Week 2 - AA1

This week’s session was about the basic procedures of recording. Talking about several points which are supposed to be considered before, during and after the recording session, Steve also talked about the order of doing each step.
The process of getting prepared for a recording is almost as important as the recording itself. One part of the role of a producer, an engineer or probably an assistant is to note exactly what they have to do and when they have to do it.
In this session, however, we particularly were receiving information about the duties of the engineer in a studio in a recording session.
Many of the following points are taken from the session’s reading material, “The Session Procedures”:
Firstly, the engineer is supposed to get acquainted with the kind of music which is going to be recorded, its instrumentation, preferably the musician(s) and the band, and the producer. Then, he/she has to provide a recording order, which is not necessarily pre-set and it could differ for different recording procedures. In the reading material, there was an example of the recording order divided into loud rhythm instruments, quite rhythm instruments, main and back up vocals, overdubs and sweetening. This order would obviously be different if the engineer has another plan in mind or there is a totally different instrumentation for the band. It is notable that using the MIDI technology would have another story and recording in a MIDI studio would have another kind of order.
The next step is to assign instruments to tracks. Although nowadays there are numerous ways of recording and several types of studio hardware, software, console, etc. are available, the reading took an example of a 4-track recording and took a small band as the performers. The main point of the track-assigning process is to have a more accurate recording and to be able to observe each instrument’s involvement in the recorded tune.
Surely, the more tracks available, the more accuracy the engineer could have dealing with the music.
Commonly-used computer softwares have more than 8 tracks these days and not only they can process the recorded material, but they are capable of providing the space for the engineer/producer to add any kind of electronic sounds/noises, effects, samples, etc. as overdubs to the music.
One of the most popular softwares is Digidesign’s Pro-Tools. It initially provides 32 simultaneous tracks for recording as well as 128 so-called “Virtual Tracks”. It is one of the most powerful recording softwares and has gained enough reputation throughout all the years within studios, home studios, producers, etc. More information on Pro-Tools is on its internet website.
Getting back to the subject of the recording process, after planning for the way the engineer intends to use the available tracks, he/she would prepare a session sheet in which containing information about the instruments, their respective assigned tracks and for instance the microphones used for each instrument. In case the engineer decides to record more than one take and choose the best out of them (which the reading material recommends to do) there should be a note indicating the best (or the chosen) record take on the session sheet.
The engineer could prepare a production schedule and include the sequence of recordings and overdubs afterwards. Information regarding the tracks specified for each instrument is also used in professional studios to organise the entire recording session even more. In a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) however, the information could be entered on screen.
To indicate what input would be used for each particular instrument’s recording and also the microphone used for each instrument, the engineer would provide a microphone input list. Nevertheless, it is notable to remember that the one who judges what sound for what instrument is needed, is the producer and the engineer has the duty of providing the most accurate sound desired by the producer.
Before the actual process of the recording begins, the engineer has to make sure that some certain jobs are perfectly done as far as:
- The position of the instruments, baffles, microphones and headphones, isolating booths, etc.. are in a way that no musician feels uncomfortable and they could do their best in the shortest amount of time. Time IS always money, especially in a studio!
- All the cables and other elements should work properly and if possible, there should be spare equipments available in case anything goes wrong. The inputs and other connecting-issues should be clearly specified and tested (for example at least with a little scratch on the microphone to check its condition.)
- The recording room should be clean and neat and there should be enough space for any probable movement of performers and/or a change of equipments’ position.
- The control room should be totally prepared for which the engineer might need another sheet as a checklist. This would contain points such as checking the patch panel, the names of the tracks which are supposed to be recorded, having all the faders’ levels set on minimum, checking the monitors, etc..
A brief example of a typical order of events in a recording session would be to record the basic tracks, do the overdubbing, mix them and edit and master the final set of tracks.

It should be noted to always keep some blank tracks (especially when using a DAW, in which having blank tracks are easier) to be able to edit, re-record, or add small elements to the music when needed. It is a wise idea to have several takes of a particular part of the tune and edit and composite it later to have a more accurate and a neater take of it.
When the recording session is finished, all the equipments are supposed to be set back to their initial condition. (for instance, microphones are to be back to their cases, cables to their store place, etc..).
In some cases some consoles (and most of the DAWs) can save the control settings and these could be recalled later in other sessions.
Overall, the engineer must prepare a “Session Plan” for the entire recording process. This includes information about the inputs, microphones or DIs considered for each instrument and the track number in which the instruments are being recorded into. A basic example of a session plan is provided below.

In the reading material however, there were few points which in my opinion were important to note, but it wasn't explaining those enough.
The exact definition of a DAW was needed in some ways. I couldn't find it in the writing, therefore I linked the DAW part of this post to Wikipedia which might not be THE most accurate source to get a technical definition as this particular one.
In one part of the writing, it was mentioned that stripes would be used on mixers in order to name the tracks. Apart from softwares these days, a considerable percentage of mixing consoles are digitally controlled in which way you basically type the name of the track you want underneath its respected fader. Two examples of this kind of consoles are Klotz Digital's AEON and Yamaha's M7CL.
Surely there is an approximate estimated time period for an example recording session, for instance it could be 5 hours of studio for 3 tracks of a 4 piece rock band. Although such estimation would be so general but I believe it might give a kind of imagination of how the time in a studio should be taken care of. There was no such thing in the reading material.
In one part, the "Session Procedures" talks about putting back the cables and sorting them out after the recording in which it recalls the term "Lasso Style" of wrapping the cables. I could find neither an exact definition nor a picture of this on the net. I think it would be better if there were some illustrations of this particular method (or other methods commonly used) of how to wrap cables.

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