Wednesday 31st August 2011

Today we recorded Jess' song in the studio for the music video. Seeing that it was only vocals and acoustic guitar that we had to record, it didn't take us long to set up the studio and start recording. Firstly i set up a KSM27 on a mic stand with a pop filter on the front of it. I plugged this mic into channel 1 on the desk. Then I set up a SM57 on a stand positioned around 5 inches from the sound hole of Olivers guitar. I then ran a channel through the DI and into the guitar. Jess (vocals) and Oliver (guitar) both did a few run throughs so that we could get an understanding for different levels of the mics and also to see where the peaks in the track were so our levels matched accordingly to that. Once all the levels were correct Taylah and myself were able to start recording. We only needed to record the track twice which was really good. Jess sang really well into the mic which made it easier to get clarity within the track. Oliver originally had his guitar set on half volume and the signal strength wasn't very strong so we boosted it to full to help balance the vocals and guitar before recording, much like what you would do for a live performance, however this brought us peaks on the guitar signal so we once again brought olivers guitar back to half level volume and then adjusted the vocal signal accordingly. The only hard thing about recording Jess' song was that it had low and high parts which made balancing the track difficult. Overall I believe the track turned out reasonably well. The vocal signal was good considering it was a live recording with the acoustic guitar. If I wanted to produce a better quality track then I probably should have recording the vocals and acoustic guitar separately at different times so that I could then get a better overall mix.