Artist Bio

Bob Marley was born Robert Nesta Marley on February 6,1945.Bob's early life was spent in rural community of Nine Miles.He moved to Trench Town where Bob Marley found his music talents.A lifelong source of inspiration ,Bob immortalized Trench Town in his songs "No Woman No Cry"(1974),"Trench Town Rock"(1975) and "Trench Town"(1983)
By the early 1960s the island's music industry was beginning to take shape, and its development gave birth to an indigenous popular Jamaican music form called ska. 

"Bob Marley - Turn yout lights down low" was released on 3 June 1977 as a part of "Exodus" albume.
"Bob Marley feat Lauryn Hill - Turn your lights down low" was released in 1999 , the project was made by his daughter in law and she used his old recordings in order to finalise the project.

SOUND RECORDING TECHNIQUES ASSIGNMENT PART I.

INTRODUCTION

The main propose with this project is to get some knowledge about all the process that needs to be done when recording a song. This concerns the correct microphone positions and the different microphone techniques that can be used in order to get the best sound when recording either musical instruments or vocals, as well as the types of microphone that match better with each instrument, voice, ambient room etc.

With this project we also get more familiar with the studio connections, mixing consoles and the way how everything is connected.

Taking in count all this details above, we have to record a song either chosen by ourselves or of our own.


SONG


The song we have chosen is "turn your lights down low by bob marley". The version of the song we used as a guide for the recording was the one by Lauryn Hill.

 

SONG DETAILS

The song was written by Bob Marley and was realised on the album Exodus (1977). Then his father together with Bob's sister-in-law Lauryn Hill, remixed the song, which became famous on the Billboard charts and all over the world with the album "Chant Down Babylon" which was a remixed album made by many hip hop and rock artists, covering some Bob Marley's songs.

GROUP

Our group is conformed by Jade Stepherson, Sebastian Stanciu and Andres Caicedo.

SONG PERFORMING

The main voice and some chorus of the song were recorded by Jade, as she is an amazing singer. The keys, Bass and Acoustic guitar were recorded by me. We also invited some very good musicians who helped us with the drums (Esteban Caicedo) and electric guitar (Al Burgess). 

 

RECORDING PROCESS

Our recording process was done mainly in the basement studio 1. We spent about two studio sessions of 8 hours each on the 27th of February and 6th of march. 

Some of the most difficult parts we found along the session was the setting up of the studio, microphones and hardware equipment such as the mixing console and microphone patchbay as we did not know how to route it throw the general patchbay. We had some problems at the beginning with the signal routing from the mixing console to pro tools as well.

All the problems were sorted out with some help assistance.

Once we were familiarized mainly with the mixing console and the signal going from the console to the DAW, all the recording was quite quick, as the musicians were pretty good and knew the song very well.

Some of the time we spent was on trying different microphone position techniques, and different kinds of microphones for each vocals and musical instruments, all in order to get the best sound quality.

SOME OF THE MICROPHONE TECHNIQUES WE USED

ORTF STEREO

We used this technique on the piano in order to get a wider stereo perception between the low to the high keys. This technique simulates more accurately the human hearing, so we can have the same hearing that the pianist had when he recorded the piano in the song.

The microphones used for this technique were a pair of AKG C414.

SPACED PAIR CARDIOID 

We used this technique for the acoustic guitar, placing one microphone in front of the resonance box of the guitar and the other near the frets, taking care of some phasing cancelations as in this type of microphone position this problem would be very easy to get. In this case, we followed the 3 to 1 rule to make sure we would not have phase problems.

The same technique was used for the over heads when recording drums, as we wanted to have a wider spectrum mainly for the cymbals. When testing the drums, the over heads would give us some phasing problems with some of the drums. So we first tasted the overheads in other to avoid any phase cancellations and then the rest of the microphones.

BASS GUITAR


For the bass guitar recording, we put the amplifier agains the wall in order to have a clearer sound, as the  live room we recorded was very small, and the low frequencies would bounce all aver the room. we used the dynamic  SENNHEISER MD 421 placed between the centre and the edge of the cone in order to get some high frequencies.

 ELECTRIC GUITAR

We used two microphone for the electric guitar. the SENNHEISER MD 421 which was placed near the amplifier cone, and the condenser NEUMANN U67 located a bit farther from the amp, as we wanted to have a cleaner sound with the MD 421 and some ambience and high frequencies with the U67.

 

VOICE RECORDING

As the condenser SE Z3300 is a microphone that can be used for many recording applications, we used it for vocals recording, and the sound was really clean. It is a big advantage when you have the option of High Pass Filter on the mic, so we used it in order to cancel some room noise.

As an over all, the recording was pretty good, and the song sounds great. With the right microphones on the right instruments, and taking care of any phase cancellation problems, which are the most important things we have to take in count when recording, everything is going to be fine. 

The musicians play a very important role in a good finished recording process, as I think it represents a 50 percent of the song quality.

 

When at the end you listen to the song and feel that everything sounds good like if it did not need to be processed and mixed, so you can say that you did a good job as a recording engineer.