Music Tech [2][2]

On the 29th of April, I tracked the Bass in the same room as the Drums.

There was a Fender 1x10 combo amp in one corner, placed on a seat, about half a metre from the wall pointing toward the centre of the room, and a Marshall 1x12 Guitar combo amp (with distortion) on the opposite side, but slightly closer to the middle of one of the walls.

I miked the Fender with an SM57 as close as possible to the grill, pointing directly at the edge of the cone, as well as the Marshall with another 57 as close as possible, except pointing at a ~30° angle toward the dust-cap.

We also had an AKG-414 pair in Blumlein configuration in the middle to capture room sound.

This method was inspired by the method used by Jon Stockman and Forrester Savell on the 'Sound Awake' record by Karnivool, where a distorted and clean amp were used in a room. This allows for distortion, which reduces low-frequency content, to have low-frequency content mixed back into the sound (it has inspired the 'Alpha Omega' pedal by Darkglass Electronics, with it and variants being all over modern Metal music).

Lastly, on the 4th of May, I tracked vocals with a 57 (don't judge me, vocalists actually use it (sometimes) !!) while trying not to annoy my flatmates.

The mix was my standard EQ-everything-in-places, where low-high I have `Kick, Bass,`* Guitar, Vox, Kick Beater, Overheads. Snare meant to cut through.

*I did have the Bass and Kick somewhat taking up the same space a bit, but what I like to do is sidechain gate the kick to the master bus and drop down levels, especially lows (wooo multi-band), by a bit for 20-30 ms to let the kick through but not get a pumping sound (which works outside of Metal) heard on many a Trance or Dilla(-inspired) track.

And bosh, job done.