(Activity) Duet and Recording Session

This happened the day after watching the movie "Begin Again".  There was no duet in the movie but there were lots of recording scenes that we felt like singing and recording after.

I've been a guitarist and a member of a rock band since high school and I think I'm a pretty decent singer.  Love is a member of the "One Voice" choir and serves at the Greenbelt chapel every Monday and she can also play the guitar. Even though our music preferences are different, we have a broad appreciation of music that allows us to be each other's fan.  

One of my "ligaw" tactics was teaching her a few songs to play on the guitar and we sing a lot together so we can say music is kinda' our thing as a couple.

We decided to record the song "Everything Has Changed" by Taylor Swift & Ed Sheeran. 

For this song, here's what we used to record it:

1. A PC.
2. A recording software.  I use Reaper - it's free to use and it's easy to learn. 
3. Studio monitors.  I use these as my default PC speaker (Alesis M1 Active 320). 
4. A USB interface device.  I used an MBOX2 Mini.  This device transforms the audio data it receives to digital data that can be processed by the recording program.
5. A condenser microphone and stand.  I used an MXL 990.  A pop filter is not required but is recommended.
6. An acoustic guitar.  I use an Ibanez MASA.  A minus one MP3 would be OK too.
7. 2 headphones.  I used a Vic Firth studio headphone and a normal headphone.

Studio Monitors

USB Interface

Digital Audio Workstation

   

The recording process:

1. First we listened to the original song and I measured the tempo using an online tap tempo.
2. I recorded the guitars first.  Love was being the sound engineer.  I used a click track as metronome.  Using the microphone to record the guitars instead of plugging the guitar to the interface sounds better.
3. Then I recorded the male vocals.
4. Then Love recorded the female vocals.

Sounds easy?  It took us about half a day to finish the raw version.  Here's a clip:

I'll upload the whole song once its mixed and mastered.