Sunday, November 4th, 2007
8 track
So that was the 8-track project. My first proper production. Recording, editing and mixing a track from start to finish.
The one thing I learned from this is that the recording sessions are the most important part. That might sound obvious, but it’s easy to get carried away with the technology and think that you can make anything sound good. Bit of editing here, bit of EQ and effects there. Not that easy!
After my 2 recording sessions with Rob, from which we got probably about 3 hours actual recording time, I got down to the job of editing and mixing. Pretty soon it became clear that we could do with another couple of takes of things. I think I’d ended up keeping only one take of the main guitar part from the original sessions. Thankfully this was one very good take! Not so lucky with the bass line, we’d done one and a half takes of that, which at the time sounded great. Listening back there was a fair bit of editing to do, plus a lot of EQing to cut out some noise that I hadn’t noticed during the recording.
Next up was the percussion part, which consisted of one take of Bongo drums. Having miked them up in stereo with one pencil mic on each drum, I somehow managed to overdub the guitar onto one of those tracks. What a tit. And I didn’t even noticed until about two weeks later when i started adding the bongos to the mix. Too late to re-record so I was stuck with half a take of percussion to work with. Inevitably this ended up being the most criticised part of the final mix.
Good quality of recording. The guitars are boomy. The bass needs some low mids cut. The bongos lack body and attack. Good stereo image created. The bongos get lost in places in the mix. The frequency balance is muddy in the lows. Dynamics use needs attention. The vox compressor is not having an effect, the bongo compressor is killing its attack (0ms). FX use is quite good, with reverb and delay. The line-up of instruments is quite good. The is some automated movement in the mix, but more could have been achieved.
Onwards and upwards, Final Production starts now! Oh, and thanks to Rob for his musical services!
