Week two of our group 3 Michael Jackson – Beat it, Multitrack session and this week Danny was playing the bass, guitar for the song. Though Danny seemed to have worked hard to know the notes for the entire song for the song there was a problem we stumbled upon while we was checking all the levels of the bass and seeing how it sounded on Pro Tools. Some of the cords were coming out louder than the others and what made it worse Danny was playing with his finger (not blaming Danny at all) I want decided to use a compressor in order to squish the difference in loudness in the frequencies emitted from the bass guitar but however everyone though it sounded robotic or some sort so we didn’t use a compressor. Before doing the recording there was one more issue we encountered and that was the fact that the amplifier was creating a sort of hissing noise, the hissing increased when the treble was increased so we turned down the treble as no one cares bout the treble, I’m all about that bass. Just like in week one I was used again to be the guide vocalist for the song while Danny was playing the bass. For the vocals we used the sE X1 microphone again, it was only the guide vocals so being perfect or having the perfect microphone wasn’t a big issue. The microphones used on the guitar amp we was using for Danny’s recording was a “AKG C414” and a “AKG D112”. We also was using a DI so that we could configure the difference in sound. The two AKG’s were places very close tot he face of the amp. The C414 was placed just left of the centre of the amplifier while the D112 was positioned right of the centre of the amp. Both of the microphones were put in cardioid polar just to get the best of both low and high frequency sounds. While we was recording we noticed there was a “Signal to Noise Ratio” (Still a bit clueless about what that is) problem. The D112 microphone was receiving some unwanted feedback from the tweeter located on the top right corner of the amplifier. I was clueless as it is so I just worked on my vocals while the others operating the desk figured it out. After swiftly avoiding all the obstacles that occurred while trying to recored the bass guitar for the song Beat it, we had finished with only having to do two takes. So to sum up week two’s multitrack session, two different instruments have been successfully been recorded into Pro Tools, The Drums and Bass Guitar. Next week we are woking on the guitar parts of the song.
© 2014 Panashe Siwira
