Behemoth Bass and Vocals Tracking/Editing
Bass Tracking/Editing
The Bass tracking was a fairly simple process and much easier to keep in time than recording 4 separate guitar tracks. I did a rough mix of the guitars and drums so I could hear everything reasonably well, but predominantly I wanted to hear the Kick, Snare, and Guitars the most to make sure I could play a tight as possible so I didn't have to do any major time editing afterwards. Like I did with the Guitars I recorded the Bass as a DI straight into Pro Tools and tracked small sections focusing on getting the best performance I can in each part, then compiling all of the different takes together at the end, see image below for details.
The tracks in green are the Drum and Guitar bounces with everything below that the individual Bass Guitar takes, guess which track I found the hardest. Another thing I did to assist me with the tracking process was to use some compression and EQ to help me hear the Bass through the Drum and Guitar track, see image below.
I basically wanted to squash the dynamics of the Bass a little to make the overall sound of what I was recording a lot more even giving me a better all round sense of what I was doing. I used the EQ to boost around 2khz because I found that gave me a bit more string definition and removed some of the frequencies around 500hz because I felt that they were just muddying up the sound. I also boosted the low to provide a greater distinction between the tone of the Bass and the Kick drum.
As for editing I really didn't do much, the only parts I did edit were in the first song where only single notes are being played per bar and I sometimes wouldn't get the transition between notes as clean as I did with the guitars, apart from that it was just removing unnecessary noise in the section that Bass had rests in. After everything was comped and edited I rendered the individual clips together to be imported into the mix session.
Vocal Tracking/Editing
Performing the scream style vocals that are required for these tracks provided to be trickier than initially expected, I have performed this style of vocal before a long time ago but I have never actually recorded my voice like this. I did some research on recording this style of vocals and found a good video my a Metal audio engineer on YouTube called Glenn Fricker, see video below.
("How to record EXTREME VOCALS | SpectreSoundStudios TUTORIAL", 2018)
The main points in this video are, use a Shure SM7b microphone and record to vocal layers. Just like I did with recording Bass I used the same Drum and Guitar tracks to my vocals to. I used the original Behemoth tracks as a guide to input place markers inside of Pro Tools to provide me with a guide of where the separate vocal lines are, see image below.
After I had recorded all of the vocal tracks I consolidated the individual clips together to be imported into the mix session. When I was listening to the vocals in the mix session I didn't particularly like them that much so I decided to go for another session and see if I could do any better. I basically followed the same process as the first session, record one vocal line until I was happy with it then record a second track of it as well, trying to get them go in time with each other, see image below.
I do feel like this session went a lot better than the first one and I manged to get a somewhat more consistent vocal tone, I'm still not 100% happy with what I can do at the moment but it's better than having no vocals. At the moment I haven't done any vocal editing as I think they are sounding relatively in time already but that could change when I am listening to them In the mixing session.
All that is left to do now is Mix and Master the tracks, but from what I am hearing already I am hopeful that I will be able to produce a good final product. In the process of recording vocals myself I feel like I have a better understanding of what it's like to record this more extreme form of vocal performance which will definitely help me with artists in future projects. I will be doing mix vlogs sometime soon so stay around for those.
Bibliography
How to record EXTREME VOCALS | SpectreSoundStudios TUTORIAL. (2018). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wwEnJAztBA