Tracking Oceancode
I was approached by the band Pop/Folk band: Oceancode to record two of their tracks back in May. Having heard their music previously in a live setting and having sat in on one of their Pre-production sessions I was excited to work with the group and knew I could bring something to the table when recording/producing them.
The bands setup is: Bass, Drums, Electric-guitar, Vocals and Acoustic Guitar. The tracking process was fairly standard- starting off with a guide vocal and Acoustic Guitar played to a click track. This meant that the full structure of the songs were laid-down and allowed the Drummer to record to the basics of the track providing more feel for the drummer to record to rather than just a click-track.
Drums
The drums were an 9 Mic setup using; AKG D-112 inside the kick-drum, approx 10 inches away from the beater; AKG C3000 Large-diaphragm condenser on the reso-head at 8 o’clock if the drum was a clock face, this mic was here to transduce the sub-frequencies of the kick-drum. On the snare I used a SM57 with a pencil condenser duct-taped to the side making sure the Capsules were matched, using this mic combination meant that I got some nice mid-range ‘wack’ from the 57 and some more ringy high-frequencies off the pencil condenser. For Over-heads I used a pair of Matched Neumann TLM-105s, I used these microphones for the over-heads as the room I was recording in was very dry and the cymbals I was recording were Dark, this gave a nice balance as the TLM-105s tend to record very bright.
Guitar and Bass
In recording the Guitar I used a SM57 right against the grill of the Cabinet, off-centre from the middle of the Speaker cone. I like using this mic on guitar cabs as it has a really nice mid-range and a High SPL Level, sounding really nice when the cab is cranked. I also used an Audio-Technica AT4040 Large- Diaphragm Condenser behind the back of the cabinet pointed at the back of the speaker. This allowed me to get a really bright bell-like sound of the Speaker.
Bass
Bass was recorded Directly into a channel on the SSL 948, using the SSLs EQ boosting 1dB at 60Hz and rolling-off the high frequencies.
Acoustic Guitar
In Recording Acoustic Guitar I used a matched pair of AKG 414s. Placing one approximately 10 inches away from the 12th fret of the guitar and one over the Player’s right shoulder. Since the player was right handed the addition of this second microphone was meant to give the illusion of listening from the players Perspective.
Vocals
In recording Vocals the singer had a very bright, raspy voice, the microphone we worked out to be best for this was a Rode Large Diaphragm as it had some nice warm High-mids. I also ran the microphone through the 1176 clone compressor to use the tubes in that compressor to warm the sound up a bit. The settings on this compressor were a fairly slow attack and release.