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.