Pictures of DM Recording Session

The following pictures document the recording of my honours project.

Bass

The bass parts for the tracks were recorded via both D.I. from the amp head, as can be seen (ish) above, and also via a Shure SM58 as can be seen both above and below. The mic was place around 3 inches from the cone of the speaker and and set slightly off-axis.

Both the D.I. and SM 58 signals are being fed into an m-box2 connected to a Macbook which can be seen in the bottom of the picture below.

Drums

The Drums were miced as was described in my previous blog entry detailing equipment lists, beginning with close micing each element before adding the overhead microphones. In the photos above the placement of the hi-hat, kick drum, and tom mics can be seen.

This picture demonstrates how placement of the overheads were placed in order to ensure that they were equidistant from the kick and snare drum in both mics, in an attempt to prevent phase problem and to try and prevent one element overpowering the other when the overheads were introduced in the mixing stage.

Acoustic panelling was then used in an attempt to prevent or at least reduce spillage from other instruments within the room, which proved to be fairly effective. For this, panels with windows were used as this allowed the drummer to see and interact with other members of the band whilst playing, as this was mostly done through gesture or eye contact, to prevent talking and ruining recordings.

Guitars

The guitars were being played through different types and of cabinet which made it necessary to use different mic placement for each guitar. The above set up, used by the rhythm guitarist was a 4x12 cabinet, meaning there were 4 12 inch speakers. To make the most of this speaker arrangement, the microphones were placed diagonally opposite one another. The 414 was placed at the bottom as it has a greater frequency response and the resonance of the cabinet against the floor is liable to create more bassy sounds than the higher up speakers. The high end focussed SM57 was used to capture more of the clarity from the amp than the 414.

The pictures both above and below show how the microphones were placed on the second guitar cabinet, which was a smaller 2x12. In this case a mic was simply place at each speaker.

Questionnaire Research

After a conversation with my peer, Daryl Robertson,  it has occurred to me that I may be able to better analyse the answers given by my test subjects by establishing more information about them first. As such my questionnaire now looks as follows.

These questions would be as follows:

Gender? (delete as appropriate): Male/Female/Do not wish to disclose

Age? (delete as appropriate): 13-17/18-24/25-34/35-44/45-44/55+ 

Which is your preferred musical genre out of the following? (Select only one): Rock/Metal/Pop/Dance/Folk/Other (Please Specify) ______________

How many hours per week do you spend listening to music?(select only one): less than and hour/Up to 4 hours/Up to 8 hours/Up to 12 hours/Up to 16 hours/Up to 24 hours/Up to 28 hours/Up to 32 hours/Up to 32+ hours

How often do you purchase music, either as CD's or digital downloads? (select only one):

More than twice a week/Up to once a week/Up to once a month/Up to 4 times a year/Less than twice a year

How often do you attend live musical showcases, such as concerts or gig? (Select only one):

More than twice a week/Up to once a week/Up to once a month/Up to 4 times a year/Less than twice a year

          

                                                                                                                A           Neither A nor B       B

Which version of the song did you prefer?

Which version of the song did you feel was better produced?

Which version of the song did you feel was a better 

performance by the band?

Which version of the song, if any, would you be more 

inclined to buy? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uf-02EG2mZ0&feature=player_embedded#!

Preliminary Mixes

Having now listened through all of the raw recordings, I have determined which are the best takes of each track and created basic mixes of each.

This was done in part so that version of these tracks could be posted on sound cloud and thus made available on here, but also so the singer has guide track to record 2, which should be taking place over the next week or so depending on his availability.

Mixing of these tracks largely involved applying EQ's and Compression to improve the overall sound of each isolated elements. In addition, it was necessary to strip silence both the Rack and Floor tom, as both were ringing when other components of the drum kit were hit, which was causing an odd and undesirable ringing through the whole mix.

For both Black To Grey and The Insider, I was able to find a performance where the whole band plays the song correctly and therefore provides a good, useable recording for the purposes of my project. During all version of Killers and Saints however, one of the guitars slips slightly out of tuning, which is not noticeable during the verses or musical interludes, but is quite evident during the chorus.

I have decided however to carry on in spite of this, on the grounds that this is what i have laid out in my project plan and additionally this is a problem that does occur live, and is slight in the recording.

The following link takes you to a playlist of these initial mixes. Please note that Killers and Saints session 2 mix 1, will be the version to be used for my project rather than Killers and Saints session 3 mix 1, in which the detuning was far more severe.

http://soundcloud.com/moleman23/sets/first-mixes

Further thought on Questionnaire

In my project proposal, i discussed establishing information about the subjects involved in my listening tests, in order to establish whether their is a key demographic which a recording of this sort would appeal too. However, I have also decided to allow people to refuse to answer these questions, as some people may feel uncomfortable and I do not wish to deter people from completing the questionnaire:

 

These questions would be as follows:

Gender (delete as appropriate): Male/Female/Do not wish to disclose

Age(delete as appropriate): 13-17/18-24/25-34/35-44/45-44/55+ 

                                                                                                                          A           Neither A nor B       B

Which version of the song did you prefer?

Which version of the song did you feel was better produced?

Which version of the song did you feel was a better 

performance by the band?

Which version of the song did you find more relatable? 

The deviations of age for my questionnaire are based upon the deviations of age in the insights section of facebook, a feature which allows bands and artist to see what type of  are liking their page, allowing them to plainly see their key demographic.

This image shows the insight feature of facebook described above. This particular example is taken from the facebook page of my band, the band which was recorded for my project. From this it can clearly be seen that the majority of the bands followers are males between 18 and 24, closely followed by males between 25 are 34. These demographics are mirrored in the female age groups, but in much lower numbers.

I decided these age group separations would be fitting as I intend to host my survey online in order to give it as wide a reach as possible and as facebook is the largest social networking sight in the world, it is reasonable to assume that the deviations they have set out are representative of the demographics regularly using the internet, and therefore the groups of people I am likely to re.ach, although in much smaller numbers than those of facebook

Recording Day 1

The setup for the recording session took around 2 hours, with the actual recording of the tracks taking around 25 minutes per track, with all being complete in around an hour and a half.

The recordings will be listened to tonight in case of faults in order to determine whether or not it is necessary to rerecord any of the track, however, if this proves to be unecessary, the band have elected to record material unrelated to the honours project during the remaining time.

Pictures of set up and recording to follow, however i do not presently have the camera.

Questionnaire Research

I have found the following link which serves as a basic guide to creating a questionnaire, giving you guidance and aiding you in avoiding common pitfalls. http://www.action-research.com/uua/question3.html

The most basic of these are:

• Avoid open ended questions, used fixed answers if at all possible
• be clear in exactly how many answers you are looking for i.e. tick one box only
• Do not ask double barrelled questions
• Put simple questions towards the beginning of the questionnaire
• Try to avoid over complicating the questionnaire, if it is not necessary for certain people to fill in certain sections make this as clear as possible.

these points are reiterated in the following link http://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=en&lr=&id=0r8xOI5rBZoC&oi=fnd&pg=PR5&dq=how+to+write+a+questionnaire&ots=ol9OIlS_SB&sig=Hoa3ToLCP4DjCQZcjLHiZH0Ks5c#v=onepage&q=how%20to%20write%20a%20questionnaire&f=false

In addition to these point, it had previously occurred to me that as my project is about the recordings being contrasted directly with other recordings, it is not necessary for me to have a controlled listening environment. As, by default, the listening environment will be identical for both versions of the track for each listener. Due to this, I intend to host my questionnaire online, hosting my tracks on soundcloud and using survey monkey to host my questionnaire, as I have seen others successfully use this site in the past. I think, by using this method, I will be able to reach a far wider demographic than if I attempt to use a paper based questionnaire, with which I suspect I am limiting my subjects to my classmates.

As my questionnaire is only trying to determine preference, I believe that I will get the clearest results if I use a basic 3 option answering system. The questions will ask the subject whether they prefer some element of the song in version A or version B. The subject may then answer A B or indifferent. I feel by using this system I will be able to determine not only which version people prefer, but also what it is about the version that has led to this decision. I also intend to determine the age and gender of my subjects within the questionnaire, in order to establish of the opinions are different between various demographics.

Songs will be clearly labelled A or B, but will be set to shuffle, in order to ensure that the order they are played in is not affecting the subjects decisions.

Example Questions:

                                                                                                           A           Neither A nor B       B

Which version of the song did you prefer?

Which version of the song did you feel was better produced?

Which version of the song did you feel was a better 

performance by the band?

Which version of the song did you find more relatable? 

I will add more questions to this as I progress

Update

Due to the death of a friend of the family, it has been necessary to reschedule my honours project recording session.
It will now be split across 2 recording sessions (at the request of D.M. Studios) on Monday the 13th of February and Tuesday the 14th of February. In retrospect, this may have been a better way to organise the recording in the first place, as one 10 hour recording session may have been overly intensive and ultimately exhausting.
The one downside of this arrangement is that the set up and tear down time will be doubled as we have to do them both twice. I will ensure that microphone placements are carefully documented in order to avoid time wasting on the second day.

Also due to the death, I have be occupied with things other than my uni work and made absolutely no progress in any of the fields which were mapped out during my last supervisor meeting. As the recording session is so close at hand, I have decided to carry out the recording based on the research I have already done and focus what time I have on the questionnaire and acoustic treatment.