Due to personal reasons, O’Brien was unable to make the sessions during weeks 4 and 5 and so Philip and I had to find other things to do for the project to remain productive. One thing we did was listen to a lot of Reggae music to try and note down some ideas for production and post-production techniques, this was a very good experience for myself as it opened me up to fresh ideas about how the final product could sound. Listening to popular Reggae artists such as Peter Tosh, Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry and The Skatalites helped me understand more and more about the genre sound and the feel that I wanted to incorporate into O’Brien’s EP.

The Skatalites

During these two weeks we also planned what instruments we would track next and what issues we may incur in the following weeks. As the keyboard and bass players were traveling a long way to come to Lincoln we had to keep in contact with O’Brien about what days in the coming weeks were going to be available for everyone. We decided that we needed the bass and guitar tracks down before even considering O’Brien to start laying down vocal tracks and so we decided on the next session being used to track guitars. O’Brien also got in touch with me about various ideas for guitar parts and I spent these two weeks thinking of ideas to bring to the session when we would next be in the studio.

Drums are an integral part of reggae music, they provide the feel and groove of a certain song. This weeks session involved drum tracking for the three main songs on the EP. Chris Gill was once again called upon to play the drums while O’Brien played along as guide for him in the live room while Chris was set up in the isolation booth. Phil and I had already pre-booked out the microphones we had planned to use after researching how a lot of reggae producers and engineers set up microphones on a drum kit for their pieces. We decided on the standard stereo approach for the overheads with two AKG 414’s.

We settled on a different technique with the overheads with the cardioid polar pattern not completely directed at the kit. An AKG D112 was used facing the kicks front skin with a pillow in between as we had a very booming sound at first but the pillow really did the trick. An SM57 was used on the snare drum to capture the high-hat and the typical reggae rim-shot.

SM57 microphone position

After we finally settled on a good sounding kit we decided to start recording takes with conversations in between with O’Brien and Chris on what we thought about the takes and what could have been done better. This was a very important part of the session as I felt we were all involved as a team and that my input was helping push the project forward. After the session was complete we thanked Chris and listened to the takes we had recorded and was very happy with them, as was our client O’Brien Hesson. Next week we aim to be tracking bass guitar to then complete the majority of the rhythm instrumentation of the three main tracks.

How a song is structured is a massive part of how it’s going to interact with the listener, that’s why this week we took the time to plan O’Brien’s tracks and run through them in more detail than the previous week. After inviting Chris Gill to the session, who is a drummer who also attends Lincoln University, we set up an overhead microphone in the drum booth and set O’Brien up in the live room in a way that they could see each other as well as being able to hear one another to jam through the tracks. Phil and I were in the control room recording the whole session and also on the talk-back coming in with ideas on beats and where parts of the song could change. One thing we noticed was the tempo of one on track was a little slower than we had recorded the previous week and so we took time out to really note down a good speed for the song for it to work to its full potential. One major change this week involved dropping one track recorded the previous week and replacing it with one of his stronger compositions. After the session had finished we listened over the material we had gathered over the following days finalising the structure to take into next weeks session where we would be laying down drum tracks. I came away from this weeks session feeling that it was very productive to have Chris Gill come in and see what the tracks were all about and now he could practice them up until the recording day.

The first session involved inviting O’Brien over to Lincoln to show us what kind of songs he was thinking of putting on the EP. He arrived with his acoustic guitar and we ran through some ideas of what we thought would be good tracks to record and set up the microphones in the studio to get a few rough ideas down. We all agreed after discussing certain ideas on five tracks that we would record by the deadline in December. We decided on three full band tracks and two live acoustic tracks, we also discussed a plan of other musicians we would need such as a drummer and a keyboard player. This meeting was very useful to the project as we got the planning stages down and sorted out which tracks we would produce for the project and also we looked at a timescale of what and would not be feasible over the next few months.

My audio project is to produce a five track EP for an outside client who writes his own material and performs all around the country. The client is a reggae fusion artist who has agreed to work with us for the next few months and we aim to produce a high quality standard EP that will be bounced to a CD format which can then be distributed at his gigs and through online digital downloads. The objective is to record and mix five tracks over the upcoming months and agree a method of distribution with the client. Using this blog I will be updating weekly about what has been happening with the project and also what I have learnt. Please feel free to check out other areas of the blog on the tabs at the top of the page and also my colleagues blog: http://philiprollett.blogs.lincoln.ac.uk/