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Leon Auckland's Cover of Little Lion Man- Mumford And Sons

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Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds Cover)

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Don't You Forget About Me (Simple Minds Cover)

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-Off Beat Pattern
-Snare Off
-Rim Shots
-Side Stick

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-Off Beat snare groove

-Triplet Fills
-16th's Drum Groove
-4 On the Floor

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-Jazz Ride Shuffle
-Feathered Bass Drum
-Snare and Hi-hat
-Ghost Notes

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There are two main grips that are used in different genre.

Match grip is tend to use in heavier genres such as funk, rock and metal.
Traditional grips is more for snare ghost notes (different dynamics), this is used mostly in jazz and blues.

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Posture is very important we playing drums otherwise you can end up with serious problems in your back for the rest of your life.
Sit up straight- Otherwise if playing for long periods of times it can cause serious heath complications.
Sit at the right height- don't cramp yourself up or have to stretch to reach the cymbal.
Relax your arms- Relax your arms, stay loose ! Never tense up and relax your drum sticks down on the snare.

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As i played drums for all three of these tracks I had a big input on the song choices as I needed three different grooves and styles to play throughout the songs. Ain't No sunshine offered fast 8th notes played on the hi hat and side stick on the snare on the 3rd beat of most bars with ghost notes played throughout. This was completely different to Times they are 'a changing. Which is just quavers most of the way through the song. As there doesn't tend to be drums in folk songs I wanted it to be subtle but effective as well. Last but not least 'you can call me A'l is a Rock drum beat with more rhythm and blues influences. The song's groove is mainly 16th notes on the hi-hat and snare on the 2nd and 4th beats of the bar.

These three tracks differ in instrumentation, structure, dynamics, and musical genres. Ain't no sunshine was a brilliant choice for a song to record as it offers a drumming technique that i'm not use to playing which expands my knowledge on different rhythms and fills in the genre of soul. Also the song is just a general good song that a lot of people know. People knew the song which meant we didn't have to spend time learning and practicing it as we'd already done it before in the same group. The song also allowed for everyone to have a fair equal amount of playing time and also as there's not a lot of instruments it people could have a fair opportunity to perform to their highest ability including my self. Overall this is why I believe this song was  appropriate and also a good contrasting genre from my usual genre of funk and jazz.

Bob Dylan's The times that are 'a changing was a brilliant idea suggested by our singer and guitarists, Lewis. This song was recorded with vocals and guitar but in order to keep everyone's grades as high as they can we needed to make it into a full band situation. As we cracked on with completing this song we realised that the song is very simple but effective, and this is what folk music is all about. Even though we added instruments we could still get the full effect of the genre it's self and still understand the theme behind the song. This is one of the reasons we picked it as we could build on the idea of folk even though we were adding instruments. Even tough the song is easy there are a lot of chord sequences to remember so when it came to recording it took several attempts to get the bass right all the way through to the end.  This song was quite hard for our bassists as he normally plays more heavy material such as Metal and heavy rock. Overall if i did this assignment again I would choose this song to record as it taught me a lot about folk as a genre and also playing techniques for the future.

'You can Call me Al' is a brilliant song which is also quite easy to play after many practices of playing it through together. This genre 'World Beat' makes perfect sense as the genre refers to instrumentation and songs that have been recorded in a 3rd world continent such as Africa. As Paul Simon was mainly influenced in Africa there's a lot of African drumming and vocal harmonies we couldn't create an exact copy of the song so we made it a bit more 'poppy' to compensate for the loss of percussion and harmonies. These three songs all show different genres and stylistic elements across all three songs. The songs have their own (D.N.A), as so to speak, as soul is more about the tonal range and register of the vocalists, folk is more about the story telling and pop/rock is more about the rhythmic element. I believe that we showed this through own songs and the way we recorded them.

These two songs are completely different as each genre has their own particular stylistic elements that are appreciated by each genre. Bill Withers seems to use quite a soft tonal range, on the other hand, Marvin Gaye can fluctuate between much vocal range. The repetition in Soul is key; this doesn't just have to be words, it could also be musical structures or even musical phrases. Bill Withers does this throughout this song and his other hits. These are some of the ways  soul artists construct their soul song. Even though Bob Dylan also used repetition of his phrases it doesn't make it soul as the other fundamental elements aren't included in Folk music.

These three songs show a variety of playing styles that I will be continuing on and to perfect them so I'm as confident as other styles and genres. Performing these different genres in the studio is completely different to a live stage environment. To begin with, the room is enclosed and they tend to be quite small, so you can't enable different sounds by using different cymbals and more microphones to crate a diverse sound through out the recording. The only way this can really be achieved is by post production through the mixing desk.
Recording these three very different track have taught me a lot about the music industry and the recording environment. It has been very interesting to learn knew things and capabilities of the mixing desk and all it has to offer. Due to the bass being out of time in the songs we had to record it several times which slowed us down as well.  The bassist has improved by playing with a metronome which is good as to allows your brain to engage to the constant beat, this is very important for a bass player as well.

Through task 1 and task 2 I have been able to rehearse genres that I wouldn't normally play, doing this has showed me how to differ my rhythmic patterns to suit different types of music. This skill will take years to complete genres to a high level but this assignment has shown me how to start that process. In task 2 I talk about techniques from genres and drumming techniques in general, I believe that the most important part of drumming technique is posture as if the correct posture isn't sustained it can cause great injury to a person.  The skills and stylistic elements that I've started to learn will be expanded on in able to use most of them for my end of year project. To complete and play excellent music you have to use the stylistic elements as a basis and then build on them to create good quality, tight music.

Some technical issues slowed us down as well such as the D.I and also one week we could receive any signal though the desk into the computer. In these sessions we've had a lot of fun and it's been nice to be able to get ideas from other people and how they'd record their primary instruments, this open my knowledge as well which I'll be able to take with me into the music industry.
To conclude even though we had some problems we were able to record three tracks that we believe are worthy are a of high grade.

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Recording the keyboard/synth part was quite easy but it took time to find the right presets that would complement the  track in general. After spending over half an hour looking for the write sound we eventually found it, after abit of tweaking from my self we were able to record the sound that we wanted to open the song. After recording we spent sometime mixing the levels and reviewing the recordings making sure that everything was perfect and that we had a good mix to send off. After adding, gates, compressors, reverb/chorus and EQ's to most of the tracks we were finished and was able to listen to the amazing work we had created. I believe out of the three this was the hardest one to record as we all wanted to understand about natural room reverb so a lot of time was spent moving the microphones to try and create that unique sound that we wanted. If I was to do this again I believe that we could spend more time adding layers and harmonics, we could do this quicker as we have had experience with natural reverb and how it can change so we wouldn't have to try trail and error like we had to in this project. Overall I believe this song was a complete success.

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As son as we got into the studio we cracked on recording the bass which was quite simple as we used a bass amp and then a microphone to pick the sound up. We recorded it clean to enable for use to add our own compressors, EQ's and effects, in the original the bass sounds very warm and soothing which is what we tried to create. The next instrument we recorded was the guitar. This happened by using a D.I box as we wanted to use the incredible amps and pedals that are on the software as it could allow use to explore into different effects and settings. We recorded two separate guitar tracks and layered them over to increase the density of the overall track. After finishing the guitar part we then went on to record the vocals. As this was pop/rock we wanted people to be able to listen to it and feel like there was a lot going on which creates a full feeling. In able to create this we recorded with one main mic and then we recorded with two other microphones that were in the corner of the room. This create the natural reverb and the fuller sound that we wanted to achieve. After doing a couple of takes with the vocals the basics of the tracks were complete. Next week the main focus was on the keyboard parts and mix and master the track ready for the consumers to hear it

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First we all sat down and figured out the complement and how we were going to portray this song to a good standard. As Shay is pianist in the group it would only be right for him to play the synth part and also the piano in the pre chorus. Lewis sang and played guitar, Sam on the bass guitar, and I on drums. As we've all worked together ever since we started college we all had ideas of what people could do, this made it really  easy as we all knew who's better at doing each instrument, this song also completed Lewis' vocal range so much, It was only right that he sung the song. After sorting out the arrangement we set targets for the lesson ahead we wanted to split it equally to give us as much time as we needed for post production. The first instrument de decided to record was the drums as the drum beat was crucial for making the song work. This was quite challenging as we had to set up microphones for every drum to be able to create the sound quality we wanted to. On top of having microphones on every drum we then also had two overheads and an ambient microphone set up on the other side of the room to get a nice natural reverb, this technique made such as difference to the quality that we had recorded. after recording the track we added EQ's and Reverb to create the 'World Beat' effect which was a very rich and full sound. As we had spent so much time on the drums time had escaped us and the lesson had finished. In order for things to be completed on time we needed to record guitar, vocals and bass.

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Week 3 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing - Bob Dylan)

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Week 3 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing - Bob Dylan)

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In the last week we needed to record the bass, guitar and harmonica. We had the same technical issue regarding the D.I boxes again. So after a while we found away how to plug from the bass straight into the desk which was ok but not ideal in the environment we were in. After sorting that out we recorded the bass and was able to add some really nice low bass eq's to boost the whole song. After recording the bass we then moved on to the drums, we were torn between using wooden drum sticks or brushes. We decided to use the brushes to try and create that folk feel, when recording this the effect really came off in the studio and worked with the rest of the band. We also put a microphone at the bottom of the snare to create a real resonance that echo's on the recording. As the skins on the drum kit are old and not the best skins we added EQ's and a bit of reverb in order to make it sound abit more realistic.
After recording the drums the only thing left to do was to record the harmonica which was very easy to do. We set up to mics the main recording one and then just ambient one that zoned in on the natural reverb of the harmonica. The problems that we had to face was technology difficulties which can't be resolved. This was a lot harder to record then ain't no sunshine simply because of the major instrument all the way through the song. Overall I believe the song was a major success and we all worked as a team to complete the huge song within the time limit.

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Week 2 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing- Bob Dylan)

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Week 2 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing- Bob Dylan)

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Carrying on from last week, our main aim was to try and record the vocals, keyboard, and guitar. We choose to record these instruments in this session as we needed a full session regarding drums as we'd have to set it up and the microphones to try and create the best sound possible. As we loaded up the software we thought the easiest instrument to record was the keyboard, this was because it was already plugged into the computer as it was a MIDI keyboard. They keyboard was quite important as it was there to underpin the whole song with the chords. Also the was Shay played it added more rhythm to the song, he used syncopation all the way through which really worked and sounded really nice.The next instrument we tried to record was guitar. We tried to run the semi-acoustic guitar through a D.I box but we had problems with getting a signal through. Instead of trying to mess around with it we set up to microphones (a condenser microphone over the neck of the guitar, to pick up the high end frequencies and a dynamic microphone over the sound hole to pick up the low end bass frequencies ). This created a really nice contrasting guitar track and the two added together made all the difference. As the guitar was recorded clean we knew we had to put a bit of reverb on, we did this by using the amps on logic which are incredible as you can create sounds your not able to create on a really amp. Next stage was recording the vocals which was the last stage for today as we spent a bit of time having to try and sort out the D.I box. The vocals were one of the easiest to to record in all honesty. We voted on who was singing and we all voted Lewis as his voice would sit really nice on the track. When recording the vocals we discovered abut of a problem regarding microphones, after swapping the microphone we were able to record the vocals and to the best of our ability. As we had abut of time Lewis added a quick harmony. The harmony was very mono-tonal which created a really thick texture throughout, Mumford and sons use this technique throughout the Babel and sigh no more album. As the session finished we were quite happy with the progress that we had achieved. Next week we were aiming to finish the song by recording, the harmonica, drums and bass. Also we allowed a bit of time for fine tweaking in able to send it off. To conclude we had a couple of technical issues they were quickly resolved and allowed us to release our full potential and to receive the highest grade possible.

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Week 1 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing- Bob Dylan)

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Week 1 Folk (The Times That Are A-Changing- Bob Dylan)

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Picking this song was not hard as song has a very nice wide range of instruments and certain stylistic elements of the genre of folk. The first task we set out to do was to try and make the song fuller with using other instruments. We settled on acoustic guitar, bass, drums, piano, harmonica and Vocals. Even though we are doing folk and it's not usually heavy regarding drums and bass we thought we'd change it abit from the original to give more flavour and textures to the song. After deciding this we spent the most of the lesson learning the styles that were portrayed in this song, as I way playing drums I wanted to correct my bass drum and hi-hat rhythms to synchronise with the rest of the rhythm section. Sam, the bassist started on practising his bass walk downs to add a heavier texture to the song. Lewis, the guitars used the time to work on a strumming pattern. At this point the lesson had finished. We decided that we'd record the guitar part and piano part next week. This was a clear plan that if we stuck two we'd get all the work done.

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Week 3 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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Week 3 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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This was the last lesson that we could this song. We decided to record the vocals first as that was the most important component to be able to finish the song. Bill withers voice is very soul like anyway but then added with effects and compressors it creates a really nice warm tone which is brilliant for the song. We tried to portray this across Lewis' vocals as well to try and get the similarity across. As this was more post production we thought we should just get everything recorded and then worry about post production. After recording the vocals in two takes we thought we should record the drums as these would be the hardest thing to complete. After setting up two over-heads, bass drum mic, snare mic and Hi-hat mic we were ready to record. Same again regarding post production we thought we'd leave it to the end, otherwise we'd be wasting time as we had to listen to every instrument in the mix and get the balance anyway. It took several attempts to record the drums to make sure we had a clear signal coming through on the five microphones we had to record. After this we recorded a simple keyboard part just to fill in the empty bars that we had during the 'I know' section. After having everything recorded on logic we set out to create the post production elements, as I was the most experienced one with the software I took lead and everybody contributed their points which created a really good environment for everybody to work in. This song was complete, the post production stage was really important as we could add the final stages that we needed to add. Adding amps to create a nice, clean, warm, sound, compressors, reverb, gates and ~EQ's were all added to create a version that is similar to the original. To improve for next time I think we all need to understand a grater knowledge of the mixing desk and how it works and how to fix it if it isn't working from the last session that we in the rooms. Overall I believe me and my team workers worked really well on this song and it was a joy to work with them all

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Week 2 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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Week 2 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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As soon as we were able to access the recording studio we cracked on with recording the guitar part. In the past we've always used an amp and then a microphone to pick up the enhanced signal. But with this the was always abit of feedback accessing it's way into the mix we had. To stop this we recorded straight into the desk via line out cable to tackle the feedback issue. Also by doing this it allowed us to choose a wider variety of effects on logic. We sent a click through to Lewis who was playing the guitar, the click was set at 84 bpm which was abit quick but we decided to do it this fast as it sped the song up and stopped it from dragging. After recording the track we set up some audio enhancements such as EQ's, composers and gates to try and direct the sound and make it sound like the original. As we wanted to do the same process with the bass guitar we set that up via line out and recorded it 'Dry'. after recording it we found it was easier and sounder a lot better adding EQ's and Effects such as reverb on afterwards. We had to be careful with the reverb on the bass and guitar as we didn't want them to clash and sound muddy and unprofessional. This is as far as we got this week but in order to complete this recording by next week we needed to record the keyboard, drums and vocals. Even though this may sound like a simple song the complicity of the technique is key to get right other wise it doesn't sound right. A lot of the techniques are in the post production stage anyway.

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Week 1 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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Week 1 Soul (Ain't No Sunshine-Bill Withers)

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Ain't no sunshine by Bill Withers is a huge iconic song for the genre of soul. Recording this particular song is abit harder as well due to the level of reverb across all the instruments. When listening to it we realised it was going to be a challenged and we were all faced up to the challenge that we had to confront. With no time to spear we went straight into the recording studio. The instrumentation we had set up was a midi keyboard, guitar, bass, drum kit and vocals. As their was four of us in a room we set up our own instruments and we all tried to sing the song. After doing this we voted who was best to do the vocals which was Lewis as he could deliver a soulful feel to the song that needed to be created. In this week our main aim was to figure out the arrangement of the song and how it would work which we had completed. With half an hour left we tried to record the guitar part through the mixing desk but for some unforeseen circumstance the mixing desk would not receive a signal through the computer. Even though we didn't record it  we knew that next week we could record it to the best of our ability. In order to make everything run smoother next week I think that we need to set up straight away to allow maximum time for recording.

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Soul music is formed of many different techniques to create one piece. These pieces can be demonstrated throughout the whole band as every instrument tends to have their own skills and techniques.
Bass Guitar:
In soul the bass guitar is not at all complicated, it tends to form of the root note of the chords that's being played by the rest of the band as well. The bass may fluctuate through pass notes to other notes but apart from that it's very simple. This is because people didn't want to listen to complicated pieces, they just wanted pieces that they'd enjoy and like.
Drums:
Soul music doesn't really rely on the beat as it's not the main focus of the genre. Most soul has a slight swing but it a lot. A straight beat is normally played on the ride or hi-hat but some times soul drummers such as James Gadson, Willie Hall, Benny Benjamin and Uriel Jones.