Les Paul - More than just a legendary Guitarist
13/08/09 13:14 Filed in: In
Memorium
Les Paul is best known as an amazing guitarist. His signature model Gibson guitar revolutionized modern rock and roll. But did you know that he is also the father of the modern recording process?
Les Paul is the inventor of cell-sync. This technology made multi-track recording a reality. Back in the days of recording to magnetic tape, cell-sync enabled you to record some audio and hear it back while you recorded something else. Thus the concept of the “overdub” was born. This made the impossible possible. Musicians could for the first time play more than one instrument on a single finished master recording. This is something we in the digital age take for granted, but if not for the ingenuity of Les Paul most of the great classic rock, jazz and blues music we are still influenced by today might not have been possible.
I encourage you to look into how recordings were made in the past. Why you ask? Well when you listen to classic rock the sound and production varies wildly from band to band because everyone had their own way of doing things. This is something that I believe is lacking in music today. There are a ton of great ways of getting unique sounds, ideas that even if you copy them the difference in the instruments you use and the room you record them in will yield results that have a sonic character that will be all yours. This is not true with sounds created in the digital realm that can be more easily copied.
So, you want some more?
12/08/09 17:49 Filed in: Site
Info
Ok well,
some of you spoke up and let me know what you wanted in terms of a
truly useful and informative home recording website. Unlike many
webmasters I am actually listening. I thought you might like to
know what changes I am making as a result of your feedback. Thanks
by the way to everyone who took the time to drop me a line about
the site.
1) I am adding comments to the blog. This way you can ask questions and I can answer them right on the post where everyone can see them. Other people who have ideas can also share them with all of us here. I’ve been doing recordings all of my adult life and still I’m the first to admit I don’t know everything. Perhaps I can learn something from you!
2) I am going to add text links to the posts that will link to definitions and other information that I hope will help you better understand what I’m talking about. If you need more info, cool it’s there, if not you don’t have to click the link!
3) I am going to add some Digit badges and whatnot to the posts, I would really appreciate it if you would put in a good word for me!
4) You can now follow this site on Twitter. Just click the follow us button on the extreme left of your screen.
If you have any further ideas or would like to get involved with the site please let me know. I would like to start up a database of user reviews for various products. So if you get a shiny new toy and you love it, why not send me an email and tell me about it. Also if you would like an honest critique of your music send me an email and let me know where I can hear it!
Thanks again for your feedback and words of encouragement. I hope you like the site more and more as time goes on.
Pete.
Maximum Home Recording.com
MaximumHR (on Twitter)
1) I am adding comments to the blog. This way you can ask questions and I can answer them right on the post where everyone can see them. Other people who have ideas can also share them with all of us here. I’ve been doing recordings all of my adult life and still I’m the first to admit I don’t know everything. Perhaps I can learn something from you!
2) I am going to add text links to the posts that will link to definitions and other information that I hope will help you better understand what I’m talking about. If you need more info, cool it’s there, if not you don’t have to click the link!
3) I am going to add some Digit badges and whatnot to the posts, I would really appreciate it if you would put in a good word for me!
4) You can now follow this site on Twitter. Just click the follow us button on the extreme left of your screen.
If you have any further ideas or would like to get involved with the site please let me know. I would like to start up a database of user reviews for various products. So if you get a shiny new toy and you love it, why not send me an email and tell me about it. Also if you would like an honest critique of your music send me an email and let me know where I can hear it!
Thanks again for your feedback and words of encouragement. I hope you like the site more and more as time goes on.
Pete.
Maximum Home Recording.com
MaximumHR (on Twitter)
Microphone Placement for Acoustic Guitar
There are a few ways to approach microphone placement on an acoustic guitar. The most commonly used method is to place an electret or small diaphragm condenser mic a few inches from the 12th fret and second mic, usually a large diaphragm condenser somewhere in between the sound hole and the bridge. I have also this second mic placed at the bottom of the guitar facing the bottom strap peg and even sometimes on the back of the guitar. This however is not the only way to get a good sound.
If you happen to own a microphone capable of a figure 8 polar pattern as well as one with a cardioid pattern you can do what is known as a mid-side technique. This is more commonly used on pianos but can be used in any situation where you’re looking for a more spacious and ambient sound. This works especially well when you want to capture a vocalist playing acoustic guitar in a very simple live off the floor manner, when the goal is to make a recording that sounds like the performer is in the room with you. To achieve this simply take your figure 8 pattern microphone that is facing your subject and turn it 90 degrees. Then take your second microphone and aim it directly at your subject and make your recording with each mic on its own mono channel. Take the figure 8 track and make a copy of it. Pan the original track hard left and the copy hard right. Next invert the phase on the copy track. Leave the other microphone’s track panned center and viola! This might not be the ideal way to record all the time but I think you’ll agree its definitely a cool sound to use when it’s appropriate.
Another method is the old XY axis, using two microphones that have a cardioid pattern placed one atop the other forming an X. This produces a very nice stereo image and can be adjusted to be more or less ambient simply by placing the microphones closer (more direct) or further away for a more ambient sound.
And hey experiment! Try placing microphones out in your room. Try hanging a PZM mic on a wall or blu tack it to a window and play into the window! I really feel that this sort of experimentation is what is sorely lacking in today’s plugin, preset-centric, over compressed, dynamic lacking music world!
But perhaps I am the only one,......
Microphone Placement for Acoustic Drums
14/07/09 01:46 Filed in: Drums
| Music Production
Microphone Placement for Acoustic Drums
In the early days of rock recording the entire drum kit was often recorded using a single microphone placed approximately two drumsticks above the snare drum. If you only have one mic for the entire kit that’s as good a place as any! Back when rock and roll was born, music was recorded in mono. A few years and some technical advancements later we had stereo and multitrack recording. This allowed for three microphones on the rum kit. One mic in the kick drum and two microphones over the drum kit to capture a stereo image. This is referred to today as an inverted pyramid technique. It’s still a very good way to capture the sound of a drum kit especially if you’re looking for an ambient sounding kit. However for this technique to give you professional sounding results you have to have two things.
First you have to have a well maintained well tuned drum kit and second you have to have a very good drummer. You need the kind of drummer that will sit behind the kit and play a while, listen to the playback and then adjust their playing style and the way he or she attacks the kit to suit the recording. You need to get the balance of the kit pretty much perfect because you won’t have much flexibility to balance the sounds of the kit later on in the mix.
This is why discreet or semi discreet mic placement techniques are more widely used. This involves more microphones. In this type of setup you have microphones in kick drum, on the snare drum, on each tom and a pair of overheads. Sometimes the hi hat has it’s own mic sometimes not depending on the style of music. Reggae music would most certainly call for a hi hat mic where blues, or heavy rock might not. This is because the sound from the hi hat will leak into the snare drum mic.
If that isn’t enough microphones for you I have done sessions in professional studios where there were microphones both above and below the toms and the snare drum, in front of and inside the kick drum, on the hi hat, two more microphones over the kit and as many as six additional microphones placed elsewhere in the room! This is overkill, but when you have the gear to do it why not try it! Although the drums did sound amazing in the finished product I have had equally amazing results with far fewer microphones.
Music Production Method - Beds, Overdubs, Mix
14/07/09 01:41 Filed in: Music
Production
Beds, Overdubs, Mix, Redux
Some of us produce music without a band or are lacking some of the needed musicians to make up the usual band unit. My advice for those of you in this situation is this. The closer you stay to this format the easier your life is going to be. If you are a programming drums lay down a click track first and play your instrument to click and then lay down the drums, then add the other bed tack elements until you have at least the bass guitar and drums. Then proceed to your overdubs. It sounds too simple to have to be explained but you'd be shocked by the number of times I am asked to help someone with a recording project only to find that the problem they are having is that the entire track is completed except for the drums because they just can't seem to find anyone who can play in time with it!
Why Does it Work?
Well, in laying down the drums first you lock into a framework that is then finalized. There's no adding a few bars or taking some away as drums are difficult to edit. This forces you to think about your song structure BEFORE you build up the track and decide that 2 minutes is a little long for a guitar solo. I once had a recording session where the client insisted that he just record his voice and guitar to a click track, and I was to build up the track from there. He played the song three times and I recorded it. The Structure of the song was different all three times and third take was a minute and half longer than the first. I ended up learning the song, making the structure decisions for him and then had him back to sing to my new version of his song. At the end of the session the client was amazed how much better things went! Recording is a process no different from baking a cake or designing a better tube sock. The right decisions made in the correct order almost alway give you the best result. In fact I have found that adhering to this strict method of recording actually gives me more freedom and flexibility in terms of what I can do with the layering of the tracks. It also almost always gives you better performances from vocalists and other soloists when they can give their performance while hearing a nearly completed mix in the headphones.
The Allure Of The Rock Trio
14/07/09 01:35 Filed in: Music Arrangement
The Allure of the Rock Trio
If you’re a guitarist in a trio with bass and drums you have more freedom to use wild effects, play louder and take up a ton of space in the mix, because it can sound hollow if you don’t! The problems can arise when you add another instrument to the mix. Certain instruments will cause you little grief, for instance ad a trumpet or other brass or woodwind to the mix and there’s not much of a problem because they are usually either playing a solo when the singer is silent or they are playing short accents or stabs that don’t hang around for long enough to step on anyones toes. It’s when you add another instrument that is capable of playing chords that more care must be taken in the arrangement of the songs.
In many guitar based rock bands it’s the blending of the two guitar sounds to create an overall wall of guitars that is important and so the fact that the guitars mask each other a bit is ok especially with heavily overdriven or distorted guitars in songs that use power chords to chug through riffs. In a solo situation you will usually have one guitar playing chords and the other playing single notes. That’s all good because guitar solos in mixes are usually given more volume and a midrange boost to the eq so that for the duration of the guitar solo the lead guitar takes the place of the lead vocal as the focal point of the sound. When blending of two rhythm guitars is not desirable you can always pan one into the left speaker and the other into the right and because both are guitars a sort of balance is achieved. Just when all is well in the universe that is your band in walks the keyboard player, and to make things worse he or she wants to play one sound and use BOTH HANDS!
Just When Things Were Going So Well,....
So now what you have is a keyboard player wielding the instrument that can make the widest range of frequencies known to man! With their mighty left hand they mask the bass guitar and with that devastating right hand they create a cacophony of confused mess in the midrange. Unless of course you bury them in the mix. You could do that. Live sound engineers do it all the time. The other option is to find more effective ways to use the awesome power of your band for good! This is where the arrangement of your songs comes into play.
All you need to do is to learn to listen to what your band mates are doing and contribute to the overall sound in ways that don’t detract from what the others are doing. In other words lead by example and at the same time take an opportunity to be selfish in terms of volume. Here are some examples.
Many times I have done live sound for open mic nights featuring mostly solo acoustic guitar and vocals. It always just seemed natural for me to adjust the sound so that the guitar could be good and loud and at the same time the vocals could be clearly heard. I guess I felt if there’s only one instrument and one voice the sound should be as full as possible. The way I achieved this was to reduce the midrange on the guitar so that I could crank it up and everyone could still hear the vocal. Seemed like a simple and easy way to get the sound I was looking for. What amazes me is the number of times I walk into an establishment featuring the same kind of performance and heard very strange sound design indeed. Sometimes the “sound guy” had cranked the midrange on the vocal to violently force it through the wall of guitar. This made the vocal extremely unpleasant to listen to, almost like a telephone thru a megaphone! Sometimes I’d hear the vocal loud and proud and almost no guitar, other times the guitar was good and loud but I was left wondering if somehow the microphone was broken or something. I could sometimes hear a vocal but don’t ask me what they were singing.
So if I knew the performer or the owner of the venue I would ask if I could fix the sound. All I would do is set the Vocal eq to flat, set the guitar eq to flat and then set the mid knob on the guitar to the 9 O’clock position and balance the volume between the two. Then I would use the eq fairly sparingly (most times) to make things sound more natural. That’s it! For this alone I earned a reputation as a kick ass live sound guy!
I guess the lesson to take away from this is: Guitarists, if you take some mid out of your guitar sound you can play louder, the overall mix will likely sound better and your band mates won’t hate you (as much). I am picking on guitar players because I am a guitar player and so I feel I can, hope this isn’t a problem! Another thing that you can do as a guitar player is play on a different place on the fretboard than the other guitar player. This makes for a more interesting blend of tones. If the other guitarist is strumming chords, why not pick some single notes out of the chords or play a melodic single note run. If they zig you zag, and now you’ve teamed up to crush zigging and zagging under foot it’s time to gang up on the keyboard player.
Don't Panic
I kid keyboard players, don’t take it personally. There are many creative things you can do to add to a killer arrangement. Keyboards have the widest array of sounds available after all. It’s your job to do what the songs require. Sometimes the most powerful contribution you can make can be the most subtle. Listen to the Police song “Every Breath You Take” the synth parts in that are a big part of what gives the song it’s power. “SYNTH PARTS” they don’t even HAVE a keyboard player! Seriously if you took out the string wash in the background the mood collapses and you are left with a very small sound stage. I could go on and on about this stuff but the basic idea is this, you have the power of greatest versatility in terms of sound, if you use it to complement the other musicians you become more than an add-on. The world is full of “also ran” keyboard players and that’s a shame, but you don’t have to be one of them because what you play is up to you! If you are going to play some left handed bass, get together with the bass player and play some things in unison, or play things that reinforce the bass line. If you find yourself in the midst of a wall of guitar why not try some things that compliment the vocals. If you sing you could even use your keyboard to drive a vocal harmony device or vocoder.
Musicians in a good band do things to compliment each other, it’s not a volume duel to the death. Since home recording is the method by which most bands record now it doesn’t hurt to learn more about these things.
Tags: Home Recording, music, arrangement, recording
Home Recording - A Good Live Room
14/07/09 01:28 Filed in: Music
Production
The “Live Room”
This room has to sound as “natural” as possible, so you definitely want a carpeted floor, and neutral wall material, drywall is good, with some fort of diffusion type wall treament. If you find that instruments or sounds with a lot of bass sound overly boomy then bass traps may come in handy. You can use egg crates for diffusion and cardboard boxes stuff with foam rubber or insulation and or shredded paper to make your own bass traps. Please keep in mind that these items are highly flammable and this is reason enough to use store bought acoustic treatments as most of them are fire treated and will not support a flame.
Isolation is the Key
The main reason for a 2 room setup is being isolated from the direct sound of the performance as it's being played. What you are most concerned with is the sound that's coming through the microphone. This way you can hear any noise or distortion in the sound as well as beginning to shape what the final sound of this performance will be. When you are isolated from direct ambient sounds of a drum kit you can make better decisions about where to place microphones apply some compression to even out the volume of the kick and snare drum and generally shape the sound of the kit as you record these sounds. This is very important for those operating demo studios where time is money. This also helps ensure that a great performance won't have to be scrapped because of a technical problem that results from you not being able to hear a problem in the first place. This of course is less critical if you are recording your self or your own band and you have unlimited time for re-takes. If you are a hired gun recordist you should always strive for the situation where you are always waiting on the client, but the client is never waiting on you.
If you only have a one room setup, the best way to compensate is to develop you own standard way of getting a fairly neutral sound recorded that you can play with in the mix. It's best to record dry sounds and use plugins or patch in outboard gear to add effects afterwards. You may also want to master the art of re-amping your guitars. This involves recording a plain jane guitar signal into your recording rig and then routing that signal back out to an amplifier with a microphone on it. There are also many plugins that allow you to make great sounds from an un-effected dry direct guitar. I personally always seem to prefer the sound of an actual microphone on a real guitar amp!
Home Recording - Your Home Control Room
14/07/09 01:23 Filed in: Music
Production
The Control Room
A basic home recording setup usually consists of a computer system, some sort of computer interface and speakers. A pair of speakers that are connected to an external amplifier that runs off your computer is the ideal situation. There are also a wide array of powered speakers on the market that will work for this application. Ideally you want the left and right speaker and your head to form an equilateral triangle with the tweeter on the speaker at ear level.
An easy way to measure this it to measure the distance between the speakers and then sit that far back from them. Start with the speakers facing straight ahead, and then as you listen to something that is well recorded tow in the speakers until the singer or lead instrument is well focused between the two speakers. This will give you the ideal tow in, once you have this set don’t move the speakers! If there are bass and treble controls on your amplifier or speakers you will want to switch them off or put them in the center or detent position so they have as little effect on the overall sound as possible.
Next you must determine if mixes done in this room will translate. In other words, is the sound you hear from your speakers in this particular room accurate? Does the room have a bright or dark sound to it? If you are lucky you have a fairly well balanced sounding room, but how do you tell?
Scoping Your Room
Scoping a room involves playing pink noise through your system and using a spectrum analyzer to ensure that your are getting a flat response. The characteristics of your room may cause sounds in it to be bright, dark, muddy or boomy. The odds are that this room in your house was not designed for sound. You do however want your mixes to translate well and sound good on stereo systems in other places and so we use the process of scoping the control room to ensure this.
What you need to do is create some pink noise and play it through your speakers. Don’t use white noise because it has more 1KHZ than other frequencies. Pink Noise has all frequencies from 20Hz to 20KHz in equal amounts. Next you will connect a microphone to your system and place it where your head will be when you are sitting at your system. Basically you have the pink noise recorded and the mic is setup as if you are going to record it. Next you will find the spectrum analyzer plugin and apply it to the track you are using to “record the microphone (Most computer recording software packages have them). Next you will look at the analyzer to determine what frequencies you need to boost and which you have to cut. You will then use a graphic equalizer plugin setup on the overall stereo master tracks to adjust the sound until you have as even as possible a balance of Lows, mids and highs. Once you have this setting you will save it as a preset and call it up whenever you begin a new mixing session. You always want it to be the last thing on the Master Stereo channels and this should be the first thing you do before anything else. This will save you valuable time in the future.
Pro Recording VS. Home Recording
14/07/09 01:20 Filed in: Music
Production
Pro Recording
In a professional recording situation you have three separate and distinct groups of people working to create a finished product. You have the technical element, the recording engineer and assistant engineers. Then there is the production staff who oversee the budget and organize the personnel and are usually there to represent the client whether that be the band itself or the record label to which they are signed. Lastly you have the most important group of people, the musicians, songwriters, in short the talent.
Home Recording
In the home recording setting in many cases YOU are all of the above! You are Engineer, Producer, Talent AND Client! In order to produce the best possible recordings you must master some of the skills in each of these areas. This especially true if your goal is to eventually open your home studio to the public or build a more professional studio for profit. When you are deciding what instrumentation to use, what equipment to buy, what the order of the songs will be on the finished CD and how everything will be paid for you’re in “Producer Mode”. When you’re deciding what mic to use to best capture an instrument, which frequencies must be boosted or cut in order make a vocal cut through the mix you’re in “Engineer Mode”. While you’re writing the songs and playing the instruments you’re in “Talent Mode” . If you think about recording in these terms as you develop your own personal process of recording, you will begin to see the process as a whole and this will enable you to anticipate how what you do in the planning stages of your recording will effect the tracking and mixing process.
A Studio Setup
What you need to create is a controlled environment, a control room if you will. There are 2 reasons it’s called a control room. The first reason is that where all the controls are housed, your computer, mixer and other recording equipment. The second is more scientific. In science the concept of a control is a known quantity to be used as a basis of comparison. In this case your control room will be setup so that there is an even balance of low, mid and high frequencies. This will allow you to more accurately judge the characteristics of the sounds that you monitor before you record and the sounds you playback once they are recorded. You need to do this so that your final mixes will sound the way you intended them too when played back on other systems in other places. This very important step is overlooked by many home recordists and this is why many home recordings sound unprofessional.
The other room in a typical studio setup is referred to as the “Live Room” or “Studio Floor”. It is a good idea for this room to be treated with materials that absorb sound. The reason for this is that it is ideal for microphones to capture the direct sound from what you are recording with as few reflections as possible. This sound dampening material also serves to minimize outside sounds from finding their way into your recordings.
By isolating these two rooms from one another you are able to use tools like compression and equalization to get the sounds close to the way you want them to be in the finished product right from the word go. For this reason it comes in handy to have an accurate idea of what the final mix will sound like. It also comes in handy to have a track sheet where you map out exactly what instrumentation you are going to record, in what order and which tracks will need to be recorded in stereo as opposed to mono. Not everyone has two rooms to work with and so the recording and mixing method must be altered a little but some people may prefer to record in a single room.
Physical Effects - Electric Strings on an Acoustic Guitar
08/07/09 03:26 Filed in: Getting
Sounds
Physical Effects - Electric Stings on an Acoustic Guitar
In this era of plugins and virtual everything music is starting to have a certain sameness about it. As a recording engineer I love to tell/hear stories about interesting things that were done to achieve a cool sound. I think this is part of the recent resurgence of classic rock and metal. I would love to hear about wacky things you’ve done to get cool sounds, so let me start the ball rolling by giving you one of my favorites.
Once you start to progress as a recordist you will find that start recording things the way you want them to eventually sound. Many times acoustic guitars are recorded in stereo and panned hard left and right, with very little bass. Sometimes there’s very little tone in the sound as all, what you end up with more of the sound of the pick on the strings. One of the ways you can get a sound like this right off the bat without having to use EQ is to string up an acoustic guitar with electric guitar strings.
First of all, it renders the guitar easier to play, but you end up with a great stringy sound with very little bass. However the sound is natural and does sound strange or effected like your typical acoustic guitar with all the bass viciously carved out with an equalizer!
I have a bunch more of these little tricks to share with you, so stay tuned!
Abandon the Presets - Recording Music Without a net!
06/07/09 20:34 Filed in: Music
Production
Abandon the Presets
One of the potentially negative things to come out of the digital home recording revolution is the over use of preset settings in plugins. There’s nothing wrong with using presets as a feature but the problem arises when there’s no preset for the task at hand. How do you accomplish your goals if you have no idea why those settings are doing what they’re doing? It may be high time you learned. The good news is that learning this stuff can be fun!
If you are a preset junkie who wants to take the music to the next sonic level you could try the following:
Step 1: Take the mix that you made with the presets, mix is down and use it as a reference.
Step 2: Do a second mix and make every setting manually yourself mix that down and compare the two.
What’s better or worse about your manual mix as compared to the mixed where you relied on presets? The things that sound better or different in a good way are your fault so pat yourself on the back! The things that don’t sound better or as good as the preset mix will show you where your weaknesses are. It’s all about learning how to create or more importantly re-create types of sounds at will. It’s just like playing an instrument the more scales and chords you know the more broad the palette of sounds you can create. Likewise as a recordist knowing how to achieve a wide variety of sounds will enable you to give each song the treatment it deserves. Bottom line is that presets were designed for “generic music”, and I know that if you’re here reading this you’re not looking for generic sounds you’re looking for that sound that makes your music stand out from everyone else.
One of the first steps to creating your own production style is to abandon those presets! It might be scary at first, and the mixes might be a little weird for a while but in the long run you’ll be very glad you did!
Ideas for Recording Acoustic Drums
10/06/09 04:33 Filed in: Drums
Recording Acoustic Drums
Recording acoustic drums in a home studio environment can be a daunting task. With the myriad of software based rhythm creation tools out there and all the amazing tools to get incredible sounding guitars, killer bass and exquisite vocals, one would wonder why anyone would go anywhere near a drum kit with a microphone anymore. Unless of course you have a drummer! Here are some ideas to help you get solid drum sounds.
Preparation
First thing you want to do is dampen any and all reflections you can. The last thing you want is sound bouncing all around the room getting into the wrong microphones! Next the Tuning of the drums is very important. Start by making recordings of the kick and snare drum. Then listen back and decide what needs to be done in terms of tuning and microphone placement. This process of trial and error is boring and tedious and you’ll be glad you did it! Once you have the kick and snare squared away, move on to the toms and finally the cymbals. Here are some tips for microphone placement.
Recording
You have some decisions to make here. Depending on the band and the type of project you must decide if you want to record the entire band live off the floor or if you want to use the traditional “drums and bass” then over dub the guitars, keys and vocals etc. Sometimes you luck out and the guitarist has some sort of effects device that allows direct plug in. This way you can have the entire band wear headphones and play together. You can keep only the parts you want to use with the understanding that only the bass guitar and drums need to be near perfect performances. If you can record the other musicians you should because you never know when these tracks can be added in to thicken the sound or provide a slightly different texture.
If you have any questions about digital home recording, use the contact form at Http://www.MaximumHomeRecording.com
Production for Singer Songwriters
01/06/09 01:35 Filed in: Music
Production
Production for Singer/Songwriters
One mistake I see made time and time again is the mismatching of what the CD sounds like with the live show sound. I once attended a live performance by a band called Andrew Bird’s Flaming Bowl of Fire. They were fantastic live, a really good band the drummer was especially good. They were so good that I forked out 20 bucks for the CD. I can’t remember the name of the CD right now because I threw it in the garbage! Why would I do such a thing? Well it’s simple, the CD was a flaming bowl of crap! NONE of the people that were part of the live show actually played on the CD save Andrew himself and the entire thing was recorded live IN MONO on one track with one microphone. The microphone was an old 40’s RCA ribbon microphone or something. Needless to say that the live show was in no way a fair representation of what to expect on the CD. That was almost 10 years ago and yet it was enough of a piss-off that I remember it vividly today.
Another example, a client of mine, a singer-songwriter who plays acoustic guitar hired me to record a project. We talked at length for what not only seemed like but WAS years about the project. When the actual recording started I thought it was important for his vocals and guitar to be most prominent and that he should avoid adding much more than a bass guitar and drums. This was because I new he planned to play solo acoustic live shows rather than perform with a band. For the recordings he hired and paid thru the nose for a top shelf drummer and bass player. This lead me to believe that he and I were on the same page production wise.
A while later I get a copy of the finished product. My client had decided to go in a completely different direction. He gave the tracks to a producer/keyboard player who essentially whacked off on the songs to the point where the final mix made keyboards the stars of the show. Not only that he buried the drums and the bass in the mix which had the effect of making it sound like the project was that of a keyboard playing singer/songwriter! I told him as much because I respect clients enough not to lie about what I think. The end result was that anyone who enjoyed the CD was disappointed with the live show and vice versa.
Years later I was asked to revisit the project in order to create mixes that were pretty much exactly what I had originally suggested they be. I declined. It was too late for this project. This performer had a limited window of opportunity for this project and his music to be noticed and that window had slammed shut. Last I heard he was trying to be a concert promoter or something. I haven’t heard from him or about him since.
The moral of this story is to make sure that your recordings make it apparent who you are and what you do. Don’t be afraid to make it obvious. I know you might be afraid of your voice and want to put a ton of other things in the mix but it won’t work. The project is about YOU full stop. As such it needs to highlight your talent and give an idea of what might be to come at a live show. A simple arrangement lends itself better to backing tracks as well, should you choose to use them. Simple recordings also have more of a timeless quality to them especially ones that feature acoustic guitars.
The best advice I can give to singer songwriters who record themselves is to learn to make a big sound with only a few instruments. Get really good at making a full sounding mix with just your guitar and vocal. Unless you’re extremely versatile with your guitar stylings a whole CD of vocal and one guitar can get to be a bit much, so by all means add bass and drums. Put some strings or an organ in the background. Just keep in mind that you are the star of the show here, so don’t bury yourself in added clutter especially when you can’t reproduce it in a live show setting.
Keep Noise to a Minimum
21/04/09 05:00 Filed in: Noise Elimination
Keeping Noise to a Minimum
The most obvious advantage a professional studio has over your home studio is a near silent environment. When recording anything using a microphone very little if any sound other than what is being recorded finds it’s way into the signal. Your environment likely won’t have this advantage. So the first way you can deal with noise is by using as few microphones as possible, and when you do try to reduce outside noise as much as possible. Guitars, Bass guitar, and keyboards can all be recorded direct rather than using a microphone on a speaker cabinet.
Another good way to reduce noise is to use only balanced connections. Balanced connections use a cleaner higher voltage signal. Many guitar and bass amplifiers have direct recording outputs. Other devices like Line 6 pods allow you to custom tailor your guitar sound including speaker cabinet simulation. If you are using drum machine you may be able to forgo using microphones for everything except vocals.
If you are going to use a microphone on a guitar cabinet, make it’s a dynamic mic and record the cabinet at high volume. This will prevent other sounds from getting into the signal. There is no way around using a few microphones to record a drum kit. You can limit the effect of the noise by using noise gates on all the drums mics except for the overheads.
MAXIMUM HOME RECORDING
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