First Studio Session/Digital Audio - Posted on 2016-02-29 by Koby Parks

Koby Parks - Leap Day 2016

This past week was a pretty productive one.  Not only did I study my third chapter and over digital audio, but I got to sit in on my first studio session with a band named Feel Never Real. Their sound is modern style classic heavy rock with many cleans, gang vocals, and few screams. I would consider it a grungy Def Leppard.

The chapter mainly went over the history of digital audio tape recorders and what brands were used as well as multitrack recorders, samplers, and sequencers dating back to the late 70's and early 80's.  It also went over sample rates, bit depth, the limitations of digital audio (The Nyquist Theorem), and Digital Signal Processing.  In the lesson Alex took me through some examples on sample rates and how those work when converting session files with Pro Tools, as well as sample rates for sound editing on video mixing.  On top of that we also talked about the history of recording and how it has evolved over his lifetime of being an engineer and what tools worked best for him.

On the session day, we all arrived around 11am and got right to work and I assisted with Paola in getting the session set up for the day.  From 11-7 the guys recorded a track from start to finish.  Everyone plugged up and got on their instruments while Alex set the levels so they could do a live session together.  After the live session was tracked Alex had the drummer record his part by himself while the live session track played in his headphones.  Alex then took the time to go through and align all of the drum parts after tracking was finished so the guitarists had a solid idea of where their riffs would line up while tracking, and for obvious reasons, so the drums would sound great on the record.  Before guitar tracking, he set up a direct input (clean channel) for the guitars and well as mic'd up a cab.  He has both condenser and dynamic mics set up on robotic limbs in front of the cab he was using and he was able to control their location and the distance directly from his computer to accurately find the sound that would suit best for the guitars being tracked, both left and right.  The guitarists used some of their own instruments as well as one of Alex's new Jericho guitars (which sounded amazing and stayed in tune very well during production).  Once the guitars were tracked he had the Bass recorded on D.I. as well as on a cab just like the other guitars.  The main reason to have tracked direct input is to later reamp those signals into another amp or amp simulator later on if desired by the band.  After all the main instruments were tracked, the group got together and worked on some last minute MIDI piano parts to incorperate into the intro and outro of the song.  The guys also had me join in on some gang vocals for their chorus which I though was pretty neat.  Alex had us stand in a line across the room from a mic and tracked our semi-synced yells.  After recording Alex added a few touches and it sounded solid in the background of the music.

Tomorrow I get to go in for my next lesson over connectivity and to sit in on a vocal session with the same band to finish up the production on the song. So far so good, I'm soaking in tons of information in a little amount of time and I'm enjoying it.