Recording - February 2017 - 36

R e d e m p t i o n S o ng s
TAKING RECORDINGS TO CHURCH-AGAIN

Congregating technologies

Now that the tools and working method were set, it was
time to address the workflow issues that all of these decisions
and technical idiosyncrasies presented. Foremost was the
fact that these tracks would not be created in the project's
native format, that of PreSonus' Studio One DAW. We'd be
recording vocal takes to unchangeable rough instrumental
mixes of all of the album's 15 songs, scattered across three
different VS-880 units.
Some of this was for reasons of data economy. I chose to record
these takes in the VS-880's Master Mode, uncompressed at a 48
kHz sample rate (which matches the original
Studio One files, so importing them would
be cleaner). By today's standards, the
VS-880 has very little hard disk space to
accommodate these recordings.
This seemed like a pretty solid plan,
with what looked to be a great-sounding
signal chain, but it presented two immediate
challenges. First was that there was no
all-digital signal path; my PreSonus
StudioLive 16.0.2 digital mixer/audio
interface doesn't have a S/PDIF digital
input, so I couldn't digitally sync the
computer to the VS-880s.
That brought me to hurdle number
two, which was how to get the remotely recorded vocals to match up exactly with the other tracks once I did get
them back into Studio One. The trick was
to make sure to include the drummer's sticks
and count-in at the top of each song, so
I'd have a nice, clean little transient in the
waveform to home in on and visually sync
up to the original drum tracks later, placing
the vocal exactly where it should be.
There's no drag-and-drop song loading
into the VS-880, so my stereo backing
submixes for the first six songs had to
be recorded one at a time into the VS-880 from Studio One
in real time, in alphabetical order, and named accordingly to
prevent later confusion. (I then did the same for tracks 7-12
on the second unit and 13-15 on the third.) These submixes
took up tracks 1 and 2 out of 8 for each song, A strip of PostIt Labeling Tape along the bottom of the VS-880, under the
faders, let me label everything clearly.
The tricky part of this strategy was that I would need a pair
of virtual tracks for every vocal take, which meant that every
take required twice as much disk space and that averaged
out to just four 'keeper' takes for each song. Considering this
would have to include any spontaneous inspirations like back36

RECORDING FEBRUARY 2017

ing vocal ideas, handclaps and shouts, I figured that I should
only count on coming back home with a maximum of three
takes for each song.
I accomplished this by utilizing the VS-880's Virtual Tracks
feature. Within each of that unit's 8 tracks is the ability to record 8 separate takes. On V-Tracks 1 through 3 for Track 7
of each song, for instance, I recorded the close-miked vocal,
while V-Tracks 1-3 for Track 8 captured the same performance
from the room mic's perspective. This usage of Tracks 1-2 and
7-8 also remained consistent throughout.

Revelations

Game day: I packed up the mics, preamps, and every kind of interconnect
that I could think of. This included three
40' XLR cables that I had custom-made
to provide the best signal over such
a long (by audio cable standards) distance. I also brought along a my favorite
Sennheiser HD280 Pro and AKG K240
headphones and a Behringer HA4600
headphone amplifier for monitoring, several extension cords, some solid yet portable mic stands... and in one last grasp
at the concept of "safety first", I added
my Electro-Voice RE20 large-diaphragm
dynamic mic to the pile, just in case we
really needed to take the room out of the
close vocal microphone!
I got myself to the church on time and
started staking out the areas we would
need to use. Obviously, I wanted to first
set up the vocal mic as close as possible to
the spot where David felt most comfortable
performing. Then I found an area near
the organ that provided all the power
sources and working surface I would
require, about 30 feet away from
the vocals. I set up the headphones and
played the mixes through them to get levels and a feel for
the space.
I then turned my attention to the room. Where was I going to set
this one microphone that would perfectly portray the essence of
this space, while working to support the sound of the close vocal
mic? As David warmed up by singing along to the mixes, I walked
to my best guesses for locating the mic and listened to each.
The back center of the room sounded full, but a bit boomy
below 150 Hz. The back corners were clearer, but lacked body
and exhibited excessive sibilance. The corners of the dais sounded quite well-balanced, but simply too close. Finally I found
a spot in the center, about four pews away, that captured the

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Recording - February 2017