Hi! Sorry but this will be quite a long post 'cos it's to keep track of what I've been doing (in case I forget some stuff).
So the past few weeks I've been concentrating on recording, mixing and putting the song together.
I first wanted to follow Mumford & Sons kind of arrangement where I'd keep it really simple. I added in a banjo (using midi but failed to copy the timbre), added in an organ, piano, bass and electric guitars. My folk rock idea was slowly turning into pop rock so I decided to just stick to the pop rock genre! I also arranged for the usual bam bam and ooh harmonies in the song.
Apart from that, I recorded the acoustic guitar, drums, bass and vocals. Mixing is quite a tough one for me because to be honest, I had little knowledge and experience from it. But however, thanks to the internet I researched on my own on mixing and how to use certain plug ins to achieve the sound. I was quite upset with how my snare top sounded because of the wrong mike used. I should have used a SM57 for it but it was recorded with a Senn 441. The body sound was gone and the snare just sounded so thin. I tried boosting the low mids of like around 200Hz but it still sounded bad and the attack sound of the snare hit mixed with the thin sound of the snare was really bad. Thus, I had to trigger midi samples to make up for this. I also triggered a kick drum sample to mix together with my recorded kick drum to give it more "punch" and click sound as the recorded one had a lot of boom sound.
For bass, I used 4 mikes- DI, AKG D112, subkick and senn 421. I really liked the DI 'cos both the attack and plucking sound of the strings/string noise was really prominent. The D112 had a really nice tone to the bass also but it had a lot of low end that gave mud to the mix. The senn 421 was alright but comparing this to D112 I preferred the D112. I only used the DI and D112 tracks to mix cos the others just added alot of mud to the mix.
For acoustic guitar, it was my first time recording it in the stereo XY coincident technique with the Earthworks mike pointing at the 12th fret. I also had another recording to get a different tone using the AT2035 that was slanted towards the guitar hole. This one had a lot of boom sound when I played the low notes but when I EQ-ed the frequencies away it sounded really bright and thin which blended well with the Earthworks. The earthworks represents the highs/clarity of the guitar really well too and because I wanted a bright tone for the song.
As for vocals, I used the u87 because it gives the warmness to the voice and I think it suited the tone of my voice.
