My Best Advice to All Recording Engineers

[KEVIN BALLARD]

Record All Styles And Types Of Music Approach Each Session With Open Mind You Can Learn From Anybody Just Watch And Listen

[garageband]

That's a pretty long song/book title.

[angeltapes]

V useful although (at the risk of getting off topic) I'm a big metal fan I don't own any of Andy Sneap's albums. For my money, the metal guru is Rick Rubin, for recording 'Reign In Blood' and 'Trouble'. Modern metal is too slick.

[kheftel]

@The Music Lab - do you need a website?

[lolzgreg]

Originally Posted by angeltapes

V useful although (at the risk of getting off topic) I'm a big metal fan I don't own any of Andy Sneap's albums. For my money, the metal guru is Rick Rubin, for recording 'Reign In Blood' and 'Trouble'. Modern metal is too slick.

Metal is my favorite, so don't get nervous:

Andy Sneap albums:

Nevermore: Dead Heart in a Dead World, This Godless Endeavour
Devildriver: The Last Kind Words
Killswitch Engage: The End of Heartache, Alive or Just Breathing
Opeth: Deliverance
Arch Enemy: Wages Of Sin Anthems Of Rebellion, Dead Eyes See No Future, Doomsday Machine, Live Apocalypse

[lolzgreg]

And my reamping rant... take a listen guys!

Direct to amp vs Reamping

[eduardoxm]

awesome. thanks.

[Freddy G]

Please allow me to offer some advice as well.

• Make sure your instruments are well set-up (preferably by a respected pro). You'd be surprised at how many people think it's easy to set-up intonation on a guitar or bass. It's not. There are so many little snags, for instance...you put a new set of strings on and set intonation by comparing 12th fret harmonics to a fretted 12th fret note and then simply adjust the saddle until they both match, right?
  Nope....this is the most common mistake I see ( I have been a pro luthier / guitar maker for 23 years). Most people don't realize that until the string is stretched and that slight bit of rounded overshoot the string has as it comes off the saddle is straight, your intonation readings are lying to you...they are telling you it's sharper than it really is. There are other problems as well that can't be solved by a simple intonation setting. If your frets are pitted, or wide and flat on top your intonation readings may look OK at the 12th fret but elsewhere on the fingerboard they could be out significantly.
  Another biggie is the way the nut is adjusted. Most nuts are cut on the high side right out of the factory. Intonation seems especially sour when playing open chords around the first few frets. Ever picked up a guitar and wondered why you can't have a sweet open D chord as well as a sweet open Amaj? It's the nut! There have been some innovative strides in this area (buzz feiten, earvana.....) well, actually savvy luthiers have addressed this issue long before these guys patented their systems....but I digress
  The point is, when you're recording, your instruments are under the microscope and you will forever live with the result.....make sure they are in top shape!

• I see a trend happening with a new generation of recording enthusiasts because of the ability to have total recall when mixing "in the box". I think that the ability to tweak a mix as much and as long as you want to is a double edged sword. On the one hand it is so fantastic that you can recall a mix and perfect every little detail, then listen to it in your car, at home, at a friends place, post it on the internet and get all kinds of feedback, then came back and tweak some more. Basically we now have the ability to tweak until we think it's just perfect. The real danger is that we can easily tweak until we milk all the life out of the mix and make it safe and boring. I see it again and again (without a doubt, I have been guilty of it too...)
  You know what they say about first impressions? Chances are that after you've listened to something a hundred times, you just can't see the big picture anymore! Ever worked on a mix for so long and then somebody comes along and after one listen they point out things to you that made you think "holy crap, you're right!" ? That's the power of first impression.
  I have a little exercise that I do once a week that i think is very useful. Each week one of my friends will send me a multitrack tune for me to mix....there is only one rule- I have to finish it within 1 hour. The reason this is a good exercise is that you have to use your instincts, your gut feelings, there's no time to fall into limbo by over-thinking things (I like to call that "analysis paralysis")

• Get a gig doing live sound mixing. Find a club that has a decent PA and even one decent compressor, a delay and reverb, and try to get a job mixing some club acts or bar bands there. This is the ultimate experience of mixing using your guts and instincts. You are in the moment, there are no second chances. You have an audience that is listening to what you're doing....this is so very different than sitting alone in your room with your computer. Many people don't even know what it's like to mix with both hands on real faders and knobs on analogue equipment. Trust me, it's liberating and you will hate your mouse afterwards For me, live mixing is fun and thrilling....especially when you know it sounds great and the audience knows it too.
  One beautiful thing about live mixing is that you never have to second guess what your mix will sound like on this system or that system. All that matters is what it sounds like right now. Because of this, you may find yourself doing things to make the mix sound good that you would never do when working on a "studio" mix. For example you might apply some wild or drastic EQ on a kick or vocal. What I'm saying is, you don't worry that you're not doing things "by the book" (eg. you can't boost the EQ that much). The only thing that matters is that you make it sound good to everyone in the room no matter how you have to do it.

• Stay creative, don't fall into traps where you limit yourself to "this is how I always do it". Sure, use what you know as a starting template....but always experiment, try new things and above all, trust your ears

[lolzgreg]

That's some amazing advice. I know all about what you're saying with guitar setup. Every guitar I record, I charge the owner $40 dollars plus a set of strings to intonate and set it up. I always end up re-cutting the nuts, stretching the strings and THEN intonating. If the client doesn't agree, they use one of my instruments or I throw 'em out the back door.

In efforts to what I said before about DI's and reamping, it's a blessing. I did six hours of reamping today for a full length tweaking the tone until it was batting 100%. You have to be ESPECIALLY careful when you have a two guitarist band and have rhythm and lead parts. If you get a thick sounding rhythm tone, its SUPER UBER IMPORTANT that you spend a lot of time on your lead tone (today I ended up using a Mesa Dual Racktifer--yes, the rackmount--on vintage mode for rhythms and a 5150 II on the crunch channel for leads). I went through three amps before I found out that the 5150 II was the ideal amp for leads.

[Freddy G]

Hey logreg,
Yep...reamping is a way of life for me too
Engineers have been reamping since my dad was knee high to a grasshopper.
The thing that just blew me away was that somebody actually patented the technique in the early 90s....presumably because nobody else had ever thought about patenting something so simple! Hmmmm maybe I should patent the word WARM hehe . So they charge more than $200 for something that I built for myself and about 8 of my friends for $30 a box.