All Aboard the Recording Train!

As one might have somehow guessed due to the title, I have spent more time with my microphones around me and my headphones glued to my head than I have spent sleeping this week and if I’m honest, I don’t actually know if that is an exaggeration or not.

What have I been recording then?

Well, I am delighted to say that the score for my musical study on timbre is all but complete, and thus the project has entered recording phase. Thankfully this means I can focus my creativity on my co-write project, however the down side is I’ll probably be curled up in a ball on the floor after one to many bad takes or bars missed. I do have a short demo of this recording though which I am pleased to share, but more about that later.

How does recording work?

Until I began producing my own work and researching how to do so, I was always perplexed by the notion of being a producer, it always seemed obviously simple what to do and i couldn't work out why artists would have someone other than themselves take care of of this side of the work... surely you just put a microphone in front of the instrument, hit record and repeat until it is all done? Well... note so fast... For those looking to learn about this or others who may just be curios about the magic behind their favorite tunes, I will over the next few weeks talk about recording, mixing and producing in parallel to my own project.

Ok, So recording 101:

There are different types of microphones...

Yeah, I was surprised to learn this and it is important to have a suitable mic for what you are recording and thus for people looking to set up a home recording studio like I have done, it is important to carefully consider your purchases as you do not want to end up with an expensive piece of equipment useless for your needs, or an expensive piece of now trash because you didn't read the manual. thankfully there are some safe options such as dynamic mics and diaphragm condensers are fairly good all round so long as you don't grossly punish them with phantom power or crazy high SPL respectively. However if you took a ribbon mic to a drum kit, you would be in for a bit of a nasty surprise.

All of my work i record on a mix of a Rode NT-1 (large diaphragm condenser) and a stereo matched pair of Rode NT-5s (small diaphragm condensers). Between these you are fairly well equipped for recording most things.

Not only do you need to know what mic to use, but placing it correctly is very important too, and not doing so correctly will yield a poor sound.

After this comes setting the gain on the microphones, i.e. how much sound they pick up. if this is too low a mix will have too much noise when normalized to the correct level and if it is too high, something far worse happens... Clipping. Every producers nightmare. This is when the sound level exceeds the max value possible and distortion occurs. This must be avoided at all costs. There is more to this but in a nutshell, this is how it works. This is also why bands do sound checks on stage. A common occurrence, slight cliche and running joke in the industry is to observe un-experienced drummers in sound checks play quietly when asked to "play as loud as they will play" when requested by the sound engineer, in a hope to be louder in the mix, but only be quieter as a result of the engineer not being able to set the levels correctly.

Now comes the actual playing. The dream for this is to get the perfect one take, however this is almost un achievable unless you learn what you are going to record to the standard of a recital. Apologies to everyone who plays an instrument, but until you have tried mixing yourself, you do not realize the number of mistakes you make... unless you are amazing, in which case, huge respect to you. A single should be the ultimate form of a piece and thus second best will not do, a contraindication in terms when the recordings that you take to the final mix are what i would consider the best compromise of what you could achieve. Not an easy task if you are a perfectionist.

Next week or the week after depending on how far I get with recording and mixing, I will talk a little about mixing producing to continue this mini intro to the world of creating music.

Somewhat out of my own curiosity but also because I hope people may find it interesting, I am adding a bit of a focus to these weekly blogs in which I will talk about the music theory behind a new passage of music from my own work each week. So, without further a due, here is the score and snippet of music I have to demo mentioned above:

This is a very dissonant passage of music despite only having two notes at any one time until the end.

It is in D minor with a brief modulation to C minor.

There is an implied chord sequence by the interaction of the harmonies of the two parts, and by arpeggios in the guitar, that being: i9 iv7c, i6, bii9c, (modulation to C minor) vii4-3, i7-6, vib7, (modulation back to D minor) iv, vii, i.

This chord sequence is quite clearly not from your average pop song and it certainly wouldn’t sound very good if you just played it on the piano, so why does it work?

It is partly because of the arpeggiated nature in the chords, it allows the voice leading to dictate the harmony as opposed to the other way round, and the general shape of the melody works. It would be possible to do a more complex harmonic analysis of this for every change in note, but this breakdown works fine. It also becomes less and less dissonant, ending with an almost cadential passage, chords iv to vii being a fifth apart and then from vii to i is very similar to v – i. however I’d like to discuss some of those dissonances a little more.

Starting with the first bar, the trill from the 9th to the 10th in the chord anticipates the bass moving to the third, and thus this anticipates the move to the subdominant in the next beat, whilst 7th still reverberates creating a third inversion harmony. The third bar also implies a Neapolitan 6th chord. It is technically not one due to the fact it is not in first inversion, but it also has a 9th in the bass which is interesting, note 7 is highlighted in both parts across the bar to help anticipate this whist the third is also highlighted to allow the root, or the flatted 2nd of the key to sound harmonic. This also allows the transition into C minor as it is effectively chord III – i in that key which is actually quite consonant, however a 7-6 suspension trill is used to keep the sound unstable. The guitar then walks down to the G / G minor shared by both keys which is then used to modulate back.

With regards to other work, we have a fairly finalised structure on the project I am co-writing, and the score is almost complete for the arrangement of pieces Alex Picard is going to be producing. It is very short but very sweet, especially if Irish style folk tunes is your kind of thing. This website is also looking considerably better thanks to Wix. It’s design is not complete by any means, but as I had hoped It does now have a structure that it will stick with.

Unfortunately however I will not be releasing the re-recording of White Shores for a few weeks as my projects for my course need to take a front seat for the moment. The same also goes for other upcoming work non related to my course. However this does mean I can focus my efforts to each project on a more individual basis so they can be as awesome as can be.