Outdoor Recordings!!!

[ratmandtotti]

Long Version = There's nothing better than taking your favorite two arts, music and recording, outdoors?! Well maybe there are better things but what ever. A few weeks ago, my brother and I went on a family trip to a small town called Wiarton. It's a beautiful little town located in central Ontario, about 2:30 to 3 hours away from Toronto. Anyways, we stayed in a motel that backed on to the spectacular Georgian Bay and so I got this crazy idea that I would record some tunes right next to the water. It was a very quiet environment since it was far away from the craziness of the city which is always a good thing for recording! Luckily I had planned ahead and brought some of my recording gear along for the trip: my alesis io 14 interface, my macbook, an audio technica 2020 mic, a mic stand, a pair of m-audio headphones and my dad's old ovation acoustic guitar and of course all the necessary cables. Unfortunately me and my brother's first attempt at recording outside was a little tough since there was a bit of wind in the air. We had to find the perfect spot to set up right behind a tree that blocked the wind from reaching us. Once that was done, the recording part went smoothly. I swear our cheap 2020 mic sounded 10 times better outside. There was practically no reverb from walls closing and reflecting the sound. And the waves from the bay sounded awesome in the background. I did take some huge risks bringing all my equipment outside since there was no power supply anywhere so all the power was coming from my macbook's battery. My macbook is what surprised me most! It was powering my interface which was in turn powering my mic with phantom power and the battery still wasn't draining that fast. Another problem we encountered was bugs and spiders crawling all over our computer and mic. And the absolute worst possible thing that happened was rain!!!!!!!!!!!! About an hour into our session, rain started pouring down so we had to cram everything into our bags as if our life depended on it. Fortunately, nothing was damaged.

Condensed Version = OK! I think that's enough story telling! I feel like I'm back in school writing an English paper. Just listen to the recordings for yourselves and tell me if the outdoors bring anything more to the world of recording than the indoors. I personally think way more recordings should be done outdoors! Has anyone else tried doing this?

The songs are very poorly performed and in no way perfected since we had limited time to complete them due to the stupid rain! In fact, I haven't even edited them yet. They're just dry recordings. I did adjust the volumes though. And I used one mic for both guitar and vocals. So only one track.

[ratmandtotti]

In no way are these songs even close to being finished. They're just rough/scratch ideas.

[edub357]

i think the outdoor recording sounds fine, i didnt hear any cross audio that interfered with your recording and for being a dry scratch track it sounds good. the second acoustic song was this done outside as well? around 17seconds into it i hear birds chirpping(or is that in my head lol) i think it brings a nice element into the acoustics. i use bird chirps and dog barks in my hip hop beats and people dont even know that they are those sounds because i blend them in to make a smooth feeling.

[ratmandtotti]

Originally Posted by edub357

i think the outdoor recording sounds fine, i didnt hear any cross audio that interfered with your recording and for being a dry scratch track it sounds good. the second acoustic song was this done outside as well? around 17seconds into it i hear birds chirpping(or is that in my head lol) i think it brings a nice element into the acoustics. i use bird chirps and dog barks in my hip hop beats and people dont even know that they are those sounds because i blend them in to make a smooth feeling.

Ya you're absolutely right, those are real birds chirping in the background. All the tracks were done outside. The only thing is that the last (third) track was slightly edited. I used quite a bit of plugin compression to bring the volume up. You can tell that track is a lot louder than the other two. Thanks a lot for the response! The key to recording outside is finding a peaceful and quiet area where the only backgrounds noises are from animals or water. Unless of course you want a noisy backdrop to the song.

[edub357]

gotcha! like i said i use animal sounds and they really do work well i guess it tricks your mind and pulls you into the mix more? keep it up the main vocal performance was great i forgot to put that in my original comment.