The Making Of A Song
Gallery Of Souls is back in the studio in early 2003, recording seven new songs that we hope you will enjoy. we thought we'd give you a peek at our recording process as we go rough the various stages of recording one of our new songs - sort of a behind-the-scenes look at what typically goes on when recording a pop/rock song. If you are interested in the recording process including overdubbing, microphone use, recording equipment, setup, etc. then pop in from time to time and see how things are going. This page, which will be constantly under construction until our recording project is finished, will feature pictures, technical details, and maybe even some sound bytes taken at various stages as the recording progresses. If you have questions for any of us, please drop us a line via email or sign the guest book. Enjoy.

This project will be broken into 4 Steps:

Step 1. Record the drum tracks
Step 2. Overdubbing
Step 3. Mixing (or mixdown)
Step 4. Mastering

 



Step 1. Recording the drum tracks

Our intent is to record good drum parts first, along with temporary, expendable "scratch tracks" for bass, guitars and lead vocal, then later go back and re-record (overdub) those scratch tracks, putting them into their final (good) form. While in a commercial recording studio there is enough sound isolation to prevent loud guitar amplifier sounds from bleeding into the drum microphones (and onto the recorded drum tracks) to allow for simultaneous recording of all those parts, in a home or project studio this is not usually the case. This forces us to initially record bass and guitars using a direct electrical connection to the recorder instead of using regular amplifiers with speakers. This way, the drum tracks will contain only drum sounds.

As for the drums themselves, new heads are usually installed prior to a recording session. Care is taken to get them tuned up and adjusted so that they sound musical and don't contain any annoying rattles or buzzes. once the drums sound good acoustically, microphones are placed to get them sounding good, then the whole band plays together to inspire a great drum performance.

 

This is a shot of chief engineer, guitar player, and song writer Nate Hartmann at the helm. Many hours of prep work wiring the equipment, running cable, setting up microphones, and making preliminary adjustments are necessary before the first note is even played.
This is a nice overhead shot of the drum set up. We're using 11 mics on the drums - 2 overhead (left and right), 1 each for the kick (bass drum) and hi-hat, 1 for each of the 5 toms and 2 on the snare (top and bottom). The overhead, kick and hi-hat mic signals are recorded onto individual tracks on the multi-track recorder. Note the broken stick pile behind Mike.

Mike plays drums in another room while Nate, Bobby, and Jim, lay down scratch tracks. This helps Mike to keep track of the form of the tune and play the dynamics. Laying down drum tracks with no instruments or vocals would be very difficult to do.
 

 
The 2 snare mics signals are first added (mixed) together, adjusting the amount of each signal to produce the desired overall snare drum sound, then sent as a composite signal to one track on the recorder. The mic cable on the bottom snare mic is intentionally wired "backwards" because that mic receives the opposite snare sound compared to the what the mic on top of the snare drum receives. (When the drum head is moving downward, the sound pressure at the top mic is decreasing while the sound pressure on the bottom mic is increasing.) This backwards wiring, or "phase reversal", ensures that the two snare mic signals reinforce each other ("in phase") instead of subtract from each other; it is reversing the phase of a signal that is already reversed, in a sense.

The 5 tom mic signals are also mixed together prior to being sent to the recorder, but this time they are sent to the recorder as a group in a stereo submix; that is, each mic signal is adjusted for volume and also is panned (placed somewhere between full left and full right) so that it ends up on 2 tape tracks, the particular level recorded on either track determined by how far "left" or "right" the signal was panned. This will allow each tom to have its own place in the left/right stereo soundfield when the whole song is eventually mixed into the final stereo format.

Doing these snare and tom submixes also frees up tape tracks for other instruments - instead of using 11 tape tracks for the drums, we are using a total of 7.

 
Bobby beefs up the rhythm guitar before laying down solos on another track. Mike from the front of the tubs. Scratch tracks are being played in another room by Bob, Jim, and Nate.
Jim lays down lead vocals on one of his songs. Nate finesses his 12-string.