Setup
During week 8, we found ourselves recording one of the guitar parts. The setup used for recording an electric guitar was very similar to that when recording the bass guitar. The guitar was connected to a DI box which was used to split the signal sent from the guitar. One signal was sent through the wall and into the mixing desk so that we could record a clean sound on one channel. From the DI box, another signal was passed out into an amplifier. In order to record the sound of the guitar being amplified, we decided to place a microphone in front of the amplifier. The microphone was positioned halfway along the radius of the sound cone in order to capture the truest sound. Sound is refered to as ‘true’ when it best replicates what a person would hear as a live sound.
In order to record the sounds prodced from the guitar amplifer, we used a Shure SM57. This micrphone has it a mid frequency range and is quite sensative. These factors make it usefull for picking up the sound of a guitar.
Next, we setup the mixing desk. Through the use of foldback system, we made sure that our guitar player, James, was happy with the levels of the drums and bass that were being sent through to his headphones. We altered the foldback levels of each drum and the bass guitar until he found them comfortable to play along to. We also made sure that the signals from his guitar were successfully being sent into the mixing desk, ready for recording.
The Recording Process
During the recording process, James made a few minor instrumental errors. But this was nothing to worry about. Whenever a mistake was spotted, we simply stopped the song, rewound it and then played it from an agreed time before the error was made. Any error was then recorded over using the ‘punch in’ function.
By the end of the session, we only had one guitar part recorded. Sometime during the next few feeks, we will make sure to get one or two more guitar parts recorded. To make each part sound distinguishable, we will most likely have to experiment with the EQ settings. Once recorded, we could also add a variety of effects using to each part with the use of ProTools.