Production Diary

08/01/2025 - Recording an Electric Guitar

Today Rhodri took us into the Live room and the control room to show us how to mic up and record a guitar using the mixing desk. The first thing we did was get a sm57 dynamic microphone, attach it to a mic stand and angle it directly in front of the speaker cone. Then we got another sm57 and placed it off centre to the speaker cone, After this we plugged the microphones into the stage box. We then went into the control room and started a Logic session and faded it using the mixing desk, Rhodri demonstrated to us the proper procedure to turn everything on and how to control Logic using the mixing desk. The first thing you do is turn on the interface and the computer, then you turn on the mixing desk. Load up Logic, make sure the mixing desk and audio interface are connected and then the last thing you do is turn on the studio monitors. Then once a signal comes through onto the mixing desk adjust the gain on that channel on the mixing desk, fade up the small fader and once you're ready fade up the master fader to start getting audio through the monitors. Once we recorded two audios from the two different microphones we swapped one out for a ribbon mic and placed a room omni-directional microphone aswell. Plugged those in and went back to the control room to record more audio. Rhodri then went through the difference in sounds between the different angles, positions and types of microphones. The sm57 facing directly the middle had a much brighter sound with more mids but less bass and top end. The sm57 facing offset to the centre had a darker sound with more bass and top end but less mids. The sm57 facing at a 45 degree angle to the speaker cone had the best sound in my opinion with a nice mix of the highs, mids and lows. The ribbon microphone had a lot of mids and bass but very little high end with an overall muddier sound.

09/01/2025 - Recording an Acoustic Guitar

Today Rhodri took us into the live room again and showed us how to record an acoustic guitar using different types of microphones and a D.I box. The first microphone we made use of was a U87 condenser microphone with a large diaphragm placed infront of the guitar lined up around the 12th fret. Usually condenser microphones are the best microphones to record an acoustic guitar with because it has the widest range of frequencies that it can pick up, giving you the most of that natural acoustic tone as possible. The next microphones we set up were a pair of AKG 414 condenser large diaphragm microphones. One was pointed at the bridge and one was pointed at the neck. It was very important that the microphones were the same distance away from the guitar to avoid phasing. The large diaphragm is ideal for this situation because it allows us to capture the widest range of sound possible. The two final microphones we made use of were 2 Rode NT5 small diaphragm condenser microphones. These were placed further away than the other microphones and just the same as the last pair, one was pointed toward the bridge of the guitar and one was pointed towards the neck of the guitar. We then went into the control room and recorded some guitar on Logic using the mixing desk. The process for this is the same as if you were recording an electric guitar.

Recording a Drumkit 16/01/2025

Today we went into the studio with Rhodri to record a drumkit. I have included various photos of the drumkit from different angles ensuring to capture the microphone placement and positioning. I have also included a photo of the Logic session which we recorded onto. To record the kickdrum we utilised an AKG D112 dynamic wide diaphragm cardioid microphone known for it's use with kick drums and miking up bass amplifiers. At the first the microphone was positioned inside the kickdrum pointing towards the beater on the inside. However this didn't give us enough resonance so we moved the microphone outside of the kickdrum and pointed it forward toward the hole and this solved the issue.

Recording Vocals 20/01/2025

sm7b, sm58, RE20

30/01/2025 - Live Lounge Practice

Today with Rhodri we had a test run of rigging

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