Recording An Original

Over the last few days I have been recording a new original I wrote to share on my social media accounts. I am in the process of recording and writing a demo album so I have my own material to show. This is the fourth original I have recorded so far, and was one I wrote on piano.

Depending on whether I want a video of me singing the original for my social media accounts, I will either film my originals in one go while videoing on my iPhone, or recording the instruments and vocals separately, like I did for this song. The benefits of recording them separately are that the finish is usually better quality and I have more control over the levels, however it does take longer. The first day of recording I recorded the piano.

I used my Rode NT1A microphone to record the piano, and used the free software 'Studio One 3' that came with in. I like this software as has lot of options and desired professional effects if you're confident in using recording software's, but is also beginner friendly as well. I plugged my microphone into my Audio Box using an XLR and hen put that into my laptop via USB. I then plugged my earphones into the Audio ox so I could hear myself and the meronome playing back to me as I recorded. I don't usually use a metronome as I fond it off putting when recording vocals as well as difficult no to risk over spill into the microphone as when I am singing I need it louder so I can heart it over myself, however when recording piano instrumentals without guide vocals, I will use a metronome. I figured out that the BPM for this song was 200 and that the time signature was 3/4, and set up the metronome.

I turned it down very low on my Audio Box so there wasn't any over spill and did a few test takes to check everything was working and sounded fine. I recorded the instrumental in different parts and pieced them together so each part was as good quality as it could have been. After putting all the pieces of the song together I make sure the level is even, that it's in time with the metronome and add a tiny bit of reverb so it doesn't sound too raw.

Piano Instrumental - https://soundcloud.com/emily-laura-snuggs/change-original-song-piano-instrumental-usable-in-videos-read-description​

I used the same setup and a similar to record the vocals the next day, just without the metronome. I recorded each part separately for a better outcome, then added reverb.

I also recorded a montage to put over the top of this for my YouTube channel, as I had seen Alice Kristiansen do something like this and thought it was an interesting way to present a recorded song.