It has been another great week at Progressive Enterprises Recording Studio for IIM Rockers bands. Four of our bands have now completed recording the drum tracks for the three songs that each band chose for inclusion on this year’s compilation CD.
Wingspan and This Band Has No Name completed their drum tracks last week. Black Bandits and Orbit got theirs done this week. All four bands had done extensive preparations during their rehearsal times to get ready for this pivotal experience. That work showed in how quickly they were able to complete this part of their recordings.
The way recordings are made in a studio begins with careful placement of microphones. For IIM, this job is done by studio engineering students working with Jay Kirssin. For drums, this can be a time consuming process of choosing the correct type of mic, placed at exactly the correct location near a particular drum or cymbal.
The sounds coming from each drum, or area of the drum kit, are recorded on separate tracks in order to give the recording engineer the flexibility to control the individual volume of that sound, as well as the ability to add a vast array of effects to each track. All this is done in the mixing phase, which happens at the end of the recording process.
Although capturing the drums has been the main focus of the past two weeks’ recording, the rest of the members of each band have been involved as well. During their last few rehearsals, everyone worked with Wade and Jay to review charts notating the sections of each song, in order to make sure that all the tracks will align properly. Once they were in the studio, they all played simultaneously, as each instrument or vocal part was recorded on separate tracks.
During the coming weeks, students will have the chance to return to the studio and redo their individual track recordings, before final mixing takes place later in the semester. The last of the drum tracks will be done next week, as The Anonymous Penguins and The Bucket Brigade, Wade’s Drum Ensemble, get their time to record.