Music Intensive

For our final intensive we've been working on the music song writing assignment. We were told to construct compose write and record a song that was previously assigned to us. We chose the song straight out the door and drew references from songs like Hello, by Adel and Wild One By RGSM, both of these tracks were a piano heavy song with the vocals being the most important thing. We wanted to recreate a cheesy ballad type song that was grandeur and built up to a climax at the last chorus.

We first recorded the Drums. We went in there with an idea for what we wanted to kit to soundlike. I wanted a really low end thumpy kick with a quick crisp tight snare. We plaved a sandbag against the skin of the kick drum to achieve this thud that i was after, and tightened the skins on the snare to create that crunch. The snare had two top mics and one bottom mic to ensure we got the crispest sound possible. The drum recording went fine with no real setbacks.

The next week we recorded the piano and the bass guitar. For the piano we used two Royer 121 at either end pointing down into the open upright piano. We also used 2 Neuman u87 that were pointing front on towards the strings in the piano. The u87s picked up the crispness and the hammer while the 121 picked up the warmth and body from inside the piano. I was very pleased with this setup and i will definitely be trying this setup again if i were to record piano again. We also just used the DI to record the bass track directly into pro tools.

The next monday we were up for recording our vocalist and we were pleased to find someone who has the incredible voice that we were after in this song. It suited it perfectly. The recording of the vocals ran smoothly with each take getting better and better.

I went away and added in some orchestral sounds to make sure it sounded as grandeur as we had hoped.

On the last lesson we had to mix it down, running everything through effects units and external gear. I was really happy with how smoothly this intensive went. We worked really well as a team we all listened to each other and respected each other's opinions. Everyone had an input.