First Year Multi-Track Recording Blog

Throughout the mixing process for the song ‘Lonely Boy’ by ‘The Black Keys’, I have made various creative decisions and changes from the original raw mix, as to how I wish to mould the song into the final piece. This involved many choices in terms of balancing, dynamic range of certain tracks and even alteration of overall ambience (e.g. reverbs). These choices were made based on personal preference and how I believe the mix should evolve. For example, I enjoyed the harmonic on the acoustic track whilst recording it and felt this acted as a good opener to the song, therefore I included it, which I have also done with the introductory drum clicks.

The balancing of the song took a great deal of my focus, as I felt without a good early understanding of how the mix would end up, then the track may fall apart. My mix centres heavily extenuating the bass so it cuts through the mix, as I feel this acts as a spine to the constant drive as the song progresses. I was also impressed with the sound output of the acoustic guitars and have kept them as a powerful undercurrent to the song. Yet in saying this, I have definitely attempted to place emphasis on the lead guitar riff whenever it is played during the beginning of the song or towards the final chorus. I feel the vocal needed to be clearly referenced throughout the track and so have made sure this is clearly heard at all sections. Arguably I attempted to be quite conservative with my drum volume, but as the mixing process continued I tried to make sure they could be clearly heard.

I have used multiple alterations to the dynamic range of certain instruments, using an insert compressor on the ‘High-Hats’ track and a compressor send on both ‘Overhead’ tracks. This was mainly done to reduce the dynamic range of the ‘High-Hats’ on both tracks. I enjoyed the power they brought to the song in the final chorus, but they were too overwhelming, so I’ve attempted to bring them back into the mix further.

I have also used a reverb send on both the ‘Backing VOX’ track and the main ‘VOX’ track to create the sense of further depth to their environment whilst they sing, as opposed to a dead clean sound. I thought that in adding reverb, the tone of the track would mesh better with the overall sound of the piece. Whilst editing the vocals, however, I did decide to take out the second ‘Backing VOX’ track that was recorded in the dead room, as I felt it added little to the mix in general. This was due to the vocalist singing exactly what the lead VOX was singing. This did, when turned up massively, brought a ‘gang vocal’ feel to the song, but this wasn’t effective in the mix, and so I decided to delete it.

• This session allowed for us to establish any extra recordings that we wished to add to the song. We decided at the beginning of the session that we wanted to add acoustic guitar recordings and also backing vocals to help ‘flesh-out’ the track.

• The acoustic guitar recording was chosen first by the group. We used two AKG414 microphones, one placed in front of the body of the guitar, and the other near the twelfth fret to obtain the  sound of the harmonics in the recording capture. We used this setup both in the live room and the dead room so that we could experiment with whether we preferred the natural environment reverberations of the live room or the dead space with just the audio capture. This was fed into the wall via XLR leads and fed back to the desk, with levels being set and input into Pro Tools.

• Then the backing vocals were recorded. Two vocals were recorded at the same time, one in the live room and then the other in the dead room. Both musicians used the AKG414 microphones to record.

• Due to absence from the session, I am unaware of the intricacies of the recording process on the vocals. However, I was later informed that the group used the AKG414 microphone to record the vocals within the dead room inputting the microphone to the wall via an XLR lead into channel 13 to then feed back to the control room desk and then input into the Pro Tools session. The dead room was used to avoid the issue of any natural reverberations in being recorded, as the pure sound of the vocals was needed rather than capturing the ‘feel’ of the environment that was being recorded in. A fold-back system was also established to make sure the artist had confidence in recording their individual section of the track.

• Began setup for recording the rhythm and lead guitar sections for the song. Used a similar method as the bass, in that we recorded two simultaneous signals at once in the live room. The DI box was used to gain the raw audio of the guitar pickups, whist the amplifier was used to establish a good EQ, recorded using an SM57 microphone. These signals were both captured and fed back to the desk in the control room to then be put into Pro Tools and the overall song session. The first recording was of the rhythm guitar to be used as undercurrent to the song. We then recorded the lead guitar with mildly altered EQ on the amplifier to cut through the mix more in the session.

• Prior to beginning the recording process we established a good fold-back system with the musicians to make sure they could confidently play along to the track.

• Began by setting up the bass guitar with two simultaneous recordings through both the DI box and recording of the amplifier using an AKGD112 microphone. This microphone allowed accurate capture of the lower bass frequencies and was ideal for this recording. The practice of capturing both the raw pickup audio of the bass guitar through the DI box, and then the altered EQ settings of the bass amp in the live room, was advantageous as we could choose between the two audio outputs for the track. We also used an SM57 microphone for the musicians talk-back to allow for communicating with the people in the control room.

• Following this setup process, we established a good fold-back mix so the musician could play along to the track and feel comfortable in doing so. This also allowed for communication with the talk-back feature. We then began tracking the bass guitar and feeding it into the Pro Tools session.