Austin Ellis – Session Report
| Recorded at MTSU Studios A and B – April 2009
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Session Report |
Man I dig this stuff! Austin and his band have a very smooth, organic hip-hop kind of sound, which can be fun from a production point of view. Not only can you work from the perspective of purity, or recording natural sounds and performances, but this is a wonderful opportunity to combine that perspective, with electronic production techniques. Our goal is to capture the natural feel of the band playing, and maintain a sound that resonates with hip-hop overtones. The instrumentation for these recordings consisted of drum kit, electric bass, electric guitar, acoustic guitar and vocals.
In the planning stages we decided that we wanted to capture as much of a live performance of each of the three tunes as we could. Once we has a solid performance, we could then go back and massage the songs into their final versions via editing and overdubbing. However, everyone involved had day jobs and the studio time was booked at times the space was available. I believe there was a 12am – 8am session in there. In the end we basically had to make progress on each song at the mercy of what, and who, was available at the moment.
In the first tracking session only Austin, our front man and principal songwriter, was around for the first four hours. Using a click, we tracked his acoustic guitar and fortunately, Austin was very well prepared. He managed to lay down the tracks near perfectly. Although the parts were very simple musicly they did lay down a triffic framework on which to build the rest of the parts. In only took a couple of hours to get Austin’s guitar parts done, and with some extra time on or hands, we decided to go ahead and cut vocals with the idea that we could use them, or replace them later. We had to make the most of our time and in a couple of hours we excelent guide vocals, if not usable tracks. Keep in mind that we have stuck to a strict musical structure and so far everything has been recorded to the click as tightly as possible. If the guide tracks are air tight we will have fewer problems getting the rest of the band in there.
The rest of the band members made it to the session and the plan is to track everyone together. Studio A at MTSU has a large tracking space, a small ISO booth, and a large selection of absorptive and diffusive gobos which makes isolating the various instruments, while maintaining sight lines for musicians, pretty easy. To record the drums we used a simple, augmented stereo, four microphone approach. Two Neumann TLM107 microphones were placed about four feet out from the kit, and about three feet off the floor in a 60˚ triangle. Note: We did not measure the triangle because close will work just fine in this case. Next we mic’d the snare with an SM57 placing the edge of the capsule in line with the snare shell vertically, and 90˚ to the head horizontally. A Sennheiser e602 was used in the kick drum, pointed directly at the beater and placed as close to the batter head as possible.
In order to shrink the acoustic space, a really large room, the whole drum setup was placed a few feet in front of a concrete wall and two large diffusive gobos placed to the coincident side of the TLM107’s. Our space still sounds big because we are still getting a lot of early reflections in the sound, but the drums wont bleed all over everything else, and with some luck everything else wont bleed all over the drums.
The drums themselves sound fantastic, which is 99.99% necessary for this approach to work, but back in the control room things are sounding a little weird. There is a phase issue going on between the kick and snare close mics, and the room mics due to their relative distances from the drums. At editing time, this will be the first correction that we will make by aligning a single snare and kick hit to the same instance in the room mic tracks. This will correct the timing difference, due to distance, and thus the phase problems resulting in a crystal clear ambiance.
All of the mic lines, and the bass DI, where recorded via Millennia mic pres that where connected to the Studer D950 consoles A/D converters, then directly into Pro Tools. Return monitoring paths where also handled on the D950. We took many, many, full band takes, and even though they where all cut to the same guide tracks, every take was unique, sometimes to the extreme.
The Mix
The largest and by far the moist complicated part of the mix phase is editing. We have to evaluate all the takes and build the final version of the song. There is a lot of opportunity here for an engineer to be creative but we have to remain cautious in order to maintain the feel of a liner and natural performance. However, if a moment or a phrase seems a little mechenical it might lend to hint at the hip hop influence.
Mixes of the songs where done largely “in-the-box,” on my macbook pro with a Mbox. Because we payed extream attention to the sounds we where getting at tracking time, and how they where blending together, very little processing was needed. The process was mostly about balance and panning, and making sure the song was musically interesting.
At the time of the tracking sessions, Austin and his band had only played together for a very short time, and where only familier with the material. This type of situation could be disastrous, but one again great work ethincs and attitudes saved the day.