDUBBING

Overall, we took a few takes of each track until everybody felt comfortable with how tight their performance was. Then towards the end of the session we had just enough time for Kaleah to overdub her drum track for "Claustrophobic". This was where I tried some new techniques and am rather excited for the final result:

• Speaker Microphone: to add to the sonic quality of the kick drum, in addition to the two microphones positioned on the inside and outside of the drum, I also placed a speaker microphone right next to the kick out mic; raised with bits of timber so that it sat at an optimum height. Essentially, this is a home-made speaker wired in reverse (since a speaker and microphone are essentially the same), such that it can be routed out with an XLR cable. Due to its larger diaphragm, this allows it to capture more of the lower frequencies.

• Room Microphone Placement: to capture the natural reverb of the room, I tried placing two AKG C451 B Small-diaphragm Condenser Microphones opposite the drummer, on the wall adjacent to the control room. As it contains a slanted window, I positioned the microphones diagonally into the corners of the window's cutaway. I thought this would have an interesting effect as some of the sound would build up in these corners, and could be added in moderation to the mix for a bonus element.

Ten channels, some drum tuning, microphone rearrangement, and a soundcheck later, and we were ready to record. Setup arranged by channel as follows:

1. Kick Hole: Shure Beta 52A

2. Kick Beater:

3. Speaker Microphone

4. Snare: Shure SM-57

5. High Tom: Shure SM-57

6. Floor Tom: Shure SM-57

7. Overhead Left: AKG C414

8. Overhead Right: AKG C414

9. Room Mic Left: AKG C451 B

10. Room Mic Right: AKG C451 B

Below you can see a hastily recorded clip investigating their placement more closely (language warning - and I'm not talking about the swear word):

Ultimately, I was very happy with the drum overdub. Levels were looking lovely with a really consistent waveform visualised on ProTools. Kaleah played very consistently, and I don't believe much work will be required in post-production. Looking forward to overdubbing the remainder of the elements soon.

Stay Tuned

- TA