Musical Product

The list of songs we are recording are:

• I need a dollar- Aloe Blacc
• Set Fire to The Rain- Adele
• Brown Sugar- The Rolling Stones
• Iris- The Goo Goo Dolls
• Hurt- Nine Inch Nails
• Sweet child o' mine- Guns N' Roses

We recorded the songs using the recording studio at our school. We had to ask our teacher to set up the equipment for us as it would take a long time and we had to be in lessons all day before the recording session. we did not want to waste a lot of time setting up the equipment as we only had the studio booked for 2 hours and we had a lot to run through. The instruments that we used were:

• Vocals
• Drums
• Guitar
• Piano

We had to book the room around a month before we actually recorded, we left this much time so that we could practise properly; ensure that we would be able to have people to set the equipment up on that date; make sure we were all available on that date; make sure we all knew what we were doing; and make sure we could bring in any equipment we needed


Some of the equipment used was:

• D112 mic- For the bass drum- This is designed specifically for a bass drum, it has a low frequency response.
• C418 mic- For the tom drums
• C1000's mic- Overhead mic- Condensor mic's, picks up finer details, the sound another mic would not usually pick up
• Shure beta 87C- Snare drums
• Rode NT2000- Piano and Guitar
• Pop shield- Vocals- This stops plosives, we used this to make the recording sound more professional
• Shure SM57 BETA A- for lead vocals

The vocals were placed far away from the drums, this is so the mic's did not pick up the drums, they are very loud so we would pick them up if they were too close. I was facing the group, but the microphone was facing away, this was so that the others could see me but the microphone wasn't picking up background noise. This is known as isolation.

During the recording session we left it recording for the whole 2 hour session. We recorded two or three run through of each song, we did this to ensure we could choose which version we wanted and we could identify any mistakes during the first run through, discuss the problems with the group and then we could remove in the second run through. When we first started recording, we were not aware that you had to remain silent for a few seconds after the song had finish to make sure all the sounds had stopped, so we talked straight after we had ended the song, this would mean we would talk over the decay of the final section of the music which we didn't realise would be recorded. Because we were doing 2 or 3 run through's of each song this took a lot of the pressure off us, I think that this made us more comfortable and probably made the finished product better as we were happy when we were recording.

As we were recording all of the songs without a bass guitar, some of the songs sounded a little empty when we listened to the recordings afterwards so this is something we would definitely need to work on in the future in order to make the recording sound more professional.

Here is a link to the recording of 'sweet child o' mine' that we put onto youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2z8wbS0e2yM

Overall I am very happy with our recording session and our finished product, to say that this was our first time recording in the studio, we were very well organised and the finished product came out at a high standard. However next time it is important that we ask a bassist to help us on a few songs and perhaps take less time between recording the songs, as hiring out a real studio would be very expensive.