This project of mine is all about capturing that perfect live performance
After spending the past year and a half gigging around Scotland and with the occasional visit to a studio to record their music the rock band Beyond the veil decided amongst themselves that it was time to record an EP / album.
Liam - Custom drum kit
Tom - Jackson & SG Guitar
Sean - TC hilicon Vocal pedal
Matt - Rickenbacher & Warwick Bass
After talking with the band and listening to their material, both preforming live on stage and everything that they have recorded within a studio environment, we concluded that the band sounded better live. With the energy of their performance and the passion in their music is better shown and heard by playing together rather than on their own in a studio to a guide/ click track.
But, as I discovered, it’s not as easy as it sounds. Recording a rock band playing 'live' presents a unique set of challenges, but it is still possible to achieve a good result.
Most recording techniques are easy enough to put into practice when you're only faced with the task of working with one instrument or voice at a time, but life gets more complicated when you come to record a rock band playing 'live' The most important components in the live recording process are the microphones and the room acoustics!
Tinpan Alley was chosen for this project as I found that it has a nice open sound with a great natural reverb, the room also comes with dividers to separate instruments whilst recording
To start things off, and for me to get used to my new equipment, we decided to
play around with the features of the Zoom R16 recorder. First, I tried out the multitrack
function, to mimic studio conditions, by micing up the entire drum kit and recorded to a guide track of guitar that was played alongside the drums. Once complete, the drum kit microphones where taken down to move on to guitar and bass. The bass guitar itself is easy to record, it was plugged directly in to the R16 via a DI-box that was linked to the amplifier to produce sound. I then placed microphones in front of the amp where I thought would capture the best sound and began to record. The guitar was done in the same way but was doubled up with more parts added to give it a more fuller heavy feel. Unfortunately, we didn't get vocals recorded to this track as Sean the vocalist was recovering from a throat infection. Here is the first recording with my Zoom R16 :-
After a week, once the vocalist had recovered, I managed to get the vocals completed for this track. For this I used a spaced pair mic technique, as well as plugging directly in to the R16 via a Di-Box link, much like the guitar and bass. Using 2 AT4050's, I set them up in the corners of the room pointing inwards to the centre of the room to pick up everything; every piece of the vocals, every reflection. This allowed me to use the room’s controlled reverberation to my advantage for a more powerful feel to Sean’s vocals.
The main problem I came across in this scenario was spill, specifically when it came to a mix. As a typical guitar-based rock band, the most vulnerable mics are those used by vocalists and the drum overheads that tend to pick up everything if not contained of closed off
low frequencies from the bass guitar are not easily contained as mid-range and high frequencies
Low bass also tends to cause snare-drum vibration problems. One compromise was to simply play
the bass at a lower volume .The room acoustics can also play havoc on both close-mic'd drums or close-mic'd electric guitar amplifiers, simply depending on how close the microphone is placed to the sound source. The overheads are more vulnerable, as they are further from the kit and consequently likely to pick up more spill and room ambience. A useful strategy found is to position the overheads slightly in front of the kit and lower them to just above cymbal level. I also tried placing mics under cymbal level which sounded nice but to dry for what the band where going for so I positioned them roughly above head Hight to the drummer not too far away from the individual cymbal, and aim the mics down towards the snare drum, trying to keep them both the same distance from the snare drum if possible.
After a few sessions of recording the band felt it was more like a studio session rather than a live performance. So with that in mind I changed my set up and microphone arrangement, after a few trial run at finding the best placement for sound I decided to keep the kick and the snare mic’ed up and changed to 1 SM58 as an overhead mic ,as the guitar amp was a 2 stack I set up 1 PCM2 on the bottom, pointing to the centre of the cone around and inch from the grill and a SM58 on the top, placed top right corner pointing diagonally towards the centre cone of the amp, the bass didn’t need much working out with the yoga 727 placed close to the amp it picked up as much bass needed, To capture the vocals, I set up the other PCM2 as a room mic placed centre in front of the vocalist and the rest of the band, I had the strange idea of placing a SM58 in front of the PA speakers which turned out quite well in a few tracks.
With setting the levels I’ve learned to leave plenty of headroom, as sound levels invariably creep up as the players get into their stride during the session. As my R-16 records at 24-bit resolution, then I can easily afford to leave 12dB of headroom, which will give me a viable safety margin against 'level-creep'.
(---------- Hear is what I achieved
Headstrong - Balled like song with focus on the guitar with the high note action and tribal drums giving lower, and adding more bass Frequencies in to the recording, along with the vocal melody drifting from light and soft to hard and heavy throughout
the song For the mix I kept it basic, iv added
7band EQ with a high pass filter, to soften the HF
in the pinch harmonics of the guitar and the
cymbal crash. The LF was cut at 100Hz because
between the Bass, Kick and the Toms there was
just a bit much, I also cut sum Mid Freq to take
some of the coarseness away from the vocals
Broke our silence – a jagged, in your face type of song with a heavy bass riff, grungy guitar and simple punchy drumbeat all with the vocals to match
For the mix I knew
the BF would need
some suppression
to fix the
muddiness of it all –
I felt the vocals
were a bit Crocky at times
so I used Channel strip- EQ & compression, I found the vocal frequency and cut it by 6db along with compressing the HF to loose the tinny fizz coming from the cymbal's
Sadly, around march time matt the bassist left the band for reasons unknown to me to pursue his own projects.
All though bass less now this didn’t stop beyond the veil, they carried on and started working on new materiel in-between finding a replacement.
And with me recording for their live album it wasn’t long till BTV had brand new songs for their EP
Winters Ashes EP
The setup that I went for this time was the same as before, only without the bass guitar. I found that having the SM58 as an Overhead for the drums works well in this environment as the drums carry a larger presence in the room and get picked up on every other mic I place with in the room, so some editing during the post-production stage will sort that out.
Each track was mixed individually and bounced to a stereo WAV file to keep the quality of the audio, for a final mix.
Kick drum was LP filtered and a little reverb added to get the right oomph/thud that I like
Snare has been EQed with LP and HP filter with the mid raised to a sharp point to get the right snap as the snare hits
Overhead with the SM58 FR rolling off towards HF already just a little EQed nudge of -3dbon the HF gave a shimmer to the cymbals.
with the overhead did come a lot of bleed for the other instrument's, adding a LP filter softened the guitar coming through and +4db towards Mid-range kept the sound of the tom drums coming through.
Guitar - since there was two tracks I started by playing with the levels to get best sound out of the mixture, I then BUS'ed them through and AUX track to add my FX, I began with adding EQ to HP the cymbal shimmer coming through the mic, -5db wide on LF around 75Hz to lose drum hit completely, then the OXF pro-compressor to squash and wipe away all the technical pops and clicks and adds gain to the output that brightens up the guitar
Vocal tracks where mostly a collective of room mic that where set up as it was through the PA system. But I miced up the PA and found that it worked quite nicely so I used that track. I started with EQ and tried to find the vocalist sweet spot throughout the frequency range I then isolated it between 500Hz - 2KHz using high and low pass filters adding +5db to the MF to bring the vocals out more clearly, and with the aid of compression enabling me to rise the gain of the vocals only
Blood stained hands required low high & mid-range due to the heightened coarse vocals during the chorus
Never Again needed more MID range to bring the vocals out a bit more and by adding +5db to the LF sort of compensates for there not being a bass guitar
I used reel tape saturation on Winters Ashes to add some warmth and the punch of analogy tape to mix emulating colourful characteristics, tape compression, and saturation effects of popular analogy tape formulations
When I had finished my mix of each track I bounced them down to a stereo WAV file and sent them to the band to see what they thought and so I can listen to them through different devices, like speakers or headphones just to see what final little qweeks the tracks might need to make them sound the best they can be.
After a week or so i met up with the beyond the veil and received feedback from the band and they described what they thought might be better to bring the songs out abit, it took me a while to translate what they meant but one I understood I knew exactly what I needed to do.
To finish the Winters Ashes EP, I picked one songs at random to start with then up loaded it to protools then add two extra tracks an AUX track for adding FX and a Master to keep an eye on the output.
Sadly, these where the last recordings I could capture. Unfortunately, the band story has ended, Beyond the Veil has broken up. After losing their bassist and the continuing changes to their sound and it was clear each member was heading in different directions with their styles of playing.
So, with a departure on good terms and a good luck to the future the band parted way to continue their own musical journey
Sean & Tom - Remain in their bromance /trying to start a new band
Liam - has started a hardcore metal band
(H8teBall)
Matt - continuing with his vegan adventure
I used the Pro limiter on the master track of each song to Add soft saturation and get more loudness with a higher amount of gain reduction without unwanted digital artefacts of standard brick wall limiters.it also prevents inter-sample peaks that introduce distortion during encoding