Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Recording Session off my "Need To Do List"

ARTIST: JIAJA
STUDIO: UMS DIGITAL STUDIO
ENGINEER: yours truly!

Equipment: SSL 4000 G+ 48 Channel Analog Mixer. Recorded thru ProTools.


Instruments: Drums - Yamaha (UMS's)

Guitar Amp - Marshall JCM 800 if i'm not mistaken

Bass Amp - Jiaja's own Fender.

Instruments other than the drum - Jiaja sendiri bawa.

oh yeah Keyboard - Korg Triton (UMS's) only used as a guide.

Soooooooooo.... lets get techy!

Since UMS's studio has tons of mics... i went half all out! ahahahah...
best ni... buka 2 almari and all u see are mics... mics mics mics mics...
non of those cheapo stuff too! i think the cheapest would be their Shure SM57's

So lets kick off with the mic setups for the
DRUMS:

Overheads - Used to capture the overall drum kit sound with emphasis on the cymbals.
Since we had a 48 Channel mixer... i used 4 yes FOUR overheads.
2 x AKG C 3000 B and 2 x Audio Technica AT4050

Your basic OH lay out

Since i used 4 overheads. The next time you hire me to record at UMS. Then you'll see how i do it. hahhhaa...

Toms - Biasa loh.. Single mic on each. It was a clip mic... i just don't remember the model.
AKG something something... along the lines of this.

Kick - This one was kindda basic. Didn't mess with it much since they had a darn good kick Mic.
AKG D112. Just stuck it in the kick move here and there a bit. Chun.

Hi Hat - This one also didn't mess much... damn. can't really remembered what i used... hmm...
Should have been this Shure SM81. Where did i place it... at the hihat looo... hehehe

Snare - This one i had fun with. I was doing some sessions at RAM when
Roger Wang showed me a recording mag with a special section on Drum Miking.
Ok. The standard technique would be to just mic the top with a dynamic mic
and the bottom of the snare with a condenser.
With the option to phase reverse either during mixing.
Then the mag mentioned another technique with an extra condenser mic on the
SIDE of the snare.
Where? Cari sendiri! hahah... I used an SM57 for the top, Shure SM81 for the bottom
and an AKG C414 for the side. Use with caution, wrong placement might cause serious
phase problems during mixing.


All this was tracked thru ProTools going thru the killer chun every audio engineers dream mixer. The SSL!!! Only thing touched during the whole process was minor Compression and EQ. Both utilising the SSL killer chun onboard channel strips.

The GUITAR.
Nazri was playing on his Fender Strat going to the Head of the JCM Marshall before going to
the cabinets. Which was placed in another room for isolation. The whole band played together
and that Marshall is loud! Nice loud! Mic'd it using a Neumann TLM and a Shure SM57.

His guitar track was recorded dry with no efx as the Marshall's distortion was the sweetest distortion i've heard in awhile, his 1st chords out of the Genelec Monitors were grrrr! Only thing added onto the signal line was a tad of compression from the SSL's channel strip for both the TLM and SM57 signals.

Well... thats about it for now... the bass was a lil let down since the bass amp at UMS went MISSING! So miked up Naza's Bass with an AKG D112.

The keyboard? Since it was just a guide and Jim was gonna replay at iMotion Productions. Yeah my baby that. We just went line in to the SSL and took a feed out to ProTools.

3 Days of studio magic using and SSL... an SSL!

Now i can take - RECORDING USING AN SSL - off my To Do List.






Peace One




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