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Alex Brown
And what a fortnight it has been. Right from day one, I have been completely immersed in the studio experience, being mentored by Elliot Elsey at Truphonic.
The Artist that I have spent the most time working with has been Howard Dlugash, recoring his album. We have used many different pieces of gear, and recorded many different instruments, including Rhodes keyboards, Lead Guitar and Lead and Backing Vocals.
For example, last night, to record Lead Vocals, we used two different microphones. A Neumann U87, and a Manley Reference Cardioid. The U87 is a condenser microphone, and the Manley a cardioid only capsule microphone. Both are large diaphram. The U87 was the main vocal mic used, with the Manley being placed 3ft behind and a little lower down, to pick up some different tones from the vocals at range. The U87 is an extermemly versatile vocal microphone, and can be placed close to a sound source without becoming harsh. It produces a very clear sound, where as the Manley produces a sound similar to older European tube microphones. It has a rich tonal balance, and adds a nice texture to vocals. When combining both microphones we found a tone that we, and the artist, liked.
We ran the Manley through an Avalon VT-737 opto-compressor. This added a warm, sweet tone to the sound, energising the vocals. The U87 was run through a Universal Audio La-610 Tube Mic Pre-Amp. These compressors have a distinctive character and warmth, that when combined with the clean tone delivered by the U87, produced a great vocal sound.
Then, I was allowed to run the session (with close observation from Elliot) in which Howard recorded some lead vocal tracks on a few of his songs. I opened the session for his selected song, made sure that the I/O settings were correct for the room of the studio we were in, and went through the levels, creating a good working mix for both us in the control room, and Howard in the vocal booth. Truphonic utilizes an 8 channel hear back system, so the artist in the booth can create a mix they like, seperate from that of the one in the Control Room. We sent the talkback to channel 7, the master mix to 5 & 6, and howards vocal hear back to channel 3. This way, Howard was able to communicate with us, hear his vocals played back, and hear the mix we had created, all at different volumes.
I created two new aux input tracks, selected the correct inputs for the two microphones, and outputted them to the studio on outputs 1 & 2. Then, I record enabled the two tracks, played from the top of the song, and pressed 3 to start the recording. We did several takes, creating new playlists each time on the record enabled tracks. If there was a mistake, I allowed some run-in time, and punched the recording back in. I went through the same process on a few songs. Afterwards, Howard came into the control room. I showed him the different takes he had done by selecting different playlists from the tracks we had recorded on. There are many different instruments recorded, with many different takes to select on Howards songs, so while playing his new Lead Vocal takes, we went through, adding and subtracting instruments from the mix, to see how this affected the dynamics of the song.
This was just in the evening! During the day, we ran an ADR session for the CBS television show 'Reckless'. Famous actors and actresses were coming in and out of the studio, we were on a source conncect call to Burbank, California with the shows producers, and we had to be extremely professional, fast working, polite and diligent. I will write more about the set-up process and events in my next blog!
