Monday, 10 October 2016

Portfolio Assignment

Recording Drums

In todays recording studio, I recorded Josh playing drums for the track I am remixing, in employability called 'Do For Love' by 2pac. To start off we decided on a list of microphones we would need during the process, this included; 4 Sm57's and 2 NT5's. We chose these microphones so the Sm57's would be able to pick up individual sound whilst the two NT5's would act as overhead microphones to capture the drum sounds all together and give us the stereo image we desired, whilst one of the Sm57's were placed on the snare, another on the high toms, another on the floor tom, another on the hi hat and the last one on the kick drum. This was a successful idea as we were able to get a very clear, smooth sounding drum kit which gives me many options to chose from when editing. Below is the finished recording of the drums, with each track labelled of the positioning of the microphones.

Recording Bass Guitar

Recording the bass guitar was fairly simple, we set up 2 NT5's and placed them by the bass amp using a stereo axis positioning called ORTF to ensure the sound wouldn't clash, whilst brining out the best quality of the sound. We chose to use the amp rather than feed the bass directly into the D.I so we still had the ambience in the background rather than just purely the bass playing. We took multiple takes to deicide what bass track I would use on my track, furthermore we also added a titan as a room mic to add ambience to the sound. Below is a screenshot of the bass recording.

Recording Studio

Recording Drums

In todays recording studio, I recorded Josh playing drums for the track I am remixing, in employability called 'Do For Love' by 2pac. To start off we decided on a list of microphones we would need during the process, this included; 4 Sm57's and 2 NT5's. We chose these microphones so the Sm57's would be able to pick up individual sound whilst the two NT5's would act as overhead microphones to capture the drum sounds all together and give us the stereo image we desired, whilst one of the Sm57's were placed on the snare, another on the high toms, another on the floor tom, another on the hi hat and the last one on the kick drum. This was a successful idea as we were able to get a very clear, smooth sounding drum kit which gives me many options to chose from when editing. Below is the finished recording of the drums, with each track labelled of the positioning of the microphones.

Recording Bass Guitar

Recording the bass guitar was fairly simple, we set up 2 NT5's and placed them by the bass amp using bidirectional positioning to ensure the sound wouldn't clash. We took multiple takes to deicide what bass track I would use on my track, furthermore we also added a titan as a room mic to add ambience to the sound. Below is a screenshot of the bass recording.

Employability Task, Remixing

Tupac Do For Love

What makes this track stand out so much for me, would have to be the bassline and vocals. To start off I got stems for the bass and the drums, however whether I used the drums or not was yet to be decided. Using ultra beat I came up with a 90's sounding drum kit which i added mid way through the track, I used this to further develop the song into my own image. After listening to the original multiple times i decided that adding a synth under the drum beat was the way to go. Later on in one of our classes with Farz, I asked Josh to play the drums in audio, which was interesting because it gave the drums a realistic sound and can be improved further through the use of effects and equalising