Yesterday we recorded some of the guitar parts for the album. It was really nice because the guitar player who came in knows music very well as opposed to some of the other musicians who were good at their instrument, but didn’t know music very well. This made for an extremely easy and quick day yesterday. We were able to lay down a rough take for three of the four songs. I have found that recording rough tracks first can be a very helpful way to record because, even though it may take more effort and time in the begining. It helps us to better visualize what that particular instrument is going to say in the song and strain out any bad ideas that don’t really fit in the mix. In some cases, such as yesterday, we can even use some parts from the rough in the finished product. We have also been experimenting with different micing technics to get different sounds from the instruments. For example, last week we used an XY pattern which I learned at TBeats for micing the piano. The XY pattern is when you cross two microphones to make an X shape. This gives you a stereo field. When we recorded guitar, I used a Shure SM58 dynamic microphone on one end of the amplifier cone, and a Rode NT1-A condenser microphone on the other end of the amplifier cone. The combination of the crisper and cleaner SM58 with the heavier and thicker NT1-A worked very nicely.
