Gimme Shelter Recording Project - Rhythm & Guitar Recording
I organised the first recording session, aiming to track the guitars through. For this session I booked an afternoon slot of the Tascam mixing console / studio. For the rhythm guitar Luke brought his Telecaster, fitting with the equipment used on the original record, and with this being the driving riff track in the piece we sent the signal through to the live-room via the tieline in at the patch bay, out to a Vox amp which was set to add some distortion and drive to the guitar.
I was aiming for a somewhat thin but driven tone from the guitars, this came into consideration when placing the mics on the rhythm amp, I used two the SM57s and positioned one in the centre of the right cone within the amp and one on the rim of the left cone to achieve this, these were then sent back via the stagebox to input 9-10 on the desk, pre-gain was set to an adequate amount on both mics to ensure the signal between was even and not lopsided, as these signals would both be played back together, with adjusting the balance I shifted aspects of the tone until I was satisfied with the result prior to recording. This signal came in on layer 1, with the signal routed into Pro Tools to be recorded on the tracks setup via the output routing matrix, and then returned to layer 2 from the DAW and to the stereo mix for playback.
With the rhythm set-up, the lead came next with Das using his Stratocaster, this went straight into the patch-bay as DI to the desks line inputs, the reason I decided on not use an amp on this guitar was to keep the signal thin and able to still pierce through the mix, I believe a amped recording may have introduced extra unwanted buzz or distortion which I wanted to minimise on this track being the clean lead. The signal going into the patchbay DI line then also came into layer 1 on the desk, was sent via the output routing matrix to protools to be recorded, and then back again to layer 2 for playback.
With tracks armed, we started the recording stage with the lead lines done by Das, played to the scratch tracks outputting through the desks playback layer 2 on faders 1-3 (including click) both staying in the control room at this point for the communication, I recorded several takes of Das playing through until we then swapped and Luke played to the scratch with lead, tracking the rhythm took only a couple takes, then they switched back and Das recorded some final solo and flair lines. The takes got stored in playlists within pro tools, the rhythm consisting of two tracks (one for each mic) and the lead consisting in the end of around 4 of the lines tracked in the take playlist.
These were all tracked into the ProTools 48k Recording Session as the desk required the 48k files for proper operation.
With the guitars recording stage complete, I recorded the bassline with Dan. This went through as DI as similarly with the lead line, the bass needed to be both clean and solid to anchor the guitars and contrast against their thinner and gritty sound. The bass was double tracked from the recording, this was done by sending the signal from the bass into the 6-track where the mono signal from the bass was sent to the stereo mix out into the interface as two L&R channels, where finally it came out in the DAW as the two channels, this was done so that one signal could then be compressed while still keeping the dynamics pushing through on the uncompressed track. This led to the tight low-end I was aiming for which would sit at a consistent level through the track whilst still allowing the groove and punch through.
With the guitars and bass recorded, I then planned the drum session. For this session I booked out the audient desk & live room as I wanted to use the analogue desk for the drums. I used the 48k recording Pro tools session, and loaded in and outputted the scratch drums / piano tracks along with the guitars and bass outputting to their relevant channels on the desk. I brought the drum kit through to the live room and assembled it myself, I then positioned all the mic stands how I wanted them whilst I waited for access to the mics and breakables.
The stands for the final mic placement consisted of an overhead XY stereo pair using the SF300Bs horizontal to the kit (above the centre of the kick drum, with X mic pointing to the crash and Y mic pointing at the ride with the 90 degrees maintained at the diaphragms). The kick stand was positioned around a foot away from the front of the kick drum with the D12 in place, the snare and hi-hat mics were placed up close to the skin and cymbal, using the chair in a fixed spot during the placing I aimed each arm of the mic stands at the centre of the stool so that their was a central point of focus for all the spot-mics, this was also followed with the floor tom mic, which was a C2000B condenser. These SM57s on the snare and hihat were used to replicate the classic rock sound, as this dynamic microphone has been notoriously used on such records I figured it wouldn’t be suitable to use any other type. For the floor tom mic I could’ve also used a dynamic, however opted for the condenser as I wanted it to be much more of an open sound in the recording in comparison to the somewhat boxy sound of sm57, this ensured the toms energetic low / high frequencies were captured and came through.
With the mics placed and the breakables installed, the mics were plugged into the stage-box according to the plan, these respectively then came through to the short faders on the desk, where along with the pre-gains I balanced and set the levels for the kit while Dom played some riffs and fills at around the level the final tracking would be done at. The tracks were then sent to the DAW with same input output settings so that each would return to each relevant long-fader, other than the overheads which being the only stereo pair were interleaved within the DAW before being sent back to the long faders.
With the kit set for recording, I prepared the Qmix / foldback for Dom to play to, using the aux sends to set the levels for the mix which consisted of the guitars / bass / piano / click and quite scratch drums for a guide. This Qmix then was sent via tieline to headphones in the live room. Once the desk and kit were set we started the tracking process, recording several takes through, with alterations within each for variance when it came back to the editing process.
