Sound Engineering (Studio) A - Project

Recording Notes - Personal Pilot and Marvin By Meredith Riley ( and Band )

Date/s of Recording
28/05/07, 30/05/07, 06/06/07
Song Titles
Personal Pilot, Marvin
Format
Sampling Rate 44.1khz Bit Depth 16 Bit
Duration: Personal Pilot - 4m’07sec, Marvin - 3m'57sec.

The first recording session the band came in there was a small bit of confusion about times. The drummer, Jarred, had thought that it was an hour later. It was no big deal as I was setting up mics for his kit anyway. He is playing in the live room with Josh, the Bass player, who is playing straight in via a DI box. Meredith is singing and playing guitar in the “Dead Room”. She is doing this mainly as guide for the others but if it works well that would be great also. We had already decided that if we could get the rhythm section down in this session we would be happy. Marvin, has quite a long guitar and vocal intro we thought it would be good to have a click to guide Meredith in this session and if she had to record both Guitars and Vocals again. Jarred was happy to tap the click using his drumsticks for the intro instead of the click track. As it turned out Meredith and I didn’t need to re-record these at the second session just some backing vocals for this track. At the second session Meredith sung in the “Live Room”. I preferred her voice in this space as the natural reverb was evident. The third session was arranged because Sara, a violinist, could not make the second session and was playing some violin on Marvin. She was recorded also in the live room with two Neumann U87 set up like overhead mics in stereo. She had to concentrate a fair bit to remain fairly still for recording levels. I thought that at least if she did move around with the Left/Right panning that I planned to apply to the mics it would sound realistic. Everything went into ProTools with no issues. Also at the second session I had several mics set up on Merediths guitar and it was also plugged into the patch bay from her pickup. It was the best sounding pickup straight from an acoustic guitar that I’ve ever heard. Everything went into ProTools with no issues. The main problem that was faced as it was being recorded is that the band was receiving the same mix through the headphones and different people wanted less of this and more of that. If it was my studio or if we were allowed to mess with the configuration of the studio busses or sends would send out individual mixes via an able headphone amplifier. The vocals and Guitar for Personal Pilot were re-recorded.

You can hear the MP3s of these songs by following the link below.

Marvin By Meredith Riley

Personal Pilot By Meredith Riley