RECORDING PRODUCTION

Money - Pink Floyd 

THE RECORDING

The recording took place at one of the studios in SAE institute. The desk available there is an SSL g+ 4000.

Money is quite a simple song, it is basically drums, guitar, bass, keyboards and vocals.

VOCALS: The c414 fitted perfectly with the vocals, It was basically set as cardioid in order to get a direct sound and nothing from behind or sides.

DRUMS: 9 microphones were used to record the drums. For the kick drum the best choice was the AKG 112, Two for the snare BETA 57 on the top and SHURE M57 for the bottom. tom 1 and floor tom would use a pair of SENHAISER MD421, as overheads a couple of  AKG SE 300B, using space pair stereo technique, two  SHURE KSM 541 were used as room mics, placed about 3 meters away from the drums using XY stereo technique. 

 

















BASS: The bass was simply plugged into the preamplifier ( SPL 2485 GoldMike), the results were good, the sound was clear and without any noise.

GUITAR: Two microphones were used to capture the sound of the amplifier. The SM57 placed very close to the cone would provide a thick sound; and a c414 with a polar pattern of figure of eight that provided a fuller frequency spectrum and some room.

Another guitar was recorded latter on, using a cone in front of the amp covering the whole output of the amplifier.

KEYBOARD: It was simply connected stereo to the Gold Mic preamplifier and routed to the desk.

MIXING

The recording and mixing were done on pro tools, all the processors and effects were done in the box. Most of the plug-ins are the standard ones; this would make things easier when it comes to open the pro tools session in another computer.

DRUMS: Dynamics were applied to everything, specially for the kick drum, snare and toms. EQ was also necessary, HPs for the overheads and the room mics. Some reverb was added to the snare and a bit to the toms.

GUITAR: High pass filter was necessary for all the guitar tracks, also reverb and some delay. No much processing will be needed for the guitar recorded with the cone; its sound does not have low frequencies that can get confused with others from the other instruments, and also in order to keep the original sound that the cone delivers.

BASS: Compression helped to accentuate the notes and also to keep a steady sound. A cut off for the low frequencies would also help to avoid any masking with the kick drum.

KEYBOARD: not much was done for the keyboard after it was recorded. The two electric piano sounds used in the song were modified before recording, so there was not need of editing it again.

VOCALS: As the song has only one main vocal with not harmonics with backing vocals, the main vocal was recorded 3 times, It will be in the center of the mix, the other 2 are simply doubling the main one and will be panned to both sides, with a bit of volume, just in order to give some sort of doubling effect to the main vocal line.

MASTERING

Three plug-ins were used for mastering; firstly, the LinEQ Broadband from waves was a convenient equalizer for the mix, as it gently modifies the frequency ranges. Using a sound field imager also helps to widen the 3D spectrum, especially for the sides. Finally a multiband limiter/compressor would increase the volume of the mix and slightly compress it. (L316 from waves)