Tracking project guidelines

This project will focus on developing your basic recording / tracking skills, to include:

* signal flow and patching, to include mics, DI's, preamps, protools interface i/o, headphones and talk back
* mic selection and microphone techniques, including mono and stereo approaches and placement concerns - close / far / spot / room

* session set up, procedures, file management, and project documentation

* recording overdubs and fixes, basic layering and editing

* working with artists and managing session dynamics
* getting good sounds!

Here are some more specific guidelines / time lines:

session 1 - probably best to have someone in your group do the playing (or just invite once guest artist) since this will give you more time to work out any problems. Session one should focus on simple mic selection, placement and patching, including headphones and talk back. This should get you ready for a session with a guest musician(s).

session 2 - plan, schedule, and arrange a visit by a guest musician(s). Probably best to just go with one or two players - keep it reasonably simple. Talk with them ahead of time and come up with a simple production plan. Work on good mic placements / getting good basic sounds, and try to get a solid take or two of the song. Maybe time for an overdub or a few fixes?

session 3 - if you want to bring the same musicians back in to do overdub and fixes, this is fine. If this is not practical, you can just repeat the approach from session 2 with a new group.

session 4 - we will discuss this in class ahead of time. Ideally, you would bring in a new group, something more ambitious, but still manageable in 3 hours.

session 5 - You may have some remaining overdubs to do. You should also use this session to review all of your previous sessions and do any cleanup and documentation that might be needed. Allow at least 1.5 hours to do a good rough mix of your most promising session. We will review this in class the following week.

* Please record all sessions on glyph edu drive, in the '482_spring16' folder. Inside that folder is a folder called 'small_group_projects'. Please make a folder for your group, and then a new session folder for each week - include the date in the session folder title.

* Each session should have a paper track sheet with info about mics used, mic placement (including distance from the source) and all other pertinent info. Your protools sessions should have each track labeled, and comments should be used for additional info (mic type at least). You may also want to write up some notes in a word doc and keep this in your sessions folders.