La Bête Blooms Bass Recording Techniques

As previously stated, the bass guitar was originally recorded directly through a Sansamp bass driver DI. The intention of this was to A; create a ghost track and B; ensure the performance of the drummer seemed as natural as possible, essentially guiding the drummers performance.

It was agreed that the bass would be re-recorded as the Sansamp added too much colouration to the D.I. signal.

I again referred to the techniques employed by Steve Albini (Tingen, 2005) to inform my microphone choices when recording bass guitar.

Albini states that his preferred microphone choices for recording bass are;

• EV RE20
• Josephson C42
• Audio-Technica Pro 37R
• AKG 451
• Altec 165/175

Out of the above choices, the only two microphones currently available to me are the EV RE20 and the AKG 451. It is evident why both of the microphones are particularly effective when recording the bass guitar when one again refers to their frequency responses. 

EV RE20 (Electro Voice, 2016) 

AKG c451 (AKG, 2016) 

When placed at 0 degrees to the sound source, the EV RE20 has a very balanced low end response from 70-150 Hz, ideal for recording the fundamental frequencies omitted by the bass guitar. The high end response is especially uneven in comparison, this is where the AKG c451 is of particular use, the mid and high end is much more balanced, with a smooth curve and boost beginning at 5kHz and rolling off around 15kHz. This will allow the AKG c451 to pick up the finer details such as string noise/rattle adding more depth to the overall sound of the bass guitar.   

La Bête Blooms Drums and Bass Recording Approach

My practices carried out whilst recording La Bête Blooms will be informed by the practices of both Steve Albini, and Butch Vig.

Both engineers prefer to take a live approach to recording, However I feel that it would be quite difficult to minimise bleed/spill from individual microphones given the size of the college studio. 

In the aforementioned article regarding Steve Albini, he states; 

I prefer to record as much of the band in one live take as possible. If you do it any other way, the band is forced into an unnatural situation from the very beginning of the process. They play together in the rehearsal room and on stage, so it seems normal to me that they also play together when they come into the studio. With 90 percent of the records I do, the singing is recorded after the band, unless the singing is what leads the band (Tingen, 2005) 

Taking this into consideration, I have decided to take a live approach when recording bass and drums, recording both together to a click track with the drummer in the live room, and the bass player in the control room running through a Sansamp straight into the desk as a ghost track. The remaining elements such as the bass, guitar and vocals will be overdubbed using a multi-track approach to achieve more flexibility with the overall sound.