Recording journal

6/8

The first track I began working on was the 6/8 time signature track. I firstly came up with two simple chords which were Dm7 and Fmaj7 which I found sounded well together after I started playing some random chords on the guitar to come up with something. I then created a simple strumming pattern that was played in 6/8. Once I had the input set properly and the gain on the guitar, I then used a tap tempo app on my phone to figure out what the tempo of the song was, which was 31bpm. I did struggle playing the chords for a long time as they were barre chords, so I simply recorded the first 2 bars of the song using a thick and clean amplifier on logic which I picked out, I also added an echo pedal and a retro chorus pedal which I thought sounded very well put together and it was the sound I was looking which was bright. After recording 8 bars on the guitar, I repeated this process until I had 12 bars put together. I then moved onto using a bass track which I used from logic and changed the complexity of it because I only wanted a simple pattern. To ensure the bass track was playing the correct chords, I individually inserted the chords to each bar. After I completed the bass track I lastly moved onto the drums. Before recording I played the song while I was on my drum kit to figure out what sort of beat I wanted, once I had done that I set up my midi but realised it was two complex for me to play all at the same time with my fingers. To solve this I individually recorded each part of the drum and started with the ride cymbal, then the kick, then the snare, then the toms and lastly the crash. This process made things a lot easier and I managed to complete it all in one take. Once I had completed the drums, I then created a simple lead part on the guitar to add some brightness and to excite the song a bit. This was also a bit of a complex process as I am not very skilled on guitar, therefore I followed the same pattern as the rhythm guitar and only did 8 bars at a time. 

Even though this was a very simple track and I hadn't played in a 6/8 time signature before, I am happy with the outcome and I personally think that the drums turned out really well. Although I am happy with the outcome, I do wish I could've made the track a bit longer and it should've included more chords. Since this was a small demo, I decided not too do a massive mix on all of my tracks but still added some stuff to make them sound good.

Mixing and mastering:

Firstly I mixed the rhythm guitar.

This was the compression I added and I mainly focused on making the guitar sounding slightly louder since the Lead guitar was sounding much more dominating.

After experimenting with the EQ, this was the finished product and I was happy with how bright it made the rhythm guitar sound.

Cutting most of the low end definitely made a huge difference in the brightness of the guitar.

These were the pedals used on both guitars.

The noise gate was automatically put into the guitar mixes but I did tweak them slightly with the threshold to lower the volume slightly as the lead guitar's volume was dominating.

 

4/4

Before starting the recording process, I knew straight away that this would be the easiest track to create as I mainly play drums in this time signature, therefore making the beat wasn't too difficult. After learning from my previous track that playing drums on a midi was difficult, I decided to take a different approach to recording the drums. After playing around with different chord structures, I really liked the sound of cmaj7 chords therefore, I found 3 chords that were Dmaj7, Fmaj7 and Cmaj7 I came up with a strumming pattern that was (DDDUDU). Again, I used the tap tempo app on my phone and found that the bpm was 75. I followed the samek pattern as my previous track and recorded the first 2 bars of the song and followed this process until I had a 16 bar song. I used the exact same amp as my previous track but I only used the retro chorus pedal this time. Next I moved onto the bass, I wanted a simple bass track therefore I inserted the song chords and created my own simple pattern which I was happy with.

After completing the bass track, I moved onto the drums. Instead of recording each part of the drum individually, I decided to use a step sequencer to create the beat I wanted, which helped me figure out what sort of beat I wanted and it also saved a lot of time compared to my previous track. I created a very straight forward beat but I was unable to add fills at the end of every 4 bars and the crash cymbal therefore I recorded it separately.

3/4

Writing a track in 3/4 was pretty challenging for me, I was getting confused with playing in 6/8 since I didn't have much playing experience in 3/4. I started looking for some songs online for inspiration and "Please please please, let my get what I want" by The smiths inspired me the most as it was my music style. I then came up with 4 simple chords which were D, C, E Minor and G. I recorded these chords at 94bpm. Unfortunately after multiple attempts I couldn't get the timing right, and kept playing in 6/8, therefore I decided just to use a loop instead to make things easier. After choosing my loops the song ended up being 16 bars. After placing the loops I began recording the kick and snare and this time I didn't use the step sequencer because I couldn't figure out how to get a swing pattern. For the beat I started with recording a 1 kick and 1 hit on the snare drum per bar. Then I added a simple fill at the end of every 4 bars which was just 3 hits on the mid tom which I played as a triplet. Lastly, I recorded the ride cymbal in a swing pattern and added a Tamborine playing the same was as the ride cymbal which I thought blended well. I noticed that the beat I played in this song was very similar to standard 3/4 beats you hear in songs which is how I knew I succeeded in creating a 3/4 beat.

This was my setup while recording the tracks:

my own guitar that was played throughout each track.

My setup included a scarlett solo audio interface, wireless headphones and a Akai midi and a simple adapter to plug into my laptop.

A slight issue that occurred during the recording process was that the audio in my headphones was very delayed compared to my mac, this was due to the fact I was using wireless headphone which I found didn't work when using Logic pro on google. Unfortunately I had to play without headphones throughout recording, but everything sounded good at the end and I managed to stay up to tempo in every song.