This week we got together and finally cemented what we wanted to do with the drums. We practiced it for a while so that my friend Aaron, who was playing the drums, could figure out what he wanted to do with it. We only had one stereo condenser microphone at our disposal and we didn’t want to record the drums in multiple pieces, so we just set it up on a stand near the middle of the set. Definitely wasn’t the most ideal setup but with some EQing I think we were able to get a decent sound. Especially hearing the layers that we’ve started working on for next week – it will end up meshing quite well, I think. Here it is, once again with comment throughout thanks to Soundcloud:

DS106 Song – Week 2 by cliftongibbons

For this first week of working on the final version of the recording, we setup the structure of the actual song, which you will see take shape over the coming weeks. After the drums were down we started the placement of the primary acoustic guitar that was heard last week. The next layers of guitars that are coming next week will be mostly electric. Then we’re planning on adding bass, vocals, and do some work with midi.

For the recording process I used a program called Ableton Suite 8 with a Presonus Firebox preamp and a stereo condenser microphone from MXL.

The process itself was pretty straightforward. Once we were in the program we simple armed the first track that we were recording to and let the recording roll. He did the full drum take each time, which we ended up doing five to ten takes of. Then after the guitar was done I started playing around with some of the virtual effects plugins (known as VST) that came with the program for editing. I’ll do a lot of work with the effects and mastering when there are more tracks added, but I took some time to start adding and tweaking various EQs, reverbs, compressors, etc to get the sound that we wanted for the context of the rest of the song that will be forming. Check out the picture below for a general look at whats being done and check back next week for more layers to be added.

REMEMBER, laptop speakers do not accurately relay the low end frequencies present in a recording – to hear all elements now and weeks to come use headphones or appropriate speakers.

-Clifton