Tomorrow, 21/11/2016, I will begin the recording process of this project. I will be recording drums at Insonic Studios in Lincoln. I was actually recommended this studio by my tutor, Lee Gretton, who told me about a room they had which might be able to capture some room ambience which may allow me to replicate the drum sound of Absolution. This corresponds to LO3, which is to replicate spaces and reverbs used by Rich Costey on Absolution. The original plan was to record drums in the University Multitrack, however it soon became quite apparent that such a drum sound wouldn’t be possible in this studio without post-recording processing and using convolution reverb, rather than capturing the natural sound of the room. For more on Muse’s drum sound see my post entitled ‘Absolution drum sound’.

The plan for tomorrow is to close-mic the kit as normal but pay particular attention to the sound of the overheads. I plan to find a great overhead sound before I even think about adding mics to the actual drums, as this will be hugely important in capturing the ‘liveness’ of the room. There will also be a room mic, which I hope will capture a sound that I’ll be able to use in mixing. While often room mic recordings aren’t used, I aim to pay particular attention to it in order to capture the sound of the room as well as possible. The owner of Insonic, Gary, has suggested I try placing the room mic in the corridor outside of the room. I will experiment with this.

I have given myself and the drummer 7 hours in which to do the recording, which I hope means that I will have ample time to make sure that the kit sounds nice, and that the microphones are set up correctly.

Attached below is an image of my MAP form for tomorrow