Recording a band

Below is a step by step guide of how to record a band in the bonnington studio. Assuming that the instrument(s) and or singer have been miced up we can begin...

• Open a session in Pro Tools and save it in the required location.
• Create track - as many as microphones are input in the rooms.
• Create a stereo track, this will be our master fader.
• Set all tracks on the mixer to 'MIC' input and set the gains to zero.
• Record and enable the tracks.
• Find levels of the mics and adjust the gain accordingly until the sound coming in turns into a light orange, this way we have a little bit of room for a louder sound coming through without it clipping and distorting.
• To set up the headphonnes for a headphone mix we need to look at the light grey area on the mix window and click on the arrows go to 'INTERFACE' - then headphone send left. Make sure to set them to 'PRE' and then put the faders to zero. (Alt-click the fader)
• On the Octopri the inputs need to be selected to mono, these will light up orange when pressed.
• Press 'SEND B' then 'FLIP' on the mixing desk to shift the desk function to the headphone setup - the faders can be adjusted accoringly here.
• To adjust the output level on the headphones in the stuio then simply change the output level on the octopri.
• The people in the studio room can chack out the headphone levels by putting the headphone jack in the 'HEADPHONE OUT' on the octopri .
• If the vocals is going to be recorded over the song, they will want to hear the song when they will be recorded. To do this the vocal track on the record window on Pro Tools will need to be set to 'INPUT ONLY MONITORING' this is the 'I' near the track name.
• For the use of a keyboard in the Live Room two DI boxes can be used (left and right channels) to set up this for Pro Tools we will need to Aux Tracks.
• If Phantom power is ever needed through the Octopri the clicking the +48v will give the microphone the power.
• When wanting to talk back to the band at any time in the Live Room the 'TALK BACK MIC LEVEL' knob and the 'MONITOR TO AUX' knob should be turned up accordingly.

Good things to know...

• TDM plug-ins use the computers hardware and R-TAS use external hardware(e.g. an M-Box) this is useful to know if the computer is starting to run slowly.
• A guitar can also be recorded in the Studio Room if the jack is inserted in the Octopri and the 'INSTRUMENT' button is enabled. The input on ProTools should be set up for this also e.g. B1
• 414's are good for multiple vocal inputs at the smae time - once set to omni.