Finances

At the start of our Final Major Project we were all given a £1500 budget that we are allowed to use during the creating of the track and any materials, marketing and promotion and an EP Launch, even though the money is hypothetical we have to plan out recording sessions just like we would have to do in real life.

I've had one recording session during the creating of my track in which i used the control and the live room and one in G079. The session in the live room and the control room cost me a total of £420, this was to pay for the live room and control room, any instruments that i would need (Drum Kit, Vocal Mic), any XLR or Jack leads that i would need and to cover the staff. The pricing for the equipment was per hour so if i was to use the drum kit for 3 hours i would pay £60. Since my session was 3 hours long i had to pay £60 for all the equipment that i was using, £60 for the engineer and £30 each for both assistants. After i had finished with the session and paid for it, my remaining budget was £1080.00.

My second recording session was in G079 and this session was not very costly as i only needed 1 hour and one performer, I paid a total of £60 for this session which covered guitars, cables and a performer for an hour. After i had finished this session and paid for it, my remaining budget was £1020.00

Session Review Dan B Piano - 12/05/14

I took part in Dan Burrows's recording session as an engineer, he asked me to engineer his session in which he was performing piano for his track which is an epic piece which you would think is from an actual film, since i had not been an engineer for our EP and one of the requirements for the FMP is for everybody to be an engineer at some point. When I arrived at the session Dan B and Alex D were already setting up the Yamaha piano with a Marshall amp connected through a jack cable and we had a SM57 set up about 3 inches away from the amp because that is what we were mainly recording, we also set up 2 SE 1A's to capture the ambience of the piano but we ran into a problem with them because we were planning of using on C1000s but we couldn't find a mic clip for one of them so we switched to the 1A's and it solved our problem and that was the only problem with the session, we also set up a talkback mic for Dan using a SM58 so he could talk to us from the live room.  

The Piano Set Up

When it came to record Dan on the Piano, i had created a blank session with 3 audio tracks, 2 for the Amp microphone and the other for talkback, the 3rd audio track was for the SE1A's and since they are stereo mics. I then imported Dans backing track into the session and matched it up with the tempo which was 140BPM and then created a click track for Dan to play along too. After all that had been set up i started to set the gains for each microphone so that we had a good level when we came to record and would not have to change them during the recording. Dan had a play through before we started recording so that he was practised and knew what he was recording, once that had been done we started the recording and he recorded 8 bars for his opening of his track and then we punch recorded 39 bars of outro and that took a few takes because Dan kept either missing notes or playing the wrong ones, which is normal for a recording session, after the recording we had done all we wanted and then saved the session and took the audio of the recordings we liked and put it on Dans memory stick and then Mat Q and Alex D who were both assistants started to pack away the piano and the microphones, stands and all cables and i turned the Mac off and turned off all the equipment that needed to be turned off in the correct order. Overall i believe i performed very well in the session as i did everything that was asked of me and i had communication with Dan and set up and put away everything correctly.

Pro Tools Session For Dan B

An Update For You

As i am speaking to you now, i have all but finished my track until we start the Mixing and Mastering. My track now has 6 new audio tracks which are the individual drums from the recording i did a couple of weeks back and during mixing week i will be mixing the individual kits to my liking. 

Dan Burrows and myself have changed the alarm that i created slightly so that it would transition a lot better. Dan time stretched the audio so that it was perfectly in time with the first 8 bars and then he uploaded the audio of the alarm onto our shared file on Google Drive and i replaced my old alarm track with the new one so that we had the same one. 

All i have to do now is to include the vocals that we recorded which Dudley has offered to do because he says he has a really nice vocoder plugin on Ableton so he will edit those and then we will include the ones we want in our tracks.

Session Review Of Alex Dudley Drums- 7/05/14

I took part in Alex Dudley's recording session as a performer, he asked me to perform drums on his track which is a chilled electronic track which is the 3rd track on our EP, the drumming wasn't too challenging there were some bits of the track which were off putting whilst drumming because of the glitchy nature of the track.
When i arrived at the studio, Alex D, and myself were setting up the drum kit when we discovered that there was no snare drum, this was a major problem as we would need it for our recording. Alex D told Harriet that there was no snare in the studio and then suggested we use the new snare as long as we were careful with it. Our second problem was that we did not have enough clips for the microphone stands so we had to take the screw out of a C1000s clip and screwing it into a clip for a Shure Beta57.
When it came to recording the drums, Alex told me what he thinks the drums should sound like and include some fills to make the track interesting and so i had one run through to make sure i had to tempo correct and was playing along to it well,  when we came to record the drums, the first take i played the drums quite mellow so that they would not over power the track, i went a bit out of time during the track because we had the click going and in the track there are some beeping sounds and it threw me off a bit but i recovered well from that, the second take was much better as i did not get thrown by the beeping sounds and i believe it was a much smoother take. The third and final take, Alex told me to go wild on the fills because he wanted to see how it would sound, so during the third take i was not mellow at all, i still played the same groove and pattern but i decided to spice it up a bit by playing them on different parts of the drum kit and playing with a bit more vigour.
Overall i believe my performance was very good and Alex was happy with my drumming for his track.

Me Drumming

Session Review of My Guitar and Bass Session - 29/04/14

My session was to record guitar and bass for my track through D/I into Logic and using an Amp Designer to get the sound that i would like. I had Mat Quinn performing the guitar and bass because he knew my track mostly and could pitch ideas to improve the track. As a performer he performed extremely well, he was prepared and came up with ideas to improve the track, he did not need many takes because he knew the track all the way through all though he got a bit thrown by my break in the track as it was a weird pattern and needed to get his head around it. I believe i performed well in my roles as well, giving input to how the track could be improved or if he was playing it the way i would like, as the engineer i set the level for the guitar and bass before he started recording and then set a punch record because one bar wasn't quite in time. Overall i believe that the session was a successful one as we completed what we set out to do.

The Guitar and Bass tracks that Mat Recorded

Recording Session Plan 29/04/14

This session will be on Tuesday 29th April and it is for the guitars on my track and we will be recording them in G079 and on Logic. Planning for this session is not a difficult task as i do not have to book time in the studio, its just hiring the instruments, cables and performer. I plan on recording the guitar and bass through the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 for audio interface and into Logic. I am using DI to record the Guitar and the Bass using the Scarlett USB interfaces we have at college because it is a lot easier and cheaper than recording in the studio and i would have recorded the acoustics of the live room that i would have to get rid of by EQ if i was using microphones to record the guitar and bass and that can take a long time, another reason for using DI is; that i can manipulate the sound while using an Amp Modeller so i can find a tone and effects and because of Logics vast array of Amp Modellers, Pedal Boards and effects, i can change it when ever i would like rather than in the studio which would have been through a microphone and an amp, i would have to settle for a sound that i would not be able to change after it had been recorded and placed in my track and if Mat messed up whilst recording i can just delete the recording and try again.
This session is not costly at all as i am only running it for 1 hour, I will be paying for the instruments which is £20 for the hour, the cables for the hour which is £20 and the performer for the hour which is £20, i will not need to hire any engineer, producer or assistants as i can do all these jobs because we are only at the mac i am working on.

Roles

Engineer/Producer/Assistant (Alex Ross)- I will be the all of these jobs in this session, this will require me to be in charge of setting the level of the guitar which is the engineers role , the sound of the guitar through an Amp Designer which is a producers role and making sure the performer is okay and happy.

Performer (Mat Quinn) - Mat will be the playing the guitar and bass for my track, it is his job to know what he will be performing and to do it to the best of his abilities.

Equipment Needed

1X Epiphone les Paul Guitar

1X Yamaha Bass Guitar

1X Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface

1X Headphones

1X Jack Cable

Session Review of Dan Allen's Session Drums - 28/4/14

I took part in Dan Allen's recording session as a performer, he asked me to perform drums on his track which is a chilled out opening to our E.P and so the drumming wasn't to challenging i just had to make sure that i didn't go overboard and take anything away from the track.
When i arrived at the session, Alex D, Dan B and myself started to set up the drum kit to my liking and then set up the mics for recording. When it came to record i knew what i was playing but i had to do a couple of takes because i kept messing (I dropped my stick on one take). Once i had recovered my stick we did another take and i played all the way through but Dan Allen as the producer wanted an ending with a bit more panache so we punch recorded the final bar so i could make a good ending.
Overall in the session i believe i performed my role well because we got a good take which Dan was happy with and i was happy with as well.

Me in action