So yesterday was eventful.. and successful. I managed to improve my recording skills yesterday by working in a professional recording studio. Myself and the vocalist Smxk3 managed to record vocals for a whole track, which turned out very well! Before yesterday, I didn't have much experience with recording in a professional studio using a mixer, but after being told what to do, it become easier each time we recorded.
The software I used to record the vocals was Pro Tools. Again, it definitely got easier over time. As it was my second time using it, I was still pretty rusty navigating around it.
We began by creating a new project in Pro Tools (making sure the project location was on one of our USB drives). After that, we had to add in a new mono audio track to add in our instrumental.
To do that, in the task bar at the top of the screen, you select; Track -> New -> Then create a mono audio track. Then we dragged our instrumental from the desktop into Pro Tools.
NOTE: When creating the project, it will ask you what sample rate you want to select. Ensure that your instrumentals sample rate is the same as the projects as if not, the track won't play at the correct speed. For example 44.1kHz, 48kHz.
To set the mic up, we had to add another track, and then select the correct input for the mic. Our mic was plugged into Input 1 on our interface, so we changed the input on Pro Tools to input 1.
NOTE: If you are using a condenser microphone, make sure that you have your Phantom Power switched on. This should be on your interface with a 48V logo next to the button
After creating that track, we then armed the mic by clicking the record button in the mixer section. You should be able to see a signal coming through the vocals channel once that has been selected.
We then got the right levels within Pro Tools by adjusting the volume fader, then we went straight into recording. We multiplied the instrumental in Pro Tools so it would play 3 times. By doing this, it allowed us to record the whole length of the track 3 times, so then we could decide which verses to keep etc.
Once we were happy with our recordings, we then exported the vocal stems by highlighting the whole track, then selecting Edit in the taskbar at the top of the screen, then selecting Consolidate Clip. This ensures that all of the stems will be exported to the same length. Once they have exported, the audio files can be found in the same place as you made your project, they will be in the folder 'Audio Files'.
So from this session, I definitely learned a lot about recording, using pro tools, using the mixer, routing etc. It was a successful session for sure!
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