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Old 12-04-2008, 04:48 PM   #41
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Simple Addition to all Above

Noise is truthfully not your friend. Learn some simple techniques about Noise Reduction. Even with some of the best recording techniques, mix leveling techniques, Masking techniques, additive and subtractive EQ, great limiting / compression . . .

If there is lot's of low level / mid level background noise on your lead vox, bkg vox, guitar tracks, samples of drums, any source for that matter, it will multiply, compound itself making ones recording or song suffer. Nothing surgical, but a good idea of minimal noise reduction can go a long way for a lot of people.

This suggestion will not help at all, if one doesn't take the time to read through this thread and take advantage of the free knowledge given. But I can assure you, and any older people here will agree (as there was a time when Noise reduction wasn't even a question as it wasn't even a requirement, it was just THERE).

I'm sure there are free plugins that can get most people there, I would not suggest anyone go out and buy any analog or outboard noise reduction gear, as that won't really help much since our medium is pretty much IN = OUT now.

Also, learn how to use an Expander it's the small cousin of sophisticated noise reduction and it does wonders in our world of Uber Compression.

There is my addition for the world.

That no one cares about.
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Old 12-04-2008, 05:41 PM   #42
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Just an observation - everyone has great points here and needs to be taken with a "grain of salt", as not everything is constant. But then "best practices" are more of a template and have always been taken with a 'grain of salt" as well.

Either way, I am having some respect to what yep has to say. This thread should be captured and put into a pdf and posted for the REAPER commnunity to have in their back pocket recording tips arsenal.

Please continue yep..
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Old 12-04-2008, 08:32 PM   #43
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yep.
great thread. kudos to you.
heres another rule..
happened to me in the past.
real story.
i go to the store years ago n hear a guitar amp that grabs me.
rather costly.
get it back to the studio n it dont grab me as much once i spend time with it. one or two trik pony.
then my dear wife at a spring yard sale brings home a find.
an old 50's all tube guitar amp she paid 8 buks for , n it blows away the one i had paid lots of buks for at the store..lol.

which leads me to my own personal rule.
"no matter what gear you got. whether a megabuk or a humble studio,
the recording gods will find a way to laugh at your puny attempts to beat them"..lol.
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Old 12-04-2008, 09:22 PM   #44
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Default Compare win and osx

Maybe try the same thing in reaper Win and OsX versions.
Sometimes I swear OsX sounds better, but I got some non-pro Win hardware.
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Old 12-05-2008, 12:18 AM   #45
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Thank you for this, Yep.

Someone sticky this, please - half the Home-Recording internet will be linking to it within a few years.
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Old 12-06-2008, 03:28 PM   #46
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Larry Gates touched on a very important topic that I plan to get into more detail later. When someone like him says something is important, it's good to listen.

But for myself, I still have some very un-glamorous ground to cover before we get into the juicy details of actual recording and processing techniques.

Recording, like any process that is both technical and creative, is a state-of-mind thing. Any single aspect of the process has the capability of being either a launching pad or a stumbling block to better records. Experience brings a sense of proportion and circumspect "big picture" awareness that is hard to get from reading web forums and eq recipes.

It is important to work fast. Finished is always better than perfect. Always. In more ways than one.

For one thing, you will change your mind about things as the recording develops. There are a thousand steps along the way, and if you get too stuck on one, you lose your inspiration and sense of proportion, you'll get frustrated and your ears will start to burn out, and you will start to hate the song and the sound. Recording it will start to feel like a chore and a burden and that state of mind will show in the finished product, if it ever gets to that state. More likely, the project will become a half-forgotten waste of hard disk space that never gets completed.

The best way to work fast is to take as much time as you need to *get ready* for recording, before you actually start the creative process.

This is actually a big problem with new clients in professional studios-- they show up late, with worn-out strings and drum heads, out-of-tune instruments in need of a setup, they're hungover (or already intoxicated), they only got four hours sleep and haven't rehearsed or even finished writing the material, and so on. This is frustrating but manageable for the engineer to deal it with, it simply means that the client is paying for a lot of wasted hours to restring their guitars and so on. The engineer can take care of the setup for the first day or two and then get on with the business of recording.

In a self-produced home studio setting, this approach is fatal. If you're trying to write the song, learn the part, demo plugins, set up your instruments, figure out your arrangements, and mix each part as you go, you will spend two years just tracking the first measure.*

So the next couple of posts are going to deal with methods and techniques designed to get you moving fast and making constant progress, and also with figuring out when you've stalled out. The whole idea is to keep the actual recording process a primarily creative and inspiration-driven one, and to separate, as much as possible, the technical aspects that a dedicated engineer would normally perform.

*Please note that are certain kinds of loop-based and sequenced/automated electronic music where sound design and stuff normally thought of as "production" is an integral part of the compositional/performance process. The same principles of efficiency apply to any kind of production, but they may apply a little differently if your core creative endeavor is built around selecting, mixing, and processing existing sounds, as distinguished from music that is created and performed from whole cloth on more conventional instruments.
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Old 12-06-2008, 04:01 PM   #47
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The best way to make sure that you are always making forward progress while recording is to set specific and achievable goals for each session. In other words, if you have three hours to record tomorrow, decide in advance what the "deliverable" will be, as though you were answering to a boss.

For example, you're going to get the main rhythm guitar track for this song recorded all the way through in three hours, come hell or high water, even if it's only half as good as you hoped. This means no shopping for plugins, no second-guessing whether you need different pickups, no deciding that the bridge needs to be re-written, no surfing the web for guitar recording tips, no testing to see how it sounds with a new bassline, no trying out alternate tunings, etc.

If you need time to do any of the above before you can be sure you're ready to cut the rhythm guitar, well, then, THAT is your project for tomorrow. Instead of trying to record the guitar part, you've got three hours to decide on the best bridge arrangement, or to try out different plugins, or to test alternate tunings, or to research and test different setup recipes, or audition plugins, or whatever.

The whole point is that no matter how many things need to be done or tested or thought through or tried out, come the end of tomorrow's session, you will have absolutely and decisively crossed one or more of those steps off your list.

No sane person would ever deliberately decide that "I'm going to spend the next three months second-guessing the amp tone and the particular voicing of the palm-muted riffs on the second turnaround," but this is exactly the danger if you don't decide in advance how much time you're going to spend on these things. Boredom, ear-burnout, and self-doubt are your enemies.

In a commercial studio, you'd have the reassuring hand of an experienced engineer and/or producer to tell you when it sounds great, or when it's time to stop and re-examine that 7sus4 chord and so on. You don't have that. So you have to trust your prior decisions, and just as important, you have to trust your future decisions and your overall talent.

It's one thing to say "we'll fix it in the mix." That's bad. But it's another to say, "I know that this is a good song, and that I can play it, and that I've been happy with this sound before, and I know that everything is going to sound bigger and better and more polished and professional once I've laid down all the tracks and have processed and mixed the whole thing."

It's very easy to get trapped in self-doubting tunnel-vision. It's important to get it done right, but it's also important to get it done. You may not achieve every goal you set for yourself in the time alloted, but at least you'll reach a point where the clock runs out and you can set yourself a better goal for next time, armed with specific knowledge of what you need to work on.

Setting specific goals in advance hedges against dangers on both sides of this see-saw. You have the opportunity to set aside enough time to do it right, while simultaneously preventing yourself from getting lost in an open-ended vortex of trying to reinvent the wheel.
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Old 12-06-2008, 04:36 PM   #48
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I'm going to step back for a minute here and make some general points about preparation and organization.

It is really important to have an organized studio. Set aside a day for this, and it will save you weeks in the coming year, not to mention immeasurable inspiration-killing frustration. You need to make it easy for yourself to be creative, and hard for yourself to get distracted.

Organized is a different thing from appearing tidy. Scoop up all your cables and tuners and notes and headphones and stuff them in a drawer and the room will appear tidy. And you will spend an hour of your next session untangling everything and finding what you need. Hide all your patch cables and tie them up in bundles behind the desk and things will appear tidy, and it will take you an hour to get behind there and patch in a "B" set of speakers or a new midi controller.

Organized means that the stuff that you need is easy to identify, easy to reach, and easy to do what you need to do with it. A well-organized studio might actually appear pretty messy, and if that's a problem with a significant other or some such, then you might need more than a day to figure out the right compromises. A studio is a workspace, like a garage or a woodworking shop.

There are three categories of stuff in your studio:

1. Stuff you need to access regularly, and that needs to be right at hand.
2. Stuff you only need to access rarely (a few times a year), that can be stored away.
3. Trash.

Notice that there is no category for stuff that might useful someday, or that you plan to work on when you have spare time. If it were useful, you'd have used it. If you had spare time, you'd already have worked on it. Here's a hint-- old magazines are trash. The useful wisdom in them is either already on the internet, or has been or will be published in book form for that day 3 years from now when you need to search for it. And when that day comes, the chances of your actually finding the article you needed in three years' worth of old magazines is nil. There is no Google for old magazines.

Bad cables are trash. If you're going to fix them, put them in a brown paper bag and do it this week. If the week goes by and you haven't fixed them, throw them away. Cables that crackle when touched, or that hum, or hiss, or that have to be plugged in at a certain angle to work have no place in a recording studio. Same with broken instruments, broken headphones, obsolete electronics, old speakers and computers, and so on.

If you have trash that has value, put it in all in a box, and write a date on it by which time you will sell it. If that date goes by, and you have not sold it, take the box of stuff down to the Salvation Army or Goodwill and make someone's day. But make the decision that you are running a studio, not a junk shop. Which is more important, to eliminate the distractions and time-wasters that get in the way of your music, or to squeeze the few extra bucks from your old soundcard?
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Old 12-06-2008, 05:34 PM   #49
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I know this thread might seem like it's getting away from "why your recordings sound like ass," but the little stuff matters. A lot. Organization makes for better recordings than preamps do. Seriously.

Go to the hardware store and buy the following (it's all cheap):

- Sturdy hooks that you can hang cables and headphones from. Pegboard, in-wall, over-door, whatever. Dedicated hooks for guitar cables, mic cables, patch cables, and computer cables.

- Rolls of colored electrical tape. From now on, every single cable in your studio will have one or more colored stripes on each connector. So when you see the mic over the snare has a red stripe and a white stripe, and you go look behind the desk or the soundcard, you will see a white stripe and a red stripe and you will know instantly where the other end of the cable is plugged in. Headphones should be similarly marked (assuming that you ever have more than one set of headphones in use at a time).

-Velcro cable ties. Every cable will also have a velcro cable tie affixed to it, so that you can easily coil up slack.

- Extra batteries. Every studio should buy batteries in 10- or 20- packs. You should never have to stop a session to look for batteries, or for a lack of batteries.

- No-residue painter's tape. This is very low-stick masking tape that you will use to label all kinds of stuff. Stick in on the console or your preamps and mark gain settings for different mics and instruments, stick on guitars and keyboards to mark the knob settings, stick it on drums to mark the mic locations, stick it on the floor to mark where the singer should stand in relation to the mic, whatever. Peel it off when you're done and no sticky residue.

- One or two universal wall-wart power adapters (the kind with multiple tips and switchable output voltage). A broken wall-wart is a bad reason to hold up inspiration, and having a spare handy makes troubleshooting a lot easier. Keep in mind that a replacement wall-wart has to have the same polarity, approximately the same output voltage, and AT LEAST the same current rating (either Amps A or milliamps mA) as the original. So splurge for the 1A/1,000mA one if they have it. If you're not sure what the above means, find out before experimenting.

Next, go to the guitar depot and buy the following:

- 5-10 sets of guitar strings of every gauge and type you are likely to record. This means 5 sets of acoustic strings, 5 sets of electric strings, and each type in both light and medium-gauge, assuming that you might be recording guitars set up for different string gauges (this includes friends or bandmates who may come over with guitars that haven't been re-strung for months. Make them pay for the strings, but have them. Charge them double or more what you paid, really). These strings are meant as backup insurance for the times when there is a string emergency, not necessarily to replace your existing string-replacement routine. So they can be the cheap discount ones. They only need to last through one session, and are there for the occasions when a guitar needs to be recorded that has dead strings. Watch for sales and stock up.

- 2 extra sets of bass strings, same idea.

- A ton of guitar picks, of every different shape, size, material, and texture. Go nuts. Don't skip the big felt picks for bass (although you can skip the expensive metal picks if you want-- they suck). You are going to put these all in a big bowl for all to enjoy, like peanuts or candy. Or better yet, in lots of little bowls, all over the studio. Changing picks is the cheapest, easiest, fastest, and most expressive way to alter the tone of a guitar, and it absolutely makes a difference. Just as important, holding up a session to look for a pick is the stupidest thing that has ever happened in a recording studio. Don't let it happen in yours. Make your studio a bountiful garden of guitar picks.

Drum heads are a bit trickier, especially if you ever record more than one set of drums. You might have to save up, but get at least one set of extra top heads for your best drums, starting with your most versatile snare. The whole idea is not to hold up a session over something that is a normal wear-and-tear part. The long-term goal should be to buy replacement heads not when the drum needs them, but when you've just replaced them from your existing stock of extras. Sad to say, it's also not a bad idea to keep your eyes peeled for deals on spare cymbals, especially if you have old ones or thin ones or if you record metal bands. (Again, this is stuff that you should make people pay for if they break, but it's better to have spares on hand than to stop a session).

If you commonly record stuff like banjo or mandolin, then splurge for an extra set of strings for these. If you record woodwinds on a semi-regular basis, then reeds are an obvious addition. Classical string instruments are trickier, but if you commonly record fiddle, then pick up some rosin and a cheap bow, just to keep the sessions moving.
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Old 12-06-2008, 06:05 PM   #50
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One of the most important things any studio should have is an ingenious device known as a pad of paper.

You may already own one and not even know it. This should have a dedicated, permanent spot in easy reach of the mixing desk (please have extra pens to go with it). Your hip pocket is a great place. Its purpose is to record "to do" and "to buy" items as soon as you think of them. Even better if you can have separate ones for each. Its value will become immediately apparent.

The "to do" list is the place to write down things like "find best upright piano preset," or "create new template for recording DI-miked hybrid bass," or "find better way to edit drum loops," or "re-write bridge for song X" or whatever you think of that needs to be done while you are focused on the deliverable goal that we talked about above.

This pad should be different from the one that you use to write lyrics or recording notes, assuming you use one. The idea here is to have a dedicated place to write down the stuff that could otherwise become a distraction while recording, as well as a place where you can capture recording-related ideas as they come up, and set them aside for future consideration in the sober light of considered reflection.

It should also be a place to write down stuff you wish you had, or wish you knew more about, so that you can shop and research in a systemic way. If you find yourself fumbling around with the mixer and the soundcard trying to get enough headphone outs or trying to rig up an A/B monitor comparison, then write it down. You might be able to rig up a simple setup on a Saturday afternoon, or you might decide it's worth getting a cheap headphone amp or monitor matrix (Behringer probably has one of each for $30).

If you can't find the right drum sample or string patch, don't stop recording to look for a patch now, instead, get the tracks laid down with what you have and make a note to look for better samples tomorrow. Tomorrow, you might have a totally fresh perspective and realize that it's not the samples that were the problem, but the arrangement. Or it might turn out that after a good night's sleep and with fresh ears, it sounds just fine. Or maybe you do need to find better sounds. In any case, it will be a lot easier to keep the processes seperate, and to focus on the issue at hand. Your pad of paper makes everything possible.

Anything that distracts your time or attention should be written down. Don't try to solve it right now, instead set it down as a problem to look into in the future.
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Old 12-06-2008, 06:52 PM   #51
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One more post for the time being:

You need storage and furnishings for your studio. It should be stable and quiet. Things should neither be falling over nor rattling. This does not have to be expensive. Places like Ikea and office-supply stores sell sturdy computer desks that are just as good as dedicated-purpose "studio" desks.

You should play various loud bass tones and suss out your studio for rattles before you start recording. Do this periodically, since things loosen over time. Duct tape, wood glue, silicone caulk, and rags such as old T-shirts are useful for impromptu rattle-fixing.

I think the best studio desks in the long haul are probably just plain, sturdy tables. A big, open, versatile space tends to age better than a preciously-designed contraption with fixed racks and speaker stands and shelves and so on. It's easy to put those things either on top of or underneath a plain table, but it's hard to rearrange stuff that's permanently built in.

Avoid cheap chairs with lots of wheels and adjustments, they are apt to rattle and squeak. Plain wooden or even folding chairs are preferable. Herman Miller Aeron chairs are excellent studio chairs, kind of a de-facto standard, but they're expensive, and complicated knockoffs are sometimes worse than simple, silent hard chairs. Musicians often benefit from a simple bar-height stool without arms, for a half-sitting, half-standing position.

If you are on a tight budget and need racks, they are ridiculously easy to make. Just build a wooden box with sides 19" apart, and screw your gear into the sides. Road worthy? Probably not. But infinitely better than just having the stuff sitting in a pile that will inevitably get knocked over. You can even cut the front at an angle pretty easily if you are marginally competent. A quick sanding and coat of hardware-store varnish and it looks like actual furniture. Best part is you can build them to fit your spaces and put them wherever you want.

Keep your eyes peeled in discount stores for plastic toolboxes and drawer systems. The cheap soft-molded plastic stuff is a great place to store mics, cables, adapters, headphones, tuners, meters, CDs, and all that other stuff. Soft-molded plastic bins might be sticky and crooked to open, but they tend to rattle and resonate less than metal or wooden stuff, unless you are buying fairly expensive.

Unless you are going to forbid drinks in the studio, you should make space for them in places where people are likely to be. The floor is a bad place, but is vastly better than on top of keyboards, mixing consoles, or rack gear. I like little cocktail tables with felt floor sliders on the bottom. They are inexpensive and movable and having a few of them makes it easy to be a fascist about saying that drinks are not allowed on any other surface, ever.

Boom-type and/or gooseneck-type mic stands are a studio necessity, and are sadly expensive, for the stable ones. If you must use the cheap $30 tripod base, then understand that you are putting the life of your mic on the line every time you set it up. Budget accordingly. Do not put an expensive vintage mic on a cheap, flimsy stand. They all get knocked over, most sooner than later. The best deals are probably the heavy metal circular bases that are commonly used in schools and institutions. Plan on either putting them on a scrap of rug or on little sticky felt furniture sliders or something to deal with uneven floors, and to provide a modicum of decoupling.

Please own enough guitar stands to accommodate every guitar that will be in use in your studio. Guitars left leaning against anything other than a guitar stand invariably get knocked over, which screws up the tuning and endangers the instrument.

Bear with me, there is juicier stuff coming.
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Old 12-06-2008, 07:36 PM   #52
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Hehe... I often wonder why people almost always decide to "re-produce" their music in my studio on the clock. Seriously.

It happens regularly. Go figure.

Last edited by Lawrence; 12-06-2008 at 07:41 PM.
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Old 12-06-2008, 08:17 PM   #53
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I'm late for a show, but I forgot something important.

The key to organization is a place for everything and everything in its place. The PLACE FOR EVERYTHING bit is the most important.

In a well-organized tool shop, you'll likely see a pegboard with hooks and marker outlines of every tool. They'll have outlines of each hammer, drill, pliers, and so on. Hex drivers will be kept in a specific drawer, screwdriver bits are kept in a little canvas zipper-bag, nails and screws are organized by size in rookie kits or drawer boxes, and so on. Everyone knows where to find anything.

Your Mom's kitchen is probably similar. Plates in one cabinet, spices in another, pots and pans in another, tableware in this drawer, cooking spoons and spatulas in another, sharp knives in this place, canned goods in that, and so on.

The point with both of these is that it is obvious when a thing is in the wrong place. A wineglass does not go in the spice cabinet. Plates do not go in the knife drawer. Drill bits do not get hung in the hammer outline of the pegboard.

Your studio should be the same way. When you set out to organize it, and you don't know where to put a thing, stop. Your task is to decide where this thing goes, where it will always go, and where everything like it goes. "Everything goes in a drawer" is not an acceptable answer. You might have to buy or select a thing to put it in. But it is important to make a decision.

Knowing where to find a thing and knowing where to put it are the exact same question. If you don't know the answer to either one, then you have to get organized. Every adapter in your studio should be in the same place. Every wall-wart should be in the same place. Every battery should be in the same place. All kinds of tape should be in the same place. Spare drum keys should be in a specific place, as should guitar strings. All software should be stored in the same place, along with the passwords and serial numbers. Cables should be coiled and hung on hooks, according to type and length, so that you always know where to put it when you're done, and so that you always know where to get it when you need it. If I come to your studio and gift you a new piece of gear or ask to borrow a piece of gear, you should know exactly where it goes or comes from, without having to think about it, and before you decide whether to accept.

If you have a thing and really can't decide where it goes, put it in a box and mark a date on it one year from today. Put it aside. If a year goes by and you haven't opened the box, deal with it as trash, above.

The point is to keep the stuff you need ready and accessible. and this means getting rid of the stuff that's all tangled up with it. Your time in the studio should be spent on making music recordings, not on sorting through junk piles or looking for a working cable.
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Old 12-06-2008, 08:25 PM   #54
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawrence View Post
Hehe... I often wonder why people almost always decide to "re-produce" their music in my studio on the clock. Seriously.

It happens regularly. Go figure.
Yeah, arguably the best reason to record in a professional studio is the organization and division of labor. Partly having someone knowledgeable to deal with the technical stuff, but also just having someone experienced, who can say, "yeah, this will sound good in the final mix," or who can nip in the bud approaches that are going to be problematic.

But of course that doesn't fit into the the tagline "make professional recordings on your computer."

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Old 12-08-2008, 05:28 PM   #55
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This thread rules.
I wonder if a mod can do a duplicate, sticky it, edit out our chit-chat and leave only the valuable advice.

Thanks yep.
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Old 12-09-2008, 10:12 AM   #56
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I'm loving this thread as well. As I read it, I feel the cluttered thoughts in my mind lining up into nice, neat columns and rows.
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Old 12-09-2008, 06:22 PM   #57
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Okay, I apologize again for all the stuff on organization, but if I didn't get the boring bits out of the way first, then I'd never get to them once we start talking about sound. So now that we have space to work and to focus and think about the sound, and a setup that allows us to hear a good, accurate representation of what's going on with the sound, let's start to talk about sound.

There is a lot to say, and a lot to think about, and there's a big two-steps-forward-one-step-back element to all this, because everything affects everything. Principles of mixing apply to tracking, and principles of tracking apply to mastering, and principles of mastering apply to getting good sounds in the room to begin with, and principles of sound in the room apply to everything. So no matter where we start, there's a lot that comes before it, and a lot that comes after it.

That said, the most basic and critical element is critical listening and judgment. And one of the hardest notions for beginners to disabuse themselves of the value of recording "recipes" or presets. So that's the first thing I'm going to spend time on. And without a clear place to begin, I'm just going to start with my favorite instrument: electric bass.

Let's say, to keep things simple, that we're recording a DI bass track (i.e. a bass just plugged right into the soundcard or preamp, no mic). And let's say that the bass player is playing a bass with a maple neck and jazz-type pickups. And let's say she's using a pick, and that she does a pretty good job of controlling dynamics. Got all that? good.

So we fire up the recording rig and she starts playing. From here on, because this is a DI track, it doesn't actually matter whether we're talking about stuff we do during mixing or tracking, because we're going to pretend that none of this affects her headphone mix or how she plays (which is a whole nother can of worms). We have also, by virtue of recording DI, eliminated anything relating to mics and rooms and phase and any of that. There are also no chords to deal with, and presumably no intonation or tuning problems. We are also pretending that we have perfectly neutral "gain staging" and that it therefore doesn't matter whether we make these changes before or after tracking. Please note that these are actually HUGE assumptions that we will see later are NOT "safe bets" at all (even with sampled bass), but we have to start somewhere.

So she's kicking out her funky bassline and everything is groovy and we start to listen carefully, not just to the groove, but to the forensics of the sound. We're going to pretend for the sake of sanity that the player and the instrument are both good and there are no serious problems of fret buzz or strings clacking or serious flaws in the tone, and that the player is hitting about the right balance of warmth, string, and growl for the material (I just glossed over about a year of prep time on that one, but all in good time).

So we've got the sound under a microscope, soloed, and here are the little sonic microbes crawling around, the molecular structure of her bass sound:

-We have the initial, mostly atonal attack of the plucked string, which could sound like a lot of things, but since we stipulated a jazz-type bass with a maple neck and a pick, it's probably going to sound a little clicky, with a slight "rasp" or chunk, and have a little subsonic bump, like un petit kick drum. If we're really industrious, maybe we want to sweep an EQ around, and see if we can identify some particular frequencies where these things happen. Not making any changes, just "parking" eq nodes at the spots where these aspects of the sound seem to be exaggerated. Like maybe the click is up around 6~8k, maybe the raspy chunk hits a broad range somewhere around 700~1500Hz, maybe the subsonic thump seems most pronounced when we bump the eq at 40Hz. Maybe it's completely different. Truthfully, how she holds the pick and how close to the bridge she picks and what kind of pick she's using and a hundred other things will change all this. But that's okay, for now we're just listening, taking mental notes.

- Immediately following the attack, we have the steady-state "note." On a good maple-neck jazz bass, this is likely to to be a fairly deep and transparent sound, with a smidgen of low-end growl, a little "scooped" in the lower mids, and some good upper-midrange clarity, with a little bit of stringiness that we can use to add some bite and punch, or that we could downplay to mellow out the sound and push it back into the mix a little. Again, if we want to, we can sweep the parametric eq around and see where these elements are most pronounced. Not changing anything yet, just listening and thinking.

- Next we have the decay, where the sound starts to taper off. The best studio bass players are masters of this oft-overlooked corner of the musical world. A bass line played with every note ringing out until the next note gives a vastly different vibe and feel to the whole mix than a bassline where each note has a definite end point. Neither is necessarily better or worse, but how long the bass notes hold and how they taper off has a big effect on the way the drums and the beat breathes and pulses, and and it can "lock in" the whole band to make it sound like a unit, or it can create separation and clarity. This is not necessarily your call to make as the engineer, but being aware of how it affects the mix will help you to make better decisions. It might not hurt to give a careful listen to how the bass decays. Does the "growl" hold on longer than the note? Do the notes end with a little finger squeak or death rattle? Is the "note" the last part to die? These "last gasp" elements are all going to amplified if we end up compressing the signal, as the louder parts get pushed down and the quieter parts get pumped up ("IF we end up compressing ELECTRIC BASS?"-- that's a good one).

-Last but DEFINITELY not least is the "silence" between notes. This is the point at which the discernible sound of the bass falls below the noise floor. Because we are recording direct, we can pretend that there are no resonances to worry about, and we can stipulate that this should be dead silent. No hiss, no hum, no rumble, no radio signal, just pure audio black space. If it's not, we're going to have some serious problems. But that's a topic for another day.

More in a minute.

Last edited by yep; 12-09-2008 at 06:27 PM.
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Old 12-09-2008, 06:54 PM   #58
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Listening to bass continued...

So far, we've just been listening, not making any actual *judgments* about the sound, nor alterations. In fact, we already stipulated that the sound is pretty good. Let's take a look at how some of our observations above might relate to judgments and alterations that we could make to improve the sound of the bass, or the way it fits into the mix.

Starting from the beginning, let's take another gander at that pick attack. Let's say for the sake of argument that we have a fairly clean, snappy, telecaster playing on the guitar track. If we put this bass track beside it, then the pick clicking could start to be a problem. For one thing, it's competing with the clean guitar attacks, and potentially confusing the waters up there in the highs. If the two instruments are not plucked in absolute lock-step, then the bass clacking around is apt to screw up the syncopation and feel of the guitar part. And for a whole lot of good reasons, it is likely that a good bass player is NOT picking on exactly the same nanosecond as the guitar player, because the bass takes more time to develop, and because the has an important role to play in relation to the dynamic decay of the drums.

So maybe we want to back off that initial pick attack a little bit. Compression or fast limiting might help, but maybe we start to lose some definition that way. Maybe we're better off trying to nail it with eq. That lets us keep some of the slower, midrange chunky rasp that actually overlaps nicely with the guitar. As it turns out, turning down the highs a little might also solve some problems in the "steady-state" portion, where the stringyness might be similarly fighting the guitar.

On the other hand, let's say that the guitar is not a clean, snappy tele, but a roaring overdriven SG. Now we have a whole nother set of considerations. Here, that little ghostly "chunk" might be completely blown away by the guitar, and those clicky, stringy highs might be just the ticket to cut through that wall of power and give some bite and clarity to a bass sound that could otherwise get drowned into wub-wub.

Simply cranking up the highs on the bass might not be the best solution though, since these are fairly small elements of the sound, and are apt to turn brittle and fizzy if over-played. Compression or other dynamics control might offer some help, but here we start to run the risk of mucking up the whole sound of the bass just to try and get the string sound to cut through. This might be a good time to get creative, and try a little sansamp or guitar distortion to get that saturated harmonic bite. Or maybe it's time to plug into the crunchy API or tube preamp or whatever. But that might also change our nice, transparent low end in ways that we don't like (or maybe we do). Maybe we could split or clone the track with a high-pass filter, and just raunch up the highs a little to give the right "cut" to the sound.

More in a sec.

Last edited by yep; 12-09-2008 at 07:29 PM.
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Old 12-09-2008, 07:16 PM   #59
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Before we go much further, let's double back for a second. Notice that the whole post above is about dealing with one little aspect of the sound. And recall that where this element falls in the frequency spectrum and what proportion of the overall sound it comprises is entirely dependent upon factors such as: how the player holds the pick (or certainly whether she even uses a pick), how close to the bridge she picks the strings, the type of wood on the fretboard, and a ton of other stuff.

If the same player were playing a P-bass with the same technique, then the whole sound would be completely different. The chunk and growl would be much increased, and the clickly, stringy highs would be almost non-existant. Turning up the highs that help the Jazz bass cut through the SG might merely turn up hiss and fizz on a P-bass with a rosewood fingerboard. If she were fingerpicking or playing slap-style, the whole world would be different.

Now think for a moment about presets and "recipes." Even if they come from a world-class producer/engineer recording your absolute favorite bass player, what are the chances that every variable is going to line up exactly the same so that YOUR bass player, playing HER bass, with HER technique, in YOUR mix, of YOUR band, with all of the specific instruments and sounds, so that the settings and practices that worked best for one recording are going to be ideal for another? Is "rock bass" really a useful preset?

And just in case you think I've "gamed the system" by starting with the hardest part, think again. Life is about to get worse for bass presets. Read on...
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Old 12-09-2008, 08:02 PM   #60
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I'm skipping right over the "thump" part of the bass attack, but that does not at all mean that you shouldn't think about how it might muddy up the all-important kick drum beat, or how it affects the sense of weight and definition of the bass guitar part, or how it interacts with the guitar and other instruments in terms of body and rythmic feel, or what kinds of effect it might have on your overall headroom in the track. I'm skipping over it because we have a lot of ground to cover, and there's always going to be stuff to double back to. And electric bass is just one example, and a DI recording of it is about the simplest thing we're likely to deal with in a project.

On to the "steady-state note" portion of the sound.

So maybe we made a few tweaks above to get the high-end definition right. The sound is still the good bass sound we had at the beginning, but we've done a little work to get the highs to sit better with our other instruments. So far so good. (please note that starting from the highs is not necessarily the recommended methodology for bass, it's just where I started posting)

So now we're listening to the bass, soloed (or not, whatever), and we start to focus again on our "steady state" sound-- the "average" sustained note portion off the sound. And it sounds good, but something doesn't quite "feel" right. The bassline sounds good, but just seems a little uneven, maybe a little jumpy. The "body" seems to waver in strength. We throw up the other faders, and sure enough, there it is, the plague of the recording world: the disappearing/reappearing bass line.

The bass just doesn't seem to articulate every note consistently. What should be a solid foundation of low-end tonality instead seems a little like a spongy, uneven house of sand. It's not precisely a "sound quality" problem-- the tone is there, the meter seems to show pretty consistent bouncing around the average, the picking is well-articulated and good, so what is it?

Well, because this is my example, I actually know the secret in this case, but I'm not going to tell you just yet. I'm not going to tell you, because there are a whole lot of things that can cause this symptom, and the cause is actually not all that important, or even that helpful when it comes to the practical reality of fixing the problem. The fact is that for a whole bunch of psycho-acoustical reasons and realities of the nature of the instrument, bass is prone to this syndrome. Bass notes are far further apart in wavelength than the notes of higher instruments, and broadband aspects of the "tone" of the instrument that would encompass a whole octave or more of high-frequency notes can disproportionately affect perception of individual notes, or ranges of notes, or certain harmonic relationships of notes, when it comes to bass instruments.

So let's take a closer listen to this bassline. Let's say that the bass player is bouncing around a range of about an octave or so, and the lower notes seem good, but the higher ones just seem to lose their tonality. You can still hear the string attack just fine, but the body drops out. And it's not that the foundation moves up in range, it just kind of lacks balls. So you try a compressor, and that helps a little, but the compression is getting pretty heavy and affecting the sound of the instrument. So you try sweeping some eq boost around where you think the problem might be. As it turns out, right about 100Hz works pretty good. But interestingly, a few ticks higher actually makes the problem worse.

So you settle on 100Hz, feed the boosted signal into some light compression, and now you're getting close to where you want to be. Cool, but what happened? Why did that work? Is it because 100Hz is a magic frequency for restoring consistent body to bass? NOT AT ALL.

For the secret, read on...
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Old 12-09-2008, 08:18 PM   #61
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In this particular case, here are two things that I know and that you don't, that are the keys to understanding why 100Hz was the magic frequency. Before you read the explanation below, think about the following two facts and see if you can guess why a boost at 100Hz fixed the problem, but a boost at 110Hz made it worse:

-The song is a I-IV-V progression in D

-This particular bass guitar tends to sound notes on the "D" string quieter than notes on other strings (this is not *at all* uncommon, even on good basses)

(If you don't know how a bass guitar is strung or what a I-IV-V progression is, then don't hurt yourself, just skip ahead).

edit:
I realized after working it out that this was kind of a confusing example/trick question, so skip ahead before you dig out the slide rule.

Last edited by yep; 12-09-2008 at 08:38 PM.
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Old 12-09-2008, 08:37 PM   #62
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Here's the key (literally and figuratively):

In the I-IV-V progression in D, the three most important notes are D,G,A.

On the bass guitar, the first position has prominent G and A notes on the D string. The frequency of the low G note on a bass (E string, 3rd fret) is around 48Hz. The frequency of the Low A note on a bass (E string, 5th fret, or open A) is 55Hz. So the frequencies of the first octave of these two notes (D string, 5th and 7th frets) are 96Hz and 110Hz, respectively. Those are the notes that are not sounding loud enough. If we boost at one frequency or the other, we not only boost that note, but the first harmonic of the lower-octave note of the same name, making the problem worse for the one we're not boosting. Boosting right in the middle of the two (technically, I guess a little higher, like 103Hz) gives a boost to G#/Ab (a note not played in D), and a little overlap boost to both notes, evening out the sound.

edit:
Reading this, I realize I made a little oversight that might confuse astute readers. Technically, I guess we might have trouble if the player also used the open D, especially if she alternated between the open D and closed D on the A string (time to dig out the multiband compressor).

Last edited by yep; 12-09-2008 at 09:51 PM.
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Old 12-09-2008, 09:04 PM   #63
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So anyway, if the above puzzle gives you a headache, that should actually just hammer home the point that trying to think through this stuff is actually a lot harder than just listening. Moreover, there's no way to expect yourself to keep track of things like this and mentally cross-reference them.

All you need is ears. If you can hear the problem, you can hear the fix. The theory is not only unnecessary, it's not really even that helpful. I have never, ever, thought through an eq problem that way, and I doubt anyone else has either (the example was something that I figured out after the fact). And even if I did have a flash of insight and figured out what the cause was, I'd count myself clever and then STILL suss it out by ear.

But the real point of the above exercise was to illustrate the problem with presets. Whether you understand all the ins and outs of the breakdown or not, the real point is that the above fix would not have worked on a bass that didn't depress the D string, nor for any song that was not in the same key. Theory-minded bass players will recognize instantly that a boost of the second octave G# would be a serious problem for songs in the key of E, especially if the D string were NOT quieter than the others.

You can't just dial in a good bass sound and then use that for everything and expect to get the same effect. I can't go so far as to say that presets and recipes are useless, but I think there is more danger for the novice in over-reliance on them than there is in simply not using them at all. In some respects, the less you need them, the more useful they can be. The great danger is in trusting presets more than your ears, and sadly, I think that is often the norm among beginning home recordists these days.

More to come.
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Old 12-09-2008, 09:20 PM   #64
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Quote:
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All you need is ears. If you can hear the problem, you can hear the fix.
WHOA! Thank you for that, cause I was getting seriously depressed!

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Old 12-11-2008, 11:36 AM   #65
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Great thread
I agree with some other posters.It should be condensed and made into ,"Sticky"
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Old 12-11-2008, 04:20 PM   #66
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Level-matching continued...

the "improved" recording sounds like a vortex of shit.
FFS, LMAO
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Old 12-11-2008, 07:16 PM   #67
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So, having partially dissected a very simple DI recording, let's talk about microphones next.

There is no best microphone. There is no best mic in any given price range. There are some bad mics, but for the most, there are a lot of different mics. And frequency response is not a very important part of what makes a mic a good one or a bad one (at least, not within the realm of reasonable choices for studio recording). If frequency response were the ultimate measure, you could just use an eq to make an SM57 sound like a C12 and save yourself $15,000 or so.

And before we go any further, let's just clarify that there are times when an SM57 is actually preferable to a C12. In other words, there is no best mic. Any more than there is a "best ingredient." Spanish saffron is not necessarily much better than Nestle chocolate chips if you're making cookies. White truffles are great for veal, but not so much for lemonade. Whether you're better off using caviar or strawberry syrup might depend on whether you're serving toast points or ice cream (I always go with strawberry syrup, myself).

So it is with mics. And well-equipped professional studios that have access to all kinds of mics in all kinds of price ranges use a lot of different ones for different applications. Ask a dozen rock stars which mic they recorded their last vocal track with and you might get a dozen answers, and that's not because they don't know about or have access to the other mics.

It is a pretty safe bet that any well-known mic that costs over, say, $500 will be a pretty good mic, otherwise nobody would be paying for them. But there are also good mics that are inexpensive, and a more expensive mic does not automatically make it a better one for any given application. In fact the humble SM57 is probably the most widely-used microphone in the world, in professional applications.

Even if you're rich, a home studio is unlikely to have the same range of mics available as a professional recording studio, anymore than a rich person's kitchen is going to be as well-stocked as a professional chef's commercial kitchen. But that does not mean that homemade food is necessarily worse than professionally-made food.

A professional chef has to be able to make dozens, maybe hundreds of different dishes on demand. Maybe thousands, when you count all the sides and sauces and garnishes. And she has to cook for hundreds of people every night, and every single meal that leaves the kitchen has to be top-quality, and there have to be choices to satisfy thousands of different palettes. A home cook just has to make dinner for themselves and their family or guests, and they only have to make one meal, and they only have to please themselves.

Similarly, a commercial recording studio might be cranking out a new album every week, made by an engineer who has never heard the band before, who might not even like the band. The band might have instrumentation or sonics that are completely different from anything the engineer has worked on in the last year. The band might be incompetent and bad-sounding. But the studio is still accountable for turning out top-quality product, quickly, day after day, making every band that walks in the door sound like rock stars. This is a categorically different task from recording your own material that you love and have worked on and can spend time on without a meter running.

So put out of your head any notion of trying to compete with commercial studios in terms of GEAR, and put into your head the notion that you can still compete in terms of SOUND (albeit in a more limited range). If your Aunt Minnie can make a great pot roast at home, you can make great recordings at home. All you need is ears.

So anyway, what makes a good microphone? Read on...
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Old 12-11-2008, 08:06 PM   #68
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There are a lot of different, interacting factors that go into the "sound" of a microphone. Perhaps more to the point, it is more common for the "sound" of a mic to change with the particulars of its application than not. In other words, how you use and where you place a mic is just as big a component of the "sound" as the mic itself.

In no particular order, some things that make one mic sound different than another in a given application are:

- Directional response-- an SM57 has a very tight cardioid pattern that is excellent at recording the stuff you point it at and rejecting everything else. This gives it a very close, focused, tight sound that happens to complement other features of the mic. It also makes it very difficult to use for vocal recordings, because every movement of the singer's head alters the sound. It furthermore lends the mic a potentially unnatural "closed-in" or "recorded" sound, which could be good or bad. A U87, on the other hand, has a very broad, big, forgiving pickup pattern, which is reflected in the sound. The U87 gives full-bodied, open, natural-sounding recordings of pretty much whatever is within its intuitive pickup radius. This makes it a very easy-to use mic for vocal recordings, but also a potentially problematic one to use for, say, close-miking a drum kit. It also makes the mic susceptible to the sound of the room. Which could be a problem in subpar recording environments. The U87 will give a full, lush, natural recording of a boxy, cheap-sounding bedroom studio if that's where you put it. Could be good or bad.

-Proximity effect. All directional mics change in dynamic and frequency response as you move closer to or further from the source. Speaking broadly, the closer to the source you get, the more the low end fills out and builds up. This can work for you or against you, and different mics can have different kinds and degrees of proximity effect. A mic with a big proximity effect can give a singer with a weak voice a big, movie-announcer, "voice of God" sound, but it could make a rich, gravelly baritone sound like the mic is in his stomach. It could make an airy alto diva sound like a throaty roadhouse karaoke girl. It can give power and throaty "chest" to screaming rock vocals, but it can also exaggerate pitchiness or vague tonality in untrained singers. With instruments, the same kinds of problems and benefits can pose similar conundrums. Moving the mic further away or closer to the source changes the proximity effect, but it also changes other aspects of the sound in ways that are inter-connected with the mic's polarity and sensitivity. Any of which may be good or bad.

- Sensitivity and dynamics response. This is intrinsically related to both of the above effects. The afore-mentioned U87 is a wonderfully sensitive mic, that picks up and highlights shimmering harmonics and "air" that can sound realer than real. They can also turn into gritty, brittle hash in the extreme highs when recorded through cheap preamps or processed with digital eq. The afore-mentioned SM57 is, on the other hand, a rugged, working-class mic, designed for military applications to deliver clear, intelligible speech. No shimmer or fainting beauties here, just articulate, punchy upper mids that cut right through noise and dense mixes. Either one could be better or worse, depending on what you're after. Sensitivity and dynamics response work differently when recording sources of differing volume. Some mics (like the SM57) tend to "flatten and fatten" when pushed hard, giving a kind of mechanical compression that can sound artificial and "recorded," although potentially in a good way, especially for stuff like explosive snare, lead guitars, or screaming indie-rock vocals. Other mics overload in rich, firey ways or simply crap out when pushed too hard. This last is particularly common among ribbon mics and cheap Chinese-capsule condensers, which sometimes sound great right up to the point where they sound outright bad. Once again, careful listening is the key.
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Old 12-11-2008, 08:48 PM   #69
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The very best (and most expensive) mics deliver predictable, intuitive, and usable dynamics, proximity effect, sensitivity and pickup patterns in a wide variety of applications, as well as very consistent manufacturing quality that assures consistent frequency response and output levels from one mic to the next. Cheaper mics are often much better at one thing than another, or are hard to match up pairs (one mic outputs 3dB higher than another, or has slightly different frequency response or proximity effect, etc).

Inexpensive mics are not necessarily bad-sounding, especially these days. There is a tidal wave of inexpensive Chinese condenser capsules that are modeled on (i.e. ripped off of) the hard work that went into making the legendary mics of the studio world. There is a lot of trial-and-error that goes into designing world-class mics, and a lot of R&D cost that is reflected in the price. For this reason and others, top-tier mics tend to be made with uncompromising manufacturing, workmanship, and materials standards, all of which cost money.

Moral issues of supporting dedicated craftsmanship aside, whether it is worthwhile to pay for that extra percent of quality when you can buy a dozen similar Chinese mics for the money becomes almost philosophical past a certain point. If you're building a home addition, professional-grade power tools will make the job a lot easier and go a lot faster, but flimsy discount-store hand tools can still get the job done if you're willing to deal with more time and frustration. If you've ever tried a building project or worked a trade, you'll understand immediately what I'm talking about.

But since most musos are work-averse layabouts when it comes to practical arts, these can be hard distinctions to draw. If you've ever read reviews of the modern wave of cheap condenser mics, they almost all read the same: "surprisingly good for the money! Not quite as good as (fill in vintage mic here), but a useful studio backup."

By that measure, the average starving-artist-type could have a closet full of backup mics backing up nothing. The reality is that these second-tier mics CAN be used to make first-class recordings, but they often require a little more work, a little more time spent on placement, a few more compromises, a little more willingness to work with the sounds you can get as opposed to getting the sound you want, and so on.

A commercial studio has to be able to set up and go. If the first mic on the stand in the iso booth isn't quite the right sound, they swap it out for the next one. Three mics later and they're ready to roll tape.

In the home studio world of fewer and more compromised mics, it might take trying the mics in different places, in different rooms, at different angles. Some cheap mics might sound great but have terrible sibilance unless they're angled just so. That might mean an extra four takes, or it might mean recording different sections of the vocal with the mic placed slightly differently, which might in turn mean more processing work to the get the vocal to sound seamless.

These are the tradeoffs when you're a self-produced musician. The gear in professional studios is not magic (well, maybe one or two pieces are, but most of it is ordinary iron and copper). The engineer is not superhuman. The wood and the acoustics are not made by gods. But the tools, experience, versatility, and professional expertise are all, at the very least, great time-savers, and time is worth money.

If you have more time than money, or if you prefer the satisfaction or flexibility of doing it yourself, you can absolutely do so. You just have to trust your ears, and keep at it until it sounds right.
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Old 12-11-2008, 09:55 PM   #70
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I want to double back to this notion of "all you need is ears." If you have read through these first few posts, I hope that it is becoming clear that this principle does not denigrate the work or the value of recording professionals. On the contrary, it is ordinary civilian ears that distinguish the work of great recordists. And there are some great ones, people who deliver recorded works that are beautiful in their own right, like photographers or painters who make gorgeous pictures of everything from old shoes to pretty girls.

But it is also those same ordinary civilian ears that allow us to hear when our own recordings are substandard.

I am taking it for granted that anyone reading this thread has already, at some point or another, made good-sounding music. There was a time when all that recordings aspired to was accurate recordings of good-sounding music. This objective is preposterously easy these days. I recently tried a $50 Earthworks knockoff mic made by Behringer that is absolutely fool-the-ear accurate. Throw it in a room and record a conversation with this mic and play it back through decent speakers and the people in the room will start replying to the recorded conversation.

But that is not usually what people are looking for in modern popular music recordings. These days, everything is supposed to be larger-than-life, realer-than-real, hyped and firey without sounding "distorted." We are no longer creating accurate recordings of live performances, we are creating artificial soundscapes that the live concerts will later try to duplicate with studio tricks.

You have whispered vocals over a full metal band backed a symphony orchestra, with a delicate finger-picked acoustic guitar on stage right. And it's all supposed to sound real, and big, and natural. And when the singer goes from a whisper to a scream, the scream is supposed to *sound* 20dB louder without actually *being* any louder than the whisper. Both of which are supposed to sound clear and natural over the backing band, which is of course supposed to sound loud as hell, louder than the philharmonic behind it. And everything is supposed to sound clearly articulated and distinct, including the chimey little arpeggiated guitar. And by the way, can we squeeze in this low-fi record loop and make it sound proportionate like an old record player but also clearly audible.

And the answer is yes, we can do all this. We can make conversation-level hip-hop lyrics sound bigger than explosions, we can make acoustic folk duos blend seamlessly with industrial drum machines, we can make punk rock bands that sound indie and badass while singing autotuned barbershop quartet harmonies with forty tracks of rhythm guitar. We can make country-western singers sound like heavy metal and heavy metal bands sound like new age and we can make "authentic audiophile" jazz recordings where the cymbals sound twenty feet wide and fifty feet overhead.

All these things we can do. But these are no "captured" sounds, any more than a Vegas hotel is an "authentic" reproduction of an Egyptian pyramid or a Parisian street. These are manufactured illusions. Unlike a Vegas hotel, the construction costs are almost nil. Reaper and programs like it have practically everything you need to create almost any soundscape you can imagine. All you need is ears.

This might sound like a rant, but my point is a very specific and practical one. Sound is at your disposal. Modern technology has made its capture, generation, and manipulation incredibly cheap. You can twist it and bend it and break it and re-shape it in any way you imagine. The power at your fingertips is huge. There is no excuse for dull, noisy, bland recordings except user error.

There is a lot more ground to cover, but no way to cover it all, or even most of it. Your ears are a far better guide than I or anyone else. Anything I or anyone can describe about sound, you can hear better.
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Old 12-11-2008, 10:23 PM   #71
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Good work YEP..
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Old 12-12-2008, 12:08 AM   #72
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Great, great stuff, Yep. Thank you.
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Old 12-12-2008, 02:40 AM   #73
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agree, yep, you've hit the point why I stopped (...err... never started, actually) any further cash-flow for expensive gear, heading myself to get my best...

I remember the old days (no daws or plugins) when I used to buy myself a brand new electric guitar or my quadraverb, tweaking for days just to get the sound I was looking for, never giving up until the good sound came out...
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Old 12-12-2008, 09:49 AM   #74
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Yep,

This is a wonderful thread, very informative and very well written. Now I realize that you stated you don't have the desire to write a book (you definitely have the capability). Would you consider publishing this in a .PDF for download, I would love to have a copy of this. I have a feeling a few others might feel the same.

Great work!

Peace.
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Old 12-12-2008, 12:35 PM   #75
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bluzkat View Post
Yep,

This is a wonderful thread, very informative and very well written. Now I realize that you stated you don't have the desire to write a book (you definitely have the capability). Would you consider publishing this in a .PDF for download, I would love to have a copy of this. I have a feeling a few others might feel the same.

Great work!

Peace.
I do. If not yep himself (since he's already offering enough ), maybe we can take all of his posts and compile it into a PDF document that he can review and then distribute. I'm not all that good at this PDF stuff but I'll certainly volunteer to do this.
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Old 12-12-2008, 01:44 PM   #76
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Shemp,

Yea I would give some 'time' also, but it all depends on how yep feels about it. It's his call.
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Old 12-12-2008, 01:53 PM   #77
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Quote:
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Shemp,

Yea I would give some 'time' also, but it all depends on how yep feels about it. It's his call.
yep. uh... no pun intended.... lol
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Old 12-12-2008, 04:40 PM   #78
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Hi -
I thought this by Yep was fantastic, pure gold. and i'm normally understated....
I secretly hope he's not finished! - it touched on many things I think and have arrived at thinking over the years regarding music/recording but feel no-one ever believes and it was also presented so eloquently... some good juices new bits of info too of course.
I hope my sig down there shows I was on the right line!


For my own personal use I have just copied the YEP bits into word and made a few things bold and hit save. took all of several minutes!

Since this is sitting on a public forum right now I shouldn't think there would be any problems making such a collated .pdf etc. available - but I will holdback till I get some feedback and/or blessing.

I strongly feel that recordists new and old should be sat down and made to read this thoroughly and then made to go and make some tunes, preferably with the aid of Reaper but this goes way beyond `which DAW` type stuff.

hey you could even shove this in every reaper install! one hell of an enabler then... Yep can take a $ for every one! ha
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Old 12-12-2008, 08:17 PM   #79
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Wow... this is just unbelievably good.


Thanks Yep


U da man
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Old 12-13-2008, 04:59 AM   #80
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This thread rocks! Thank you for your generosity and your time.
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