Max Herman 2/8/12 Session Notes

Mauricio, Professor Herman and Alex

I saw Professor Herman during a committee meeting Friday and he likes the recording. He was not overjoyed with some of his performance, though, and asked to come back again. I said we could do that at some point. I thought his songs were excellent. I will link him to this blog in case he wishes to provide more feedback.

As you now know, many incremental changes can yield a large improvement in sound. So the engineer is always working.

Those students who have engineered thus far will say that intense concentration is required. When the sessions become more complicated, a diamond point focus will be necessary or the recording will turn to crap very quickly.

Let’s reiterate some basic concepts. Understanding the signal chain and gain structure is critical. If you get distortion in the mic pre, nothing you do downstream will help alleviate that.

In a multi mic session (everything, just about,) phase coherency is always a consideration. We flipped phase on several microphones in this session and the results were dramatic. If you don’t get it right, the recording will sound like shit and the mix is not repairable. There is nothing to look at when adjusting phase settings on mic pres, just flip and listen. Sometimes flipping does not give the expected result, so changing the mic to source distance may be required.

Procedural: Engineer makes eye contact, says “stand by” with arm and forefinger raised, initiates recording, and while looking at performer, points at him, and/or nods. Talk backs should be brief and casual, with pleasant tone – don’t be loud.

Keep good notes (include time notation) for takes/errors while recording. Drop markers at head of every take. Special instructions may be written in Simpletext and saved in the session folder. For continuing sessions (more than one session) the Second documents all patch and outboard gear settings precisely. For mic pre/eq/compressors, etc., this often involves drawing pictures with calibrated dial scales to achieve “total recall” for the next session.

For 2/15, read all the tabbed links, including the manual, for the 1176 and know how to emulate it in the Distressor.

Read about the Vintech 473, which we will externally patch.

Read the Countryman manual, which we will use for DI (Direct Injection).

I will post next week’s session details/chain soon. I turned comments “on,” they should work now.
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