AA1 Week 3 (week 2 assignment)

Nathan and i booked the studio for 3 hours in a row so we could do more than simply set up, get a signal and then pack down again. So we decided to play around with a few things. Nathan brought his bass amp and bass guitar, so we decided to mic up the amp in the dead room. Using the Shure 52A, we placed the mic in front of the amp and tested the signal (after the correct procedure of powering up the studio). We got a signal from the microphone in track 2, and tested a recording in Protools, and although there was a very weak signal, it still worked. After playing around with the preamps on the mixer, we found a level where there was max volume and no clipping. And so after all this playing around, we didn't even use the sound from the microphone, we found it too "trebly" for the sound we wanted. We then patched the bass straight into the patch bay alongside the guitar (which had been passed through an effects processor and wah pedal) and again found the optimum level. After finding a funky drum beat on the mac, we recorded a 50 second clip. The main problem that we encountered was using the headphones in the dead room. It took us (i.e. me) a very long time to figure out that the phones level on the mixing desk was different to the control room level. A very obvious thing, but when you don't know what you're looking for, very frustrating.

Overall, a lot of fun and very interesting.
Look at the Studio Quickstart mp3 at the top right of the page.