Weekly Recordings


The best way for you to learn how to record is to take the time to get to know the instrument or voice you’re recording. How does it produce sound? Is it amplified? What maintenance is required so that the instrument isn’t making unwanted noises and will sound the best? Where should the instrument be recorded in the space you’re in? Do you need to make changes to the acoustics? Where do you place the microphone? Is it on or off axis? Do you need multiple microphones to get the best capture?

You will be completing these weekly assignments with a partner. This means you have to learn to communicate with each other about sound. How do you do that? You should be learning a great deal about that in theory class but sometimes the jargon we learn isn’t always easily recognizable and a lot of times, you may be working with musicians that haven’t been trained in music so most of us rely on shared experiences. For this exercise, that means what is your shared listening? The first part of your weekly post will be a description of your listening. Pick three examples of recordings that you would like to try and imitate for your recording and share these with your partner and see what consensus you can come to for your recording assignment. What that would look like for your electric bass assignment could be the bass on Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused, REM’s Losing My Religion and St Vincent’s Birth In Reverse.

After you write your thoughts about your listening, you will research how to record the assigned instrument with your partner and you will start by understanding the instrument and then the techniques necessary to make the best recording. Many times, the best first source is the musician you plan to record. Ask them how to get the sound on the recordings you’ve selected.

Please use a minimum of three sources and three techniques. Make sure to cite your sources and describe how you used the information. Make use of the internet, your textbook, magazines and the ebooks available from our library. Once your research is complete, book the studio (the policy can be found here) and test your research. Be sure to add pictures and the sound files to your post with accurate and informative descriptions. Please create a Soundcloud account for these recording or use your own server. While the research can be shared, I’d like for you to make separate posts since I would like to:

  1. Learn the recordings you selected individually.
  2. Read your individual opinions on what techniques and equipment you liked best and what’s useful from the ones you didn’t like as much.
  3. See how your taste differs from your partner after reading your paragraphs on the listening.
  4. See what effects you added to your instrument and how well you exported it from Reaper.

The work you will do as a duo will be:

  1. The final choice of songs to imitate.
  2. The instrument and technique research.
  3. The recording documentation.

Once all of this is finished, type it up, embed the links to your songs and research and embed the three short recordings you made as soundcloud files or use your own server. We will be collaborating on the first one as a class so don’t worry if this seems a little overwhelming right now!!

Don’t forget, there isn’t much more exciting than this kind of work. Have fun!

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