Help: A More Comprehensive Recording Book

[brandondrury]

I'm making the final touches to the home recording book. Sorry I've been away from the forum. It's killing me knowing that some of you have had questions and I've not been able to address those. At the moment, it looks like I have 745 forum posts to respond to. YES!!!!

It's great to see RecordingReview.com busy, but a dude has to sleep once in a while!

If all goes well, I'll have the text for the book finished tonight. While I've certainly been collecting what seems to be a never ending supply of topics to discuss, myths to shoot down, or rants I need to make (I've had to edit those down a bit...I'm long winded sometimes! Ha ha) I figured that I should take it one step further.

So............

What are your Top 3 recording questions?

• In other words, if you could sit down and ask me anything you wanted about the topic home recording, music, etc what would they be?
• What problems are you having?
• What solutions are you looking for?

Go ahead and just hit reply and reply to this thread. The idea is simply to make sure that I don't leave anything out of the home recording book. I want to be as thorough as possible!

Brandon

[scottrichardson]

One major question from me..

1. What golden rules are there with mixing your bass and kick drums. I always find my basslines and kick drums sound flat compared to a pro tune. Particularly referring to electronica/trance etc.

[John Spence]

Ok Brandon, here we go.

1)..Why is the best take always the one that you did'nt record?

2)..Why do singers always develop a cold/sore throat/flu/swollen gums the night before they come in the studio?

3)..Why does a Marshall JCM 800 which has worked perfectly through several years of gigging suddenly exhibit a loud annoying hum when you're trying to record it? ("It's never done that before").

I could go on but I'm sure you see where I'm coming from.
All the best with the book!

[bilco]

I guess my 3 big questions right now would be:

1. Is room treatment really necessary for the home recordist? (Is it necessary for tracking as well or just mixing? Is a part of the room isolated for mixing and treated with bass traps on the front side and those temporary office partitions behind the person mixing okay as opposed to treating the whole room?)
2. When is enough enough? (preamps, AD, DA, monitors, mics, all that stuff....)
3. How do you get objective about whether the talent in front of the mic merits the cash outlay on the gear?

bilco

[El Jefe]

Great forum! Good luck with the book.
My questions...

1) How do I get that hard driving, pumping, asskicking, energy into my mixes as I hear it on all the great rock records out there? Like Foofighters, Danko Jones, QOTSA, Racounteurs...

2) Why do my mixes always tend to be a bit to dry or too wet and too bright or too dull? I just never seem to hit it were it needs to be.

3) What is a good allround compression technique for the full mix? I always seem to screw up the masterbuss with compression but it still sounds better than without any.

[feralfrailer]

right on Brandon

you don't know how timely this is...

okay I have a computer (Dell Vostro 200, 1.86 Mhz Duo Core processor, 160GB hard-drive, 2MB RAM), an audio/midi interface (E-MU 0404/USB), a keyboard controller (E-MU Xboard 49) and monitors (Alesis M1 Active 520) a condensor microphone (MXL V63M) and a microphone pre-amp (ART MP Studio). That's my budget home recording studio, really budget, no laughing.

my audio/midi interface came with every flavor of sequencer, Ableton, Cakewalk, Cubase and a bunch of other virtual stuff like Proteus VX.

I want to introduce a synthesizer (Alesis Micron) into this mix, making it a slave to my controller, but able to interface via MIDI to my sequencers. I'm infatuated with the idea of making my own sounds vice all the presets of sampling keyboards.

Does this sound feasible? Can I make everything work together?

You can leave the microphone and pre-amp out of the picture for now because what I want to focus on now is predominately electronic music, not DJ, not Hip-hop, not trance, dance or whatever, synthesizer music ala Tomita, Kitaro, Suzanne Cianni, Chris Spheeris, etc.

Thanks for this opportunity to pose a specific question to the master.

Right on!

[John Spence]

Hey! Some of you guys are up late (or early)!
Bilco, some thoughts...
1)..My ideal room treatment is a king-size bed, a wide screen TV and a minibar.
2)..Enough is never enough.
3)..If the talent on front of the mic is really good then you would work for nothing, if it's really bad but they're paying you then smile and do the best you can.

[TommyK]

One major question from me..

1. What golden rules are there with mixing your bass and kick drums. I always find my basslines and kick drums sound flat compared to a pro tune. Particularly referring to electronica/trance etc.

This is also my top question. Not just for trance/electronica, but rock beats too. To elaborate further:

1. What mics and mic setups have been successful for kick drums?

2. What compression and EQ techniques are good?

3. Does (or what) room sound / reverb modules contribute to good kick and bass sounds?

[yohami]

Hah, its more like one question with a total newbie approach, but its the real shit:

What do I need to sound like a pro? no, REALLY.

Whats the minimum REAL budged I need (instead of a list of things I can get for under 500), what are the list of techniques I REALLY need to master, just to mix the primary drum-bass-guitar-keyboard-voice-chorus tracks. Just the basics, minimun budged, minimun techniques, minimun NEEDED to make it sound RIGHT. Not decent, not acceptable, but LIKE A FUCKING RECORD.

Programmers have their "hello world". Something that sets ups the basics and lets you get things right from the start. A template that illustrates how to set up the thing and make it run. A real starting point.

Doctors are taught how to cut, they dont start killing people and then learn slowly from their mistakes. But we kill recordings and mixes and spend years and years trying to figure it all out, like a money with a time machine.

Thats my 1 cent

[BushmasterM4]

1. Did anyone else tear up watching Wall-E ?
2. Why is most of todays music produced so bad ?
3. Why do I stay a Bengals fan year after year ?

[the.blode]

I have only two questions


1) Where do you draw the line on the tradeoff between volume/intensity in the mix and space/clarity? A record such as 'In the Absence of truth' by Isis is as loud as most, yet there is still so much space in the mix - what is the methodology behind this?


2) Is the path to home recording and/or project studio assembly really a rewarding one? or would a would-be engineer/producer be better off finding a job in a commercial studio?

[Vulconizer]

1. How do I make enough money at this to not ever have to worry about money again so I can r e a l l y experiment with my techniques without distraction?

2. Does anyone else talk to themselves and cackle like a mad scientist when they discover a new and "cool" recording trick?

3. I want to know when I'll figure out the low end in our room so I can get better translation of the low end. Not really a question unless you're psycho, er, psychic.

[Singularity]

Hey,

Hope the book is going well.

I'm in the process of figuring out stereo buses at the moment, and I'm a bit confused as to how they actually work. Does it double up a mono wave and bounce it left and right?

Applying effects to a bus instead of a wave seems to work better and save system resources, especially when the same compression is needed on several tracks, but for me it's still a lot of guess work.

Also, many surround sound systems use proLogicII processing to include more speakers while playing a stereo song, how does that work? I've not had much luck getting one of my stereo tracks to use the rear speakers, regardless of how much panning I include. (maybe the problem lays with my cluelessness about stereo buses... )

I'd like to know more about surround mixing, because: Why are we still working in stereo anyway?? We have better disks, surround systems are prevalent, we have the technology... So much room for creative mixing in a 3D audio space.

Hope these sorts of things make it into the book!

Thanks

[magno]

Just 1.
How do you put up with all these crazy musicians coming in to your home?

[Vulconizer]

Just 1.
How do you put up with all these crazy musicians coming in to your home?

Heh. My guess is they think he's the crazy one.