You are here

Session Notes: The Flying Aces

The Practical Craft Of Recording By Neil Rogers
Published March 2016

The author, piloting the Flying Aces session from the cockpit at Cambridge’s Half-Ton studio.The author, piloting the Flying Aces session from the cockpit at Cambridge’s Half-Ton studio.

Our engineer explains how to go about getting decent results from a live-band tracking session when pressed for time.

While it’s great to have time to play around and experiment with different recording options (it genuinely is my idea of a good time to spend half a day swapping mics around and trying different combinations of drums or guitar amps!), it’s not a luxury most engineers in a working studio can afford every day. Very often, you’ll need to be able to turn around a recording session fairly quickly and still somehow manage to deliver decent results. That’s why, this month, I thought I’d take you through a live recording session I did at my studio (Half-Ton in Cambridge), and highlight some ways in which I regularly go about getting a good-quality band recording in a relatively short time.

Sizing Up The Session

For this particular session, I’d have a maximum of five hours in which to set up and record a four-piece Americana function band, the Flying Aces, who wanted a high-quality two-track demo recording for their web site. I don’t record covers that often but when I do I sometimes find it tricky, especially with retro material, to decide whether it’s more important to try and be authentic (ie. faithful to the era), or to create a more modern version, with just a few stylistic nods towards a certain vibe. It’s always best to discuss this sort of thing up front, and after an initial chat with the Aces (see the ‘Session Management’ box) it was clear that they were keen on the latter approach; the demo was about securing paid bookings via their web site and they needed to quickly impress prospective customers, rather than make any sort of statement of artistic authenticity.Cambridge band, the Flying Aces.Cambridge band, the Flying Aces.

If you often work in the same recording facility, you’ll probably rely on a number of tried and tested equipment combinations in these types of sessions, but more important in enabling you to work quickly is that you figure out which elements of your recording setup are essential and which simply desirable — which ones can be put in the ‘extras’ queue, and considered only if you find enough time or have a great assistant!

My quick assessment identified a need for a mic each on the kick and snare, a drum-overhead pair, a good DI for the bass and one good mic option on each of the guitar cabs. There would be further supplemental mics, but I figured that, if pressed, those seven channels — plus the vocals, of course — should leave me with an acceptable result. How the band perform and how you put the vocals in place are of course massively important, but breaking things down to the essentials in this way can be really helpful, especially if you’re inexperienced or find yourself under pressure in a session.

Kit Parade

Sometimes it’s just not doable but, ideally, on the day of a session, you’d spend some time before the band turns up getting a good part of your recording setup in place — it takes the pressure off your shoulders a little, typically making the session run more smoothly and thus more quickly. In this case, I spent an extremely useful 20-30 minutes rigging mics up on stands and making sure the headphones were all working.

As with most band recording sessions, I set the drums up first, not because they’re the most important instrument, but because they inevitably involve the most work; typically there’s more effort involved in plugging in and setting up multiple microphones, refining their placement and so on than in choosing a vocal or guitar mic. The key elements to getting a good drum sound — which I’d place in the essential pile I described earlier — are the overheads, and the kick and snare close mics. If you know what you’re doing, you should be able to get a good drum sound for most genres using these mics alone if you have to. Also important for many genres, albeit slightly less so, are the toms, room/ambience mics and spot mics for hi-hat or ride.

The basic drum sound was built around an overhead pair, which gave just enough stereo width to the kit. Snare and kick close mics augmented this.The basic drum sound was built around an overhead pair, which gave just enough stereo width to the kit. Snare and kick close mics augmented this.

A sensible point to start with any drum recording is the sound from the overheads. Whilst I might explore some different options on a longer session, on this occasion I opted for a reliable technique, using a pair of AKG C414s, that’s very quick to set up and adjust. We have a very large telescopic mic stand at the studio and this, along with a stereo bar, provides a nice way of being able to fine tune a basic initial overhead setup, and handily keep your microphone stands from getting too congested around the kit. I positioned these mics in what’s roughly a near-coincident stereo arrangement. Although I always measure the distance from each overhead mic the snare, to make sure my snare drum is phase coherent in the overhead stereo image, this particular configuration typically provides fairly solid phase coherence across all the elements of the kit — the mics are inherently fairly close together. While it doesn’t give a particularly wide image of the kit, it does give you enough width to be able easily to place the ride and hi-hat between your speakers, and it’s also pretty forgiving when checking your mix in mono.

It was important for me to decide on the final overhead position, as only then could I properly judge my kick and snare close-mic options. After a little adjustment to the height of the overhead mics, and having made sure that the snare appeared in the centre of the stereo image, I turned my attention to the kick. In a longer session I’d normally use two mics on a kick and experiment to find a couple of options that work really well together. Here, conscious of time, I made the call to focus on a single mic, and quickly auditioned two dynamic mics that have often worked well for me, the Beyerdynamic M88 and Sennheiser MD421. Both sounded good, but I preferred the more ‘shaped’ sound of the MD421 against the overheads. I also adjusted the placement a few times — this was taking a bit out of our precious session time, but it was definitely worth getting this right.

The Beyerdynamic M201 pictured above was used to help capture a little more body from the piccolo snare.The Beyerdynamic M201 pictured above was used to help capture a little more body from the piccolo snare.

The drummer, Ben, was using a shallow piccolo-style snare. These can sometimes sound great, but I find it can be a real struggle to get enough body out of such drums when recording. With this in mind, I used a Beyerdynamic M201 hypercardioid dynamic mic on the snare’s batter head. The M201 tends to sound a little darker and more full-bodied to me than the ubiquitous Shure SM57. When used in conjunction with an AKG C414 placed beneath the snare, I was able to capture what natural fullness was possible from this particular drum. With the overheads, kick and snare mics in place, and a good workable drum sound coming through the speakers, I quickly positioned some optional close tom mics, checked for line and level, and moved on.

...I Expect You To DI!

Without wishing to demean in any way the importance of its role, the bass guitar is one element in a band recording that can be very quick to record without any compromise — a good-quality DI box (I use passive ones made by Radial) will do the job perfectly well. In fact, if you have the luxury of a nice preamp and a touch of good outboard compression, DI’ing can be the best option for capturing this instrument, regardless of the available time. For heavier styles of music, a good bass amp growling away can be a real asset, but for this session that was not essential — and in any case, you always have the option of re-amping if the player is concerned about the recorded DI tone.

The setup of the instrument is also hugely important, and one point of interest from this session was that the bass player, Conrad, had stuffed a small piece of foam beneath the bridge of his bass guitar. I’ve known a few bassists use this technique, the idea being that it gives you a slightly drier bass sound and tightens up the sustain on busier bass lines in particular. He was using flat-wound strings too, and played well; it sounded great!

Guitars

For the two guitarists, I wanted to minimise the bleed from the drums to give me more options at mixdown, so I looked to find a spot outside of the main recording room, in which I could position the two amps and their mics and run the cables back into the live room. I normally don’t like running guitar leads over long distances without some kind of device that ensures the tone isn’t compromised. I have a Little Labs STD box which was designed for this, but it was out of action for this session thanks to a guitarist recently stepping on and terminally breaking the jack connector! Fortunately, the corridor which runs outside the live room has quite a nice natural acoustic, and I thought this might give me the separation I craved, without requiring over-long instrument cables. I positioned the two amps fairly close together in the corridor, with a spare acoustic panel between them to provide a little separation.

The two guitar cabs were placed in a corridor outside the main recording room and separated by a baffle. Each was then close-miked, using a Sennheiser MD509 dynamic mic on the Vox cab and an interesting mid-rangey RCA ribbon mic on the Ampeg.The two guitar cabs were placed in a corridor outside the main recording room and separated by a baffle. Each was then close-miked, using a Sennheiser MD509 dynamic mic on the Vox cab and an interesting mid-rangey RCA ribbon mic on the Ampeg.

I wanted two mics that would create a little contrast between the two guitarists’ sounds, and I settled on a Sennheiser MD501 hypercardioid dynamic mic on what was mainly a rhythm guitar, and a slightly more left-field choice of an RCA BK5B ribbon mic for the lead. The BK5B was one of my little nods to a more retro sound; it has quite an unusual (but very definitely cool-sounding) frequency response that worked well for the lead guitar parts. It’s an unusual ribbon mic with a cardioid polar pattern, which was reportedly designed, in part, to capture shotgun blasts for film sound — which means it’s perfectly at home sitting in front of a loud guitar cab!

Session Notes

By now, I was about an hour and twenty minutes into the session and had the band pretty much all ready to go. I like to have rough targets in mind for where I want to have got to by certain points in sessions such as this, and the main one here was that I wanted to be able to hit record no later than two hours after the band had arrived. This would leave an hour or so to get the backing tracks down, an hour for some no-nonsense lead and backing vocal overdubs, and an hour to do any final touches, allow for overruns and maybe do a rough mix of sorts if I had enough time. I felt, then, that I was in a pretty good place and allowed myself a further 20 minutes or so to put a room mic up for the drums, fine-tune the position of the tom mics and make sure the guitarists were happy with the sounds coming though the speakers in the control room.

Vocals

All members of the band were keen to have some of the singer’s vocal playing in their cans whilst they laid down the main backing tracks. As the vocalist was also the guitarist — meaning his vocal mic would pick up everything in the room — this did complicate things a touch! I have the option of setting a singer-guitarist up in the control room at the studio, but although there’s a large window looking upon the live room, this inevitably leads to a certain amount of detachment... and that kind of defeats the objective of a live recording session! After a little discussion, we settled on leaving the singer in the room but positioned as far away as was practical from the drums. This would only be a guide vocal, and an SM58 positioned so the singer could get right against the grille provided just enough vocal to be heard in the headphones. After checking there was no problematic vocal spill going into the drum mics I was happy that this was working well, and it offered the bonus of providing a convenient talkback mic for the musicians who weren’t near the drum mics!

The lead vocalist was able to sing a guide vocal part while the band played, via an SM58 positioned well away from the drum kit, to avoid the voice being picked up by the overheads. The parts on the final recording were overdubbed with two mics, one an obvious choice, the other a wildcard one, to give two tonal options in the minimum of time.The lead vocalist was able to sing a guide vocal part while the band played, via an SM58 positioned well away from the drum kit, to avoid the voice being picked up by the overheads. The parts on the final recording were overdubbed with two mics, one an obvious choice, the other a wildcard one, to give two tonal options in the minimum of time.

When the time came to overdub the final lead vocals, it was important that I discuss with the singer and band how we would approach them. I could tell from the guide tracks that the singer, Jamie, was pretty confident, so I explained that we only had enough time to do two full takes for each song and a pass or two of some group backing vocals. There was no time to mess around matching a vocal chain to the singer or anything like that so, after preparing a makeshift vocal area, I put up my trusty Neumann U87 with shockmount and pop-shield — but, as a little wildcard option, I decided also to move that RCA BK5B into place, so there’d actually be two mics recording the vocalist. As it was already plugged in, there was no time penalty in doing that, and I thought it would be interesting to find out how it worked on vocals, so why not? Well, the BK5B certainly made the vocal sound retro and it was a nice combination with the U87. It’s something I might look to do more often: pair a nice, safe-choice large-diaphragm condenser mic with something a whole lot more quirky and interesting! In the cold light of day, you often end up not using this stuff, but sometimes it can help create a really unique and inspiring sound.

Session Notes

Wrapping Things Up

The vocal performances passed off pretty smoothly, and I was able to comp a more than passable lead vocal from a couple of takes of each song fairly quickly. We then captured some group backing vocals, with the band arranged around one mic — it was a really nice, fun way to round off this quick session.

Our five hours was up at this point. It was a mid-week daytime session and everyone had to dash off for school runs and other commitments — not very rock & roll, perhaps, but very real-life! There wasn’t any time to do a rough mix for the band but I assured them that I would get some mixes over to them in the next day or two. I try to be a bit more careful about handing out rough mixes these days than I used to be, as I’ve had a few unnerving experiences where people have put unfinished stuff up online, or taken what you’ve given them as too much of an indication of the finished product. You have to decide your own policies on things like this, but you must look after your reputation at all costs, especially when you’re starting out. Even with these quick sessions, the days of sending people home with a CD at the end of a tracking session are not really the norm any more, and I find the majority of people I work with are more than happy for you to email them a high-quality MP3 reasonably soon after the session has finished and then decide how they want to proceed.

How Retro To Go?

A few of the plug-ins used to put the finishing touches to this track: the Spring Reverb and Tube Delay plug-ins by Softube helped give a  retro feel to the final mix; the effects return for the guitars was EQ’d and compressed to make them seem louder in the mix without ‘muddying’ things up; and saturation was used on the main vocal effect, to help remove a  little of the ‘sheen’ that didn’t seem to suit the song.A few of the plug-ins used to put the finishing touches to this track: the Spring Reverb and Tube Delay plug-ins by Softube helped give a retro feel to the final mix; the effects return for the guitars was EQ’d and compressed to make them seem louder in the mix without ‘muddying’ things up; and saturation was used on the main vocal effect, to help remove a little of the ‘sheen’ that didn’t seem to suit the song.

When it came to mixing, I kept things fairly simple and I concerned myself primarily with striking a good balance. That said, I wanted to add a few touches that would leave the track with a hint of authentic retro about it. After playing around with a few effect options, I discovered that Softube’s Spring Reverb plug-in was a nice means of achieving the desired vibe, and combined this with a short slap-style delay to help the vocals sit in a nice way in the track. Having configured this as a send effect, I also fed a little of some other elements to it, like the snare drum, which helped the effect feel a little more coherent. There’s a nice old mix trick you can also do when you have two guitars which involves panning the guitars wide to either side and then panning the guitars reverb/echo return to its opposite side. It can sound lovely, and allows you to pan the parts to leave space in the middle, without everything sounding over-separated. I also EQ’d and compressed (in that order) the effect returns for the guitars, so I could have the reverbs quite loud without muddying things up too much.

My final job was a little mastering. For more involved mixes, I’ll often use a dedicated mastering engineer, but it’s something I typically do myself quite simply for a quick session such as this. It’s not something you can do by numbers, though, and a few of my normal techniques seemed wrong here — it certainly felt silly to over compress a version of a song from the 1950s! Still, bearing in mind the brief from the band about this being for their web site, and the fact that some of the existing tracks on their site were pretty darned loud, I found a point where I felt it was sufficiently ‘competitive’ without being unsympathetic to the genre.

Conclusions

The type of session I’ve described here is one that’s fairly common in my studio. Success depends on striking the right balance between, on the one hand, not compromising in terms of engineering and artistry and, on the other, making the project viable from a business point of view. It’s harder than ever to get people to pay good money to come into a commercial studio these days, and it literally pays to be able to work quickly. But even if money isn’t a concern, hopefully this session will have sparked a few ideas that will help you cope with the stress and pressure of setting up for a session. Every aspect of a recording is important, of course, and all those little extras can often add up to transform a recording from one that’s ordinary to something exciting. But you still have to get the basics right, and when time is of the essence, those basics can take you an awfully long way towards a successful result. Get those in the bag, and you might still find yourself with enough time for some more interesting experimentation!

Hear The Flying Aces

The Flying Aces are an Americana-inspired rock & roll function band from Cambridgeshire, featuring Jamie on vocals, Matt on lead guitar, Conrad on bass and Ben behind the drum kit. They primarily play covers from the ’50s and ’60s, with a modern twist and exceptional hair. The band have a number of tracks on their web site — the two recorded in this month’s session are ‘I Got A Woman’ and ‘You Really Got A Hold On Me’.

www.theflyingacesband.com

Session Management

Assuming that there has been no pre-production of any kind, I always like to spend at least a few minutes just sitting and talking with the band before we start setting up their gear. There are a few reasons why this is a good idea, the first being that you can very quickly find out if there is a natural leader in the group and which members are more passive — the leader is not always the singer or songwriter. Asking the band where they’d like to be at the end of the session helps focus minds, and it’s an opportunity to ascertain if certain band members have a strong sense of how their particular instrument should sound in their heads.

Another simple thing that I always do is to write down everyone’s name on my setup notes — it’s easy to forget details like that, and it helps build a good working environment to be able to confidently address people by their name. It’s important also to not just disappear into your own bubble once you begin the setup as, whilst time might be flying by for you, it can be an energy-sapping period for the band. Talk to people whilst you’re working, ask questions about the band, or take an interest in their pedal board or kick pedal — generally try to do what you can to keep the energy levels and engagement up in the room.

These kinds of people skills come with experience, of course, but they’re so important and something every engineer should work on at least as much as their recording technique. You have to develop your own style, naturally, but it’s almost certainly not a coincidence that most of the successful engineers and producers I have met or worked with have been extremely affable and engaging people to be around!