Artefact 2 - Planning Stage

When my group started planning out what we were going to record for our project, Emmanuel suggested that he and his band could do a cover of the song Soweto - by Tempoe and Victony. We created a recording plan for our project, it contains information on the song, what instruments we were planning to record and microphones we wanted to use.

Recording Plan

Below is an outline of the different sections of the recording plan to be completed. This should be completed BEFORE any recording takes place! Additional material to support your plan can also be added if necessary/relevant (images, audio, video... etc.)

Artist, song and client brief:

Here you should provide a general overview of your intended recording project. Encapsulate your description with a couple of paragraphs that outline what you intend to do for your project. What is the artist and song? Is it a cover or does a demo exist (provide a link)? Does the artist have any intended style or sound in mind? How are you going to accommodate these ideas?

We are recording a cover of the song Soweto by Tempoe, which is an afrobeats song. The song is 3 minutes and 40 seconds long with a tempo of 105 bpm.

The song has a good amount of percussion, a lot of which is syncopated, the song also features a clean guitar with reverb and a bass guitar.

Although the song has singing, the band playing the cover does not have a vocalist, therefore we will not be recording vocals.

The band features a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and drummer, The keyboardist is bringing their own equipment and providing samples for the song.

The rest of the band will use instruments from the college.

Studio selections:

What studio(s) and live room(s) do you want to carry out your project in, or different sessions of your project in and why... This is to highlight an awareness and appreciation of the different ways the rooms can play a part in your recordings.

For our guitar and drum recordings, it would be optimal for us to record in the audient suite, this is because the audient has the most soundproofing out of all the suites available to us, therefore if we want to minimise unwanted sound bleeding into our recording, we should record both guitar, keyboard and drum kit in the audient.

For our bass recording it does not matter what studio we record in as it will be recorded using DI.

Intended approaches to recording:

How do you and your group intend to carry out the recording stage of your project..? Traditional multitrack recording to a pre-prepared backing track & click? Live to multi with minimal overdubs? Something in between? Do you need to create a backing track with/for the band prior to commencing the tracking stage? What order will you record your instruments?

For the project, we will provide the band with a click track and a backing track, which will be recorded a week prior

We plan to record drums first, this is because the set up will be quite long compared to the other instruments due to the number of mics required, so it would be optimal to set up and record the drums first.

Next it would be good to record either guitar or keyboard next, as both will take around the same time to set up, bass can be recorded last as there is not a lot of equipment needed to record bass through DI.

Recording details	Detail for each instrument what your required equipment and intended recording techniques will be. Examples could be: Microphone(s) to use Polar pattern Mic placement Stereo recording technique Outboard processing Use of pedals Other equipment needed
Drums	For the drums, use the spaced pair stereo mic technique for overhead mics, as it captures a wide stereo image, for this we will use a pair of ADX51’s with a cardioid polar pattern as they are good condenser mics for overheads. We will also use a for our kick drum, this should be all the mics we require as the song does not use a lot of the drum kit, mainly the kick and hi hats.
Bass	We will be recording the bass through DI, the only equipment we will require for this is a DI box.
Guitar	The Guitar will be recorded through an amp, to do this we will place the mics in front of the speaker cones inside the amp, the guitarist won't be using pedals, but we can apply reverb in the DAW to get an authentic sound. we are using an electro-voice re20 cardioid polar pattern, and an sm57.
Keyboard	The keyboard will also be recorded using an amp, for this we will be using the same mics and amp that we used for the guitars, the keyboardist is bringing their own equipment.

Outline a timescale for the recording session

Based on all of the above, provide some thoughts with regards to timescale you require to achieve all the recording for your projects. Note that this is just an initial realistic assessment of the time needed to complete all recording (I.e. NOT mixing!)

We will most likely require at least two recording sessions for this project, the song is not too long so recording the parts shouldn't take a long time, however some of the band members aren't available for some of the recording dates meaning we will have to record them on separate dates.