Week 14: Seminar - Recording & Basic Mixing Session

In this seminar session we recorded the acoustic drums, grand piano and an electric guitar. The images below show the set up.

http://thecoloringspot.com/music/music-coloring-pages-1.html 2006

As you can see this time instead of two Rode NT-3 mics we used the Rode NT-4 Stereo condenser. This does exactly the same job and picks up a stereo sound of the piano and the room acoustics. The only difference is that it is one microphone, which is why it is useful. In addition to this it has two outputs different that connect to the wall box, which means you can have a right and left channel for the piano when mixing.

http://thecoloringspot.com/music/music-coloring-pages-1.html 2006

This is a typical drum kit mic set-up. The two condenser mics at the top are also known as overheads, they pick up the cymbals and an overall sound of the drum kit, which once again gives a stereo sound as there is a left and right mic. The dynamic mics are used for close micing the snare drum, the two toms. We placed one dynamic on top of the snare and one underneath it so we have more flexibility and choice in sound when mixing. The AKG 112 is a dynamic microphone which is specially designed to pick up lower frequencies and is ideal for the kick drum.

http://www.dibujosparapintar.com/hoja13.html 2006

We miced up the electric guitar and connected it directly to the wall box via a D.I. box (as shown in the image below). The two different options would give us flexibility when mixing.

After recording some audio we covered basic mixing techniques on ProTools. Inserts and Sends are set up in the Mixing window at the top of the channel strip. The dark grey area in the middle is used for setting up plug-in inserts and the lighter grey area below it is used for setting up sends.