DMAT Production Lab

Surprisingly most of what I was penalised for during the exam was being out of time, out of tune and also the clarity of the lyrics. I guess cause I was the songwriter, the lyrics were audible to me,especially since I knew all the lines. But what I should've done was let another person outside of my project hear it in order to check. Although it did occur to me that it was out of time and I was ready to get penalised for that. It also never really occurred to me that it was out of tune too until someone else pointed it out of me. So I guess its pretty important to get the feedback of a third person party to assess the parts of the song which I was penalised for. I'm most surprised that the most quiet people received the best marks. Which Leon commented that they were more observant.

I had booked 2 slots to record the different instruments and vocals for this week and I thought it went pretty smoothly as compared to the recording for demo 2. Not only that I managed to experiment with the different microphones and what sounded good to me and for the recording. During this period I used the AT 4021 for the cajon since in my mind it was like ' okay, this mic was used for drums so I guess it'll apply to other percussion instruments'. Though I had an issure where the snare of the cajon wasn't that audible and surprisingly enough I found that the AT-4081, which a fellow classmate had used, was able to clearly pick up the snare sound together with the bass which sent this vibration to the chest. I also ended up using the ribbon mic to record the male vocals because it was more clearer to me as compared to the MD 421-II and also the MD 421-II was too warm. Instead I used the MD 421-II for the guitar to attain that effect. Would have loved to use the AKG P42...

I spent majority of my time this week recording for other people while at the same time taking note of what I wanted in my recordings. I took the opportunity to hear the different microphones used and what effect it had on what was recorded. From what I saw the SM57 was pretty popular when it came to recording amps, most particularly to the electric guitar amps like the Marshall amp. Though once saw it used for the cajon. Other condenser microphones which were mostly used for vocals were the AKG Perception 420, Sennheiser MD 421-II, SM58. For the drums would be the AT 4021. I didn't get to experiment with these different microphones since it wasn't my session but at least I was able to take note of what my most likely options were. From what I heard all of them sounded pretty decent in recording but features like ' bright' , 'warm' , 'vinyl' all varied on what kind of equipment used so it gave me a general idea of what I could use for my recording.