Session Notes
Article Preview :: Dunning Kruger: Writing & Recording Cello Overdubs
This month, our engineer gets roped into the writing and arrangement process as he tracks cello parts in a living room.
Back in this column in SOS October 2012 (www.soundonsound.com/sos/oct12/articles/session-notes-1012.htm), I described the tracking of indie-rock group Dunning Kruger’s three-song EP. On a later date, I helped them with some overdubs, including a selection of different cello parts for the track ‘Japan Song’. Although I’d expected my role in this to extend no further than pushing some mics around and hitting ‘record’, I also became involved with the arrangement and musical direction — as many project-studio producers find they have to — so I thought it’d be worth revisiting this project here, to pass on some more tips.
Before The Session
Following a series of test recordings, here’s the dual-mic setup Mike settled on to capture some cello overdubs in a medium-sized domestic living room. The mics are Avantone Pro’s small-diaphragm CK1 condensers, with their cardioid capsules fitted.
The venue was a 7 x 5-metre living-room with laminate wood flooring, and I brought along my Roland VS2480 for recording duties, just to keep things simple. To give us a good trade-off between monitoring flexibility and having plenty of spare tracks, I imported sub-mixed stems of the full band sessions (stereo drums, bass, two guitars, and two vocals) onto the first seven tracks of a fresh 16-track VS2480 project. Back in the tape days, this process was called ‘making a slave reel’, and although it’s less commonplace on modern digital systems, it can still come in handy, for making best use of a limited track count, or to minimise disk-access and CPU demands on a laptop-based system.
With everyone in the same room, I decided that all monitoring would be done via headphones. I was confident that the VS2480’s fan noise and any spill from my open-backed Beyerdynamic DT880 headphones wouldn’t prove troublesome, as long as I positioned myself at least a couple of metres from the mics, but I also took closed-back Audio-Technica ATH910s for the cellist, Anna Zimre, to minimise foldback bleed.
I decided to set up my cue monitoring through the VS2480, because although monitoring latency can cause problems with some digital systems, this multitracker’s throughput delay is pretty low. I also knew that Anna would have the option of slipping one of the ATH910’s ear-cups backwards a little to listen to her instrument acoustically, if necessary — which is precisely what she ended up doing!
Time-saving In Advance
To avoid any technical confusion while repositioning the two identical mics, they were labelled ‘L’ and ‘R’ with masking tape, and these labels were duplicated for the respective preamps and input channels.
I hate keeping musicians waiting around, so I chose and line-checked my mics in advance of their arrival. My plan was to mic from a few feet away, to achieve a fairly natural timbre without spotlighting any single region of the instrument. I selected cardioid polar patterns for the mics, to reduce the amount of room sound picked up, but I knew that early room reflections would nonetheless form an important part of the recorded sound, so I instinctively favoured the typically tidier off-axis frequency response of small-diaphragm condensers. The pair of Avantone Pro CK1 pencil mics I had with me were a bit of an unknown, as I’d only recently acquired them, so I also brought my trusty AKG C414B XLS as a backup option.
... |
That's the end of the trailer folks!
Option 2: Buy this SOS article in Adobe PDF format
|
I AM a Subscriber - How do I access Web content?
- Depending on your Subscription type, you may or may not have Web access included in your subscription bundle.
- If you have a Print Only or Tablet Only subscription and wish to upgrade send an email including your full name and postal address to: subs-upgrade@soundonsound.com
- All other Subscription bundles do include access to Web content but you may not have activated it by logging in. See this page for Help.
I am NOT a Subscriber
- SOS locks most recent magazine web articles for 5 months after they go online.
- Only articles older than 6 months are free to access.
- Buy a subscription now for instant access to all articles. Click here for prices.
Home |
Search |
News |
Current Issue |
Tablet Mag |
Articles |
Forum |
Subscribe |
Shop |
Readers Ads
Advertise |
Information |
Digital Editions |
Privacy Policy |
Support
In this article:
Wed 22 May 2013
Sound On Sound : Est. 1985