Eight weeks ago we were set the task of creating a group multi-track project of a cover of our choice; my group chose to record a cover of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Don’t Stop’. The production process included pre-production, demo recording, arranging musicians, musical arrangement, engineering and the production of a monitor mix. As a group we worked really well together, there was a good array of talents both musically and technically. Due to the nature of the task, everyone had a change to play an instrument and take the role of either technical setup, desk operator or ProTools operator.
For this track I played the lead guitar parts that were recorded in week five of the recording process. This meant that I had plenty of time to try out the other roles within the studio. I found it really helpful to try each one, this meant that I could get a hands on experience of setting up the studio (Instrument placement, Microphone placement, Sound proofing/deflection) as well as operating the desk (Getting an input into the desk, Setting levels, Sending a signal to ProTools) and operating ProTools (Creating tracks/group tracks, Organising tracks/files, Editing clips, Playlists).
Being able to have practical experience in the studio has been really helpful to apply the theory knowledge of sound (Reverb, Proximity effect, Frequency response, Phasing). Vocals in week four was a particularly useful learning experience as we got to compare the sound of different vocal microphones looking at how and why they differ in sound.
Our theory and ProTools tutorials lead up to us creating our own mix. Going into the task I felt that I had learnt enough so far to create a professional sounding track. When creating the track i was using my notes from sessions to include all of the aspects we had covered in the tutorials (Clip organisation, Inserts and sends, Auxiliary tracks, Automation, Volume control).
Listening back to the final track I am pleased with the results. There are a few parts I would have liked to re-record or do other take but due to timing this was not possible. Next time i would like to experiment with multiple vocal parts as our track has the one lead vocal track and I think it would sound better if we had backing vocals to fill in the mix.