'Take on Me' Recording Plan

'Take on Me' is a synthpop song from 1984. The song has acoustic guitars, keyboards, and synthesizers as the main instruments. This song has a fast tempo of 170 beats per minute. Drums, acoustic guitars and electronic instrumentation are the instruments that make up the backing track. The original track was a length of 3:10 and used the key of A major.

I will need to record drums and guitars and vocals in the studio.
This track will require me to record a keyboard too.

Things I need to record in the studio (in order):

-Drums
-Bass
-Guitar
-Vocals

I will then go on to record the Keyboard.

First session in the studio

I learned something that I should have known about when I was recording in the studio. I found out that headphones going back into the live room go out of the auxiliary's and are then routed to the headphones. So therefore the volume of sounds going into the headphones are controlled by the auxiliary dials on the mixing desk.

I also learned the mic stands we use for the overhead drum microphones need to be tightened so that they don't slowly lean over because they had to be raised up at least three times during the session because they kept resting the drums.

Finally I learned that it is very important to keep the cables tidy because otherwise it is very difficult to distinguish the different microphones.

Pro Tools

When you open Pro Tools you will be greeted with a quick start window. 

The settings for bit depth should be on 24 Bit and the sample rate should be 48 kHz.
When you click ok you will be presented with a blank setup. So the first thing to do is add some tracks to this blank scene.
You have the choice of the type of track, mono/stereo and instrument or audio, and how many tracks you make at once. Instrument is different to audio because it has different midi settings. Let's say we decided to add 8 mono audio tracks to our scene.
You now have the ability to name you tracks. By default they will be 'Audio 1' or similar. They will also most likely not have the correct inputs. So we must assign our inputs to our tracks. There should be an 'I/O' drop down menu on each track. For your first track (for you first trick :D) you should assign input 1 to it. Let's say that input 1 is the kick drum. To avoid confusion of the tracks/inputs name the track Kick drum.
The last thing we should do is set a tempo for our composition. Just above the audio tracks there is a tab called bars and beats. Right click this and tempo should be in the list that appears. Click this and you should be able to set/change the tempo.

Congratulations! You've done it! How exciting. Now go and make music.

Foldback and DI

In brief, foldback is the term used to describe the way of sending a copy of the input signal back out to headphones in the liveroom so that someone playing an instrument can hear, for example, a metronome on a channel.
To get foldback to work you have to send a copy of a channel, for example channel 1, through auxiliary 1. Then on the patch bay you should route aux 1 through to one of the 4 headphone outputs. This will be sent through to the liveroom stage box. From there you connect headphones to hear channel 1. If you wanted a metronome to be sent through you would play a metronome on the mac/pc that is routed into two channels on your mixing desk. Then you would route these channels into aux 1 and the metronome will go through.

DI stands for direct input. This is a device that limits high electrical impedances in the input signal so that it does not damage the mixing desk and other connected devices.
Setting up a direct input is relatively easy. You connect a microphone/electrical instrument to a DI box and this is then connected to the stage box.

Organisation

When recording in the studio it is important to keep things tidy. Not just for safety but also to prevent confusion.

At the beginning of the session
The Live Room
When setting up microphones you should make sure that no microphone stands cross over each other as this can confuse you when coming back to finding out which cable corresponds to which microphone. The stands can also bump each other and this will mean unwanted sounds in the recording.
Cables leading across the room from the microphones to the patch bay should be slightly separated to avoid confusion between the microphones and their corresponding inputs in the patch bay.
The Control Room
The cables coming in from the patch bay to the mixing desk and the desk to the soundcard should be tied together and not twisted. Any headphones/microphones should have their leads neatly leading from their output to their headphones/microphones. This will keep the wires out of the way and will mean one less annoyance to worry about. Any paper/boxes should be kept tidy or removed from the control room if they are not required.

At the end of the session
The Live Room
When you are finished recording for the session it is best to wrap up and store every cable in a neat cupboard or box. Also fold up every microphone stand and place them all together in one area of the studio. The microphones should also be placed back into their cases for safekeeping and to prevent them taking any damage.
The Control Room
When you have finished mixing for the session you should make sure that all headphones and microphones are placed neatly without any trailing cables. Then you should make sure that any other things such as notes or boxes are placed neatly in an organized fashion. Then finally make sure that the chair is positioned ready for the next session.

Signal Path

Drum Mic Placement

Here is a description and diagram of how to setup the microphones for a drum kit.

1 & 2. There should be two condenser microphones just above the edges of the drum kit by about a metre or so. They should be pointing down towards the kit but not facing it directly.

3. This is a condenser mic. The snare drum mic should be placed pointing just inside the edge of the drum. This is so the drummer does not hit the mic but the mic will still pick up the main sound of the drum. Another mic can be placed in the same position but facing the underside of the drum.

4. To get the full sound of the hit hat the best place to position the microphone is facing the very edge of the hi hat and quite close to the edge.

5.The mic for the kick drum should be a dynamic mic. It should be placed with almost no gap between it and the drum. It should be positioned around the centre of the drum facing it.