My Best Advice to All Recording Engineers

[lolzgreg]

I'm hoping this sucker gets stickied. Here's a summation of almost everything important I've learned.

A: Never doubt your own aptitude and ability

Audio engineering isn't something for everyone, but it is something that anyone can do. If you have a will to record music, please go do it. I started out with my Presonus Firepod and a Shure SM58 a long while ago and I'm still using them.

This audio engineering thing popped into my mind a long time ago. I was hoping that I could record my own music and enjoy listening back to it. It became so much more. Here's some advice:

Most clients you'll ever have really like when you know what you're talking about.

If you know you're going to end up working with someone, or WANT the opportunity to do such:

a. Get to know them
-find out what music they like and listen to it
-find out what kind of sound they're looking for
-provide some kind of samples to them

b. Never talk in circles
c. Be up-front and polite
d. BE CONFIDENT.

Most clients you'll ever have really like when you know what you're talking about.

Now being an audio engineer is real important, but so is being a producer.

Some bands really like it when you give them direction, others don't but lets consider the following situation.

You're a guitar player/engineer but you don't know much about bass or drums or singing...

"I'm not a drummer, how could I possibly offer advice on his playing," "Oh the drums sound good enough," "But I don't know anything about that."

GUESS WHAT JUNIOR, ITS TIME TO LEARN

The problem here is that if you want to be an excellent engineer and producer, you have to "be the drummer" sometimes. I'm not talking about playing them either, you have to be "better than the drummer" on occasions as well.

I recently spent nine hours tracking drums for a hardcore band I'm recording. It sucked the big time chode.

The second I sat down and he started playing I knew it was going to be a long day. The band was in a rush to record since the drummer was going away. As he banged away, I heard some parts were too busy, some were inappropriate, some were great... I sat down and worked out his parts with him BARRE BY BARRE. We punched in and punched out practically every 30 seconds or so. I warned him that this technique can be very messy and unrealistic sounding in cases. I also got a signed waiver from him saying that if his drums were un-palatable that I could replace them with a drum VST and keep silent about it

So what am I getting at?

Every piece of work you record represents you (or misrepresents you) 10000000%. If you ever plan on taking this whole recording thing seriously, you have to think twice about everything you track.

Always have plan B

The performance is very important in a recording, but so is the tone. If you record an awesome band who is really into their recording (uh, who wouldn't be if you're paying and it ends up representing YOU) and you track a mediocre drum/guitar/bass/vocal tone, they ain't gonna be happy. LUCKILY, there is an answer to this madness:

PLAN B!

No, not the 72-hour morning-after pill, silly.

The alternate plan.

Aside from PUSHING and I mean STEAM ROLLING (politely, of course) the band or individual you're tracking to perform to their fullest extent (even if this means taking HOURS AND HOURS to just get that one part right), you need to have some kind of "insurance here." It will not only make your job eaiser, but ultimately make the band happier. Take the following into consideration:

I. Vocals: Vocals are one thing that you can't fix too much from an audio engineering perspective. If the singer has a pretty crappy take timbre-wise but has good intonation, you can't really do a thing (you can "tune" a vocal with autotune or something similar for semi-bad pitch though). You can't eq a bad performance out nor a bad recording capture. Work in a nice environment. If the singer is sick or stuffy or uncomfortable, find a different day to get the job done. Make sure you use a pop-screen and a decent mic that works for the singer. I could go on forever.

II. Guitar: Let's face it folks, most people hear the guitar more than any other instrument on the mix. It's tone really matters. Here's what you can do to save your rear-end.

GET A CLEAN DI OF EVERY SINGLE PERFORMANCE!

"What did you say, lolgreg?"

GET A CLEAN DI OF EVERY SINGLE PERFORMANCE!!!!!!!!

I would recommend the following:

a. Send the guitar signal through a splitter into whatever amp or device you're recording and a good DI into your interface. One signal is dry and one is your tone-captured signal. Monitor only the amped up signal.

"What's so good about the DI track, lolgreg?"

b. Get some sort of software based amp simulator that works post-signal (like Revalver or Amplitube). Send your signal from a good DI into the interface. This program will not affect the incoming (DI'D) signal AT ALL. You can use this track for your main track, use it with any zillion combination of amp sims and affects, or REAMP!

Reamping, for those who don't know, is when you send a signal from your interface to a unit that converts it back to a guitar-level impedance and sends it back into an amp so it's practically like playing guitar right into the amp (and will sound just like it). Now you can tweak endlessly and find your "best possible tone" and get it right. The band already did their part, now its on you.

"I wish I coulda done this better..."

OH WAIT, YOU HAVE A SECOND CHANCE.

Same concept works for bass guys!

III: Drums:

a. If your room doesn't sound good, try to get the ceiling as dead as possible and the space behind the drumkit as dead as possible, otherwise it will be direct-reflection mania into the OH's and direct mics.

b. Get your overhead mics as in phase and as awesome sounding as possible. Do a good job on the close mics as well. If your mic'd sound is usable and nice, amazing. If not you can... SAMPLE REPLACE!

c. You can use drumagog and great drum samples to replace the drums semi-realistically or as the song calls for it. You can also use KTdrumtrigger to make the individual close mic'd audio tracks into midi data and use your real overheads and a program like Toontrack's Superior Drummer 2.0 for the drum sounds (this works great).

Does the gear really matter?

I'm going to tell you the bottom line from all I've learned.

a. Get a good interface (Presonus Firestudio/Firepod being my favorite, which is also quite cost effective), MOTU stuff, Digidesign stuff etc. It will do the job, you don't need something super expensive, not even to make insane quality recordings.

b. Get a good computer that won't explode when you work with it and that has compatible firewire/usb ports and use it as a dedicated recording computer with VERY LIMITED internet access.

c. Get good cables and a few good mics. Get a few 57's, a good sounding vocal condenser, specialty mics, etc.

d. GET GOOD SOUNDING INSTRUMENTS AND AMPLIFIERS, PLEASE.

Any of you guys who think the piece of whatever IN FRONT of the microphone doesn't matter much to the outcome of the recording, you're INSANE. A Great player with a great guitar into a great amp with good settings and proper placement will sound amazing in front of a $100 microphone. A decent player with a guitar thats falling apart into a $200 dollar practice amp in front of a $10,000 mic into a vintage Neve board with with a zillion expensive preamps and compressors WONT. Blow your money on a great guitar amp and a great guitar, great bass, great drums, great cymbals, etc. There's a good reason why that gear exists and there's a good chance the band you're recording WONT have it.

The LAST THINGS YOU NEED are to upgrade are preamps, A/D D/A converters and outboard gear. Andy Sneap (the guru of metal producers) said he mixes completely inside the box (as in plugins and DIGITAL audio files only) almost all of the time. Most people in the big studios have an Empirical Labs Distressor and a few beastly preamps, but they can get away with out it, trust me.

USE THE INTERNET, ITS A VAST RESOURCE THAT TAUGHT ME ALMOST ALL OF THE AUDIO ENGINEERING INFORMATION I KNOW!!!!!!!

Closing notes:

I hope this thing was useful. I know it may be a little disorganized, BUT I needed to get this stuff out of my brain.

-Greg

EDIT:

I would recommend the Countryman Type 85 as a great DI box.
I would also recommend the John Cuniberti Reamp V2 as your reamp box.

[Eric Scholz]

Great thread! Stickyyyyyyy?

[yancrazy]

As a jerry springers after thought i got from this that its very important to get a good quality signal into your recording instead of trying to fix or repair bad audio.

[TonyB]

It's definitely not disorganized. Very well done!

[Ross111]

Awesome thread. +1 for sticky.

[MarkAH]

I like this thread, you described my golden rule aswell! "Sh*t in, Sh*t out"

[Audio~Geek]

The thread has been successfully Stuck.

Great stuff Greg

[lolzgreg]

Originally Posted by Audio~Geek

The thread has been successfully Stuck.

Great stuff Greg

Wonderful, now I have to amend it 'till the day I die.

-Greg

[TonyB]

Originally Posted by lolgreg

Wonderful, now I have to amend it 'till the day I die.

-Greg

Yes you do! It's already out of date!!!

[kheftel]

Awesome post. I really enjoyed hearing that you can get stellar recordings off of a FireStudio interface (I have one) or a Digi interface, and that the outboard gear and expensive converters aren't as important as the musical instruments and room, aka the things that are actually MAKING the sound. I've spent as much time as anyone dreaming about high-end preamps and processors, when it appears I should be spending more time on room treatment, and getting the musicians to PRACTICE.