The project in five facts.
Challenge, approach and results.
The diploma thesis Recording and Post-Production of a Live Concert describes and presents the entire process of recording a musical event and post-production of the recorded material. The entire project demonstrated that recording live concerts is a considerable technical undertaking, as it requires adaptation to many variables. Outdoor recording brings challenges primarily related to weather and lack of sound reflections, whilst indoor recording can often face excessive sound reflection.
Solution and Method
The diploma thesis Recording and Post-Production of a Live Concert describes and presents the entire process of recording a musical event and post-production of the recorded material. The main focus is on the technical challenges faced by sound engineers when capturing live sound, as well as the methods and tools used to enhance the final product. In the theoretical part of the thesis, the fundamentals of concert recording are addressed, including various microphone placement techniques, selection of recording equipment, and differences between recording an outdoor concert and a concert in a hall.
The experimental part of the thesis is based on recording two concerts. The first took place in the hall of Mladinski center Brežice on 15 November 2024, whilst the second was held outdoors at Trg Leona Štuklja in Maribor on 6 May 2023.
For recording, different microphones were used on different instruments, with emphasis on capturing sound from the bass and snare drum with two microphones simultaneously. The bass guitar was also recorded with two pieces of equipment, except that one of the microphones was replaced with a DI box. In the post-production part of the thesis, the process of creating a mix and mastering from the obtained recordings is described.
Sound processing in Cubase 12 Pro is presented in detail, where tools such as equaliser, compressor, limiter, etc., were applied to each channel separately to achieve the desired final sound image.
Results
The entire project demonstrated that recording live concerts is a considerable technical undertaking, as it requires adaptation to many variables. Outdoor recording brings challenges primarily related to weather and lack of sound reflections, whilst indoor recording can often face excessive sound reflection. The latter can lead to capturing more different sound sources with the microphone than desired.
Through comparative analysis of recording bass guitar with a microphone and DI box, it was found that the combination of both approaches enables greater flexibility in the mix. A similar finding was observed when recording bass and snare drum with two microphones. To incorporate the umbrella theme of BTEC, artificial intelligence was also used for sound processing in post-production.
It proved to be a useful tool for optimising certain processes, but for now it cannot completely replace the human ear.
Module, programme and stories.
Your diploma project for a real company.
A diploma thesis at Academia solves a challenge from a company – often the one where you do your 800 hours of placement. Read about the Avdio produkcija module or book a consultation.