Recording Halloway Project, ZFG are back and transferable skills update

Recording Halloway Project, ZFG is back and transferable skills update

I'm back after a hectic weekend of recording, mixing and mastering. Started off with class on Thursday, then a big session the next day. On Friday, we had access to the studios so, Simon, Darcy and I got into the MIDI studio to reference our tracks with the KRK monitors and sub. The session was around 6 hours of producing, mixing, mastering and research on artists and genres, with some frequent breaks to catch ourselves and rest our ears. Firstly, with Simon, we mixed his second track and rehearsed his vocals, working on flows, cadence and hooks. With the style of hip hop Simon is experimenting with, we referenced his Isiah Rashad reference tracks and got into the flow and vibe of Isiah’s musical style.

The first track was recorded in the NEVE studio with the Neumann U87 and since we liked that mic compared to the 414 we decided to experiment further and try running the vocals through the Avalon channel strip in the s6. Personally, I’ve used the Avalon channel strip many times with my artists and the characteristics of the EQ into the compressor has been a crowd favourite. So we ended up making the third track but it won't make the EP due to the fact that Simon has to come up with lyrics for that track.

Darcy and I also fixed up and changed some of the arrangement in both of our tracks in our so far now, 2 track EP. The first track will feature Tanaka and the second, Kudzai. Jordan joined us in the studio today (12th Aug) after his three week holiday in the US.

On Friday (11th Aug) I stayed back with Simon to record his vocals in the s6. We didn’t have access to the live room so we had to record in the s6 control room and with that came some issues. The hum in the room was difficult to remove with the Avalon EQ high pass filter and also the spill from the headphones were also picked up in the U87. We did some takes and Adlibs then used RX De-noise plugin to remove that room hum. Simon’s vocals were loud enough to mask the spill from the headphone but in case we used the iZotope ozone 7 EQ and used the linear-phase option which is a recommended setting by industry professionals. The linear-phase EQ, (Izotopecom, 2017) is something that adjusts the phase difference between different frequency bands that have been affected to produce no latency when the affected signal comes out of the processor.

After that session, I then had the s6 and live room booked for the next day, Saturday the 12th Aug, from 1pm-5pm. Darcy had a session booked in the NEVE to help Fraser but Fraser never showed so it ended up being a good session in the s6 because from the start of the session I had Darcy to help me set up before Jordan, Kudzai and Tanaka showed up. We set up the U87 in the live room and when the boys came through, we got Tanka on Darcy’s beat, since Tanka had written for it. We recorded some Adlibs too and to our surprise we discovered the UAD plugin pack we have in the s6 had Antares Auto-tune and since we’re a bunch of hip-hop heads, we threw on Tanka’s vocals, found the key of the track, I think it was G minor, then we found the bits that sounded good auto-tuned and left the other stuff without the auto-tune pitch correction.

Today (14th Aug) Darcy and I worked on the arrangement, mixing and mastering as well as add interest in the track for Tanka’s track. Another mastering session will take place with our lectures this week. As for my transferable skills update, instead of blogs, I'm going to try vlogs to try capture the current moment and therefore I can say what I need to say instead of doing a write-up.

Reference:

Izotopecom. (2017). Izotopecom. Retrieved 13 August, 2017, from https://www.izotope.com/en/products/master-and-deliver/ozone/features.html