The session that I sat in on was lucky enough to have been quite interesting and it happened to include an acquaintance that is now a friend. I decided to peak in on someone who was helping a young freshman rapper that wanted to make a mixtape of various songs with the rapper on them to put out to get his name out. I was lucky enough to be able to watch and learn things that I didn’t know before. It started out with the rapper telling the engineer in the small room which beats he wanted to use. The engineer decided first that he wanted to hear the beats first to see if the levels were correct and thus able to be recorded over easy since the protool sessions were not intact. Most of the tracks were usable but two for them were not able to be used much to the chagrin of the rapper. The engineer plugged in the microphone into the docks and placed a pop filter over the microphone. The rapper and the engineer tested the microphone and we were ready to go underway. The rapper had lyrics set aside for most of the songs but he wanted to freestyle first to see how it works out first try. I was amazed at the simplicity that the rapper was able to spit out such things at such a speed. It was like he was able to think of stories in three seconds flat, stories that rhymed.
Despite the fact that he was able to come out with rhymes so fast not all of them were gems. They sounded good but had very little to do with the song subject matter. I didn’t understand why this would effect the outcome of just a mixtape but I suppose I wasn’t one to question a project that was not my own. So some of the freestyling was saved while most of it was scrapped as the engineer, who now took on the job of a producer, explained to the rapper that he does his best work when he thinks his lyrics out beforehand. I happened to agree with this and was happy with this decision. They started to record the first song and the rapper put headphones on and the engineer placed the track in record and muted the speaker so that the only person who could hear the track was the rapper himself. I assumed that this was the case as his head was nodding heavily. I remember how strange the whole recording aspect sounded when you could not hear the music and the rapper would almost perform for a room of three people. The room itself was interesting as well. The room was fairly small and not like the studios I have seen in the past. The fact that it was only one room was the main difference as there was only a keyboard a computer and a monitor. The walls were properly muffled for a good sense of acoustics. They had foam on the walls witch muffled the echoes nicely. It wasn’t completely muffled but it was good enough for the room with the consol and the recording room were one in the same. This was an enjoyable experience for me and I was glad I was able to sit in on such a different type of recording session.