Recording & Home Studio Tips:
DO YOU NEED A PRODUCER?
Lots of times I'll hear bands play and they mostly have their acts together. The better ones are super-rehearsed and have performed many times so they know which songs work, that is, which tunes get people out on the floor dancin!'! Musicians can have tunnel vision, however, particularly with their original songs, to wit; the soul-searching, 8-minute-long ballad that the lead singer will not part with, no way, no how. Also, each and every one of the members of the band will have an opinion on the tone of the mix, and they might only be referring to their own instrument-"…...I can't hear the_______________(insert instrument) loud enough!............" There is also the issue of song choice for the album that will mean the difference between good commercial hits and obscure critical acclaim. If your band has had any of these issues, it might be time to find someone who will steer your recording project-a producer.
WHAT DO THEY DO?
A producer's role is not to play the music but give opinions on what kind of music works. The producer takes the 20 songs (or more) band members (or an outside songwriter) have written and chooses the 12 which should be recorded. Lots of times producers have been engineers so they have a good idea how to get a particular tone out of an amp or maybe even what kind of weird recording techniques to use for a song. The band trusts the producer, because they know they are too close to the songs to be objective anymore. The producer has hung out with the band enough to know all about them and they are all friends, for the most part. Look at the album credits of your favorite artists and chances are, you will find the same producer for many of their multi-platinum records. So how do you find these people?
If you have a good sound man, and you give him as much credit as your bass player as to your success , then he might be a good producer. A decent manager who gets you lots of jobs would be a good candidate as well. A member of your band whom you regard as the engine and the sparkplug might also work, but watch out it doesn't turn into a another Creedence Clearwater!. If none of the above are an option, you might have to suck up and hire a producer. If a record company takes a solid interest in you and they are more than some MySpace kid and can actually get your CD into Walmarts, they will usually provide a producer.
The relationship between the producer and the musicians has to be one that is totally open and willing to take criticism without getting mad or having your feelings hurt. The band will trust the producer to help make a good recording and the producer will take input from the band and not be a totalitarian facist pig. The producer is trying to help you be more popular.
HERE ARE THE ROLES……….
I'm the engineer, I place the mics and record at suitable levels with good tone so as to mix better. I take care of all the issues with the computer, interface, clocking, etc etc in other words, all the things you don't want to know about that doesn't have anything to do with musical notes. Sometimes I'm too busy to produce, but I'll tell you if you're out of tune or out of sync.
The producer tells the singer to sing with more passion (...ever heard the story of Peter Gabriel getting duct-taped to a post 8 feet in the air and told to sing? Yep, that was the producer's idea), or which lead guitar take is good enough, and they will also tell the band if they are out of time or out of sync. He knows when the band is hitting the wall and needs a break. Most importantly, the producer is responsible for the mix and tells the engineer how the mixing process should go. He/she will certainly take input from the band but the band needs to trust the producer, especially if he/she has a track record for hits on the radio.
The band has rehearsed their songs so much they are nearly sick of them, but it becomes fresh when the record button is on. They practice on their own so rehearsals go well. They have the ability to connect with crowds who love them. The producer chooses songs to help the band keep a crowd out there, unless they want to be, as one of my former clients put it, "….the best obscure band……"
Make some hits, pay some bills! There's always room for more good music.
THE MIX
After we record, we have to mix. Mixing can take as much time as tracking, so it requires lots of patience! No two bands are alike, no two guitarists play the same rigs, and so on; that means every band will mix differently. This is where the sins of tracking, such as duct-drum heads, out of tune guitars and the like will be glaringly obvious.
What is done during mix-down is adding compression, EQ-ing the instruments and adding effects such as reverb, delay, echo, chorus and the like. The mix is a blend to the taste of the client: I wish to help them realize their vision. I believe there are likely 5 different mixes that are correct or suitable and a whole bunch that can be bad!
What will help the mixing engineer will be to supply some CDs of the same genre of your music-something you would like to follow in a radio playlist. The engineer would like the first crack at the mix, this is, after all, his specialty. Besides , how many of you want to hear the kick drum over and over? It is painstaking work. The first tune takes the longest to mix and usually the engineer will submit that song back to you to see if we're on the right track. We'll listen on the mixing speakers, then on the hyped speakers, go to the cheap boombox and finally into the car. The goal is to be able to translate the mix to many different systems. Then we'll mix the rest of them up so that all the tunes have the same consistency in tone with each other. The engineer will call the band in for opinions before final mixdown. It would be helpful if the band would elect a couple of the members to be responsible for this, otherwise, there might be too many opinions to sort out. Also, leave the girlfriends or significant-others at home-they will be easily bored by all of this!
Sit on the mix awhile after it's done-play it for some honest friends. Note the first thing that comes out of their mouths-that will be the truth. If they don't say anything and you have to beg for opinions, that's bad! Ultimately, you have to decide what you like since everyone, after awhile, will have an opinion, or will feel that they have to offer an opinion so as not to look stupid- then it starts to get confusing. We then remix with slight changes and Digital Performer is superb for that since all the parameters are saved to disk. That means come back and re-mix all you want -but eventually you have to release it-your fans demand it! Don't get carried away with minutia, in other words, remixing forever on end just to fix crazy little small things will not make you any money., and it will become counter productive, not to mention, expensive! Get it out there and sell your record!
PRE-PRODUCTION
How prepared are you when you come in to record? Many of my clients will say, after it's all over, "...now I know what to do for the next record!" Hindsight is truly 20/20, but here are some ways for you to be ready for the first time you record……..
REHEARSE YOUR SONGS SO MUCH YOU'RE SICK OF THEM
In other words, make sure there are no mysteries about your songs. Of course, if need be, we can change as we go, but your perspective might not be clear as when you are in your living room sketching out what should be done. Verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge chorus-chorus-out? Make sure you have good lead sheets, no more than two pages with the proper chords above the right word.
TRY YOUR SONGS OUT LIVE
That 8 minute, gut-wrenching ballad might actually be a snooze fest for your audience, and if they quit dancin' and drinkin' the bar owner will see you to the door as well! And while we're on the subject of songwriting, see if your song can be done with just a vocal and acoustic guitar. If not, maybe you need to re-tool it. Songs can be 90% inspiration and 10% work, and also 10% inspiration and 90% work. The great songwriters craft their tunes carefully, and will come in and re-record a phrase because it bugs them so much.
MAKE A PRACTICE RECORDING OF YOURSELF
This might be the most eye-opening of all in order to see if your song needs some more work. And if you've never heard yourself before-don't let the studio be the first time. Get used to hearing yourself. After all, this is what your fans are hearing. Make sure you're able to dance around in your underwear to your own tune!
DON'T DRAG IN YOUR PALS FOR BACKUP VOCALS
Back up vocals take more time than lead vocals and are more critical in intonation and timing. You'll embarrass them-don't do it! Ever watch American Idol, you know, the wanna-bes? Now you know what I mean!
REHEARSE YOUR LEAD RIDES
'Nuff said-don't leave it up to the great Hendrix god to give you inspiration on the spot. It's still your solo even if you rehearse it.
I want you to have fun in here-if you follow what I said above, you ll have a great time!
HOME STUDIO: USING ADATS?
They're not bad, but when you first tangle a tape up, ouch! try these tips…..
Use only S-VHS tapes and not regular VHS . Only the Super VHS tapes can take the beating that multi-track recording dishes out. The other tapes will flake off and possibly ruin your heads. I'm not sure if you can get replacement heads anymore.
Always rewind all the way back and never eject the tape until then. When you insert the tape, that's when they can tangle up for whatever reason…..and there goes your timecode.
The gold-faced ADATs are the worst. Alesis had problems with them all and then shipped 'em out anyway-thanks Alesis! The good old blackfaces seem to be alive and kicking so they might be a good value these days.
It's a good idea to fast forward the tape to the end and then back again to get rid of any stickyness in the tape stock. then format it all the way through.
TRACK WITH YOUR ADATS THEN BRING THE TAPES TO RESOUND RECORDING FOR MIXING!
HOME STUDIO: MICROPHONE TYPES
The good old Shure SM57-where would rock and roll be without it? Many engineers consider this mic the "desert island" mic. It is the classic characteristic sound for old school rock guitar, snare drum, toms. Tom Petty even used one for live sound for many years before switching to a Neumann. Did I mention it is virtually indestructible?
The '57 has a cardioid pattern, which means it picks up mainly from the front, but some side pickup. An omnidirectional mic has a even hemisphere pickup pattern . It's disaster for live sound due to feedback problems. The Figure 8 picks up side to side evenly but not directly in front. Finally, there is the hypercardioid, or supercardioid mic which is a tighter up-front pattern and not side . There is a slight node of pick-up directly behind . Sometimes the monitor can feed back if directly behind this type of mic. These are the mics of choice for live vocals.
Knowing what kind of mic you have can greatly help in tracking . Don't be afraid even of cheapo ones. They might lend just the right kind of grunge to a recording. Try an omni right up close for something different.
HOME STUDIO: MICROPHONE PLACEMENT
"...This end is where you sing...no not there!..." Tossing a mic up to record with is sometimes a painstaking task. Some say ,no matter what, "...we can fix it in the mix…" I say get it to sound good now and take the time to experiment . A case in point is miking up a guitar cab. Taking the good old Shure SM57, start with it pointing directly at the middle of the speaker cone., touching the grill. Don't like it? now try offsetting it two inches or so. Or at a 45 degree angle, still close up. Then a 90 degree angle. These are all tried and true methods used by major studios and engineers. Use your ears to decide.
When using two mics, the 3:1 rule applies: if 1 foot from the source, then 3 feet from each other. Otherwise you get some comb filtering, and it ain't pretty! Of course, doing things the "wrong way" might be what was intended all along. Playback in mono to see if the sound shifts; if so, then you have to find a different spot.
If your room is bad, then work harder to close mic when recording. When you have to use a room, do as much as you can at home, then hire the studio for drums and great vocals, all the things that you can't do. Resound Recording is committed to purchasing great mics for your use, so you don't have to. Let us do the upgrading!
HOME STUDIO: HOW'S YOUR ROOM?
Before you record, sit in your recording room and listen to all the extra noises that are there. Hear any traffic? How about neighbors? Dogs barking? Trains? Planes? Close-up miking can take care of lots of external noise, but you might have to move to another location to record properly. A good spot might be a house of worship, but do it at night. During the day there is lots of traffic and planes, phones ringing and such. If you have a good relationship with your former school music teachers, they might let you in to use the school theatre after hours.
Other considerations are what your neighbors hear from you! Make sure they are aware that you are going to do some recording on a particular day so they don't fire up the lawn mower at a critical time. If you are in an apartment, recording drums will be impossible and electric guitar might only be possible via software (Amp Farm, Amplitube, etc.) or using a sealed speaker container. Of course, you will have to record with headphones and maybe get a chance to hear it on speakers at low levels, or not!.
Another item of importance-how is the tuning of your room? Living rooms can be ok, but there might be some undesirable frequencies that will pop out during mixdown. Simply deadening the room doesn't take care of low frequencies, which can build up during mixdown. Only bass traps in strategic locations can fix this problem.
At Resound Recording, the space is optimal for your needs to record drums, loud guitars, bass rigs and extra percussion. We can record the drums, rhythm guitars, bass and lead vocals all at once, which creates a better, cohesive feel for the music. Good headphone mixes help with getting a headphone feed that inspires your playing. The gear is always set up and ready to go!The rooms are tuned with proper acoustical treatment so that the tone of the instruments is realized fully in your recordings. For the sake of time and noise control, recording at the studio might be more efficient than trying to recording some of the tracks at home.
RECORDING AT HOME THEN TRANSFERRING FOR MIX-DOWN
One of the advantages in this day and age is the ability to record at home, provided you have a good enough computer and some good mics, not to mention good pre-amps and compressors. Sometimes living rooms are ok for this. The freedom to record in your bathrobe at 3:00 am is too good to turn down, not to mention the impulsiveness of keeping the creative juices flowing whenever you want. Also, you can save some money this way, but notice the caveats down below. If you have enough time to do this, you might be able to create some good tracks.
Let's say you've recorded already and you decide that your computer doesn't have the horsepower to mix correctly-then it's time to find a studio to mix in. These can range in price from $100 per tune to $1600 per tune, depending on the pedigree of the engineer/producer. It's a good idea to have this plan in mind before you start recording so that the transfer can be done easily with no surprises. the best thing to do is to call the engineer at the studio. Common formats are ADAT-tape, or any number of softwares that can generate .WAV files, even 2 inch tape. (First, you must find a facility that has a 2 inch reel-to reel. They're quite expensive and you'll have to travel to get it done in a very expensive studio. The transfer won’t break the bank for you, however.)
In order to mix, I prefer the files to be either .wav or Sound Designer II. Use 44.1 or 48 as sampling rate at either 16 or 24 bit resolution. If you're not sure of any of this, call me and I'll come over and help you if I can.
Always rewind ADAT tapes all the way before giving them to me. I can't guarantee that they won't get eaten by my ADAT. At least at the very beginning of the tape we have a chance of recovering.
If there's a large space of silence before you record, say, a lead track in the middle of the song, merge silence from the front of the tune to the part where you play. That way we'll be sure of the timing from the start of the song.
Programs that allow you to speed up or slow down the tracks can be a problem. Render the altered track at the speed you want. Otherwise, the computer thinks it's the original speed.
Work to get the recorded tracks as clear and beautiful as you can. Mixing goes better with great tracks.
Label everything so there's no mysteries. I once recorded over a clients' tape that wasn't labeled and it turned out to be a once in a life time recording-why wasn't it labeled and furthermore, the tab broken out on the back? IF it's really important, label it!
Make multiple copies of of the tracks. Don't have only one.
REASONS TO NOT RECORD AT HOME…………..
The room likely isn't tuned. I have good spaces to record and listen.
Improper monitoring will deceive you. I have a variety of speakers in order to listen critically.
I have a great selection of mics and pre-amps, purchased by me so you don't have to buy anything.
A limited number of tracks prevents home studios from getting the drum set properly recorded. I'll record the drums bass, rhythm guitars and a scratch vocal all at once to start with. Try that with an M-box!
The neighbors won't appreciate your band as much as you do. They'll likely call the cops. Resound Recording is a facility with good damping and hardly any neighbors around.
Beck, Moby and other bands are able to record at home, but they also have a great deal of capital to buy good gear. They also have a few platinum records under their belt to fund this endeavor. In addition to that, the engineers and producers they hire are the best in the business. You will probably save money and a lot of headaches by recording with me to start with! My job is to deal with wires, plugs, sampling rates etc etc and yours should be playing music.
POST PRODUCTION
After the recording is all done, the mix is right, the reviews are in, now what do you do? Sell it, of course! So how does one do that?
WEB SITES Your band needs a web site in this day and age, and likely one on MySpace as well. You can find out on Go Daddy if there's another band that has your name or not and then you can use their ingenious search engine for a domain name. I changed my studio name from R & E Sound Studio to Resound Recording because of the domain name availability. Plaster your web address on every printed item you have. Having your own is more concise and easier to remember than just using MySpace or Facebook. There are other sites that also feature new music and try to get on all that you can, especially iTunes. If you don't know how to put a web site together, hire a geek to do it for you. I would have them do a shell so you can update your site at your pleasure. Web sites are a lot of work, so keep up with the updating of information. Some bands have gone gold (100,000 copies) through the web, but it still is hard to do.
GIGS This is still the tried and true way to connect directly with your audience-get out there and play! Sell records! In addition to CDs, you'll also need T-shirts and bumper stickers and such or whatever you need to promote your band. Spinal Tap sold commemorative "Colanders" (that you strain spaghetti with) instead of "Calendars" because, of course, the promoters got the "wrong" information. Remember Stonhenge? Don't forget to have a good sound system that rocks their heads off!
Homegrown or use a duping house? If you can get your trays, covers and stickers for the CDs printed, then you might be able to burn CDs as you go and load them before gigs. otherwise, try out Disc Makers and have it done for you. they usually need a 1000 CD minimum for the best price. There are other companies such as Rely Media that also want your business and will gladly compete or beat Disc Makers. Products from a duping house look very good and also offer graphic design.
THE CD RELEASE GIG Find your friendliest venue for the release party. The manager of the bar will likely go along with this since anything to get people in the bar is good as far as he/she is concerned. Set up a small distribution of CDs around town with merchants who will agree to sell. Contact the paper and provide them with a press release with the pertinent information, such where, when, what time, how to buy the CD. You also need a good picture, and try not to make it so dark and goth-looking. As much white in the background as possible is needed so the paper will publish it. Have the picture in a variety of formats such as .jpg, .btm and so on , whatever the paper needs to print. They will likely interview you, since you might be the next big thing. All this hinges on each other and it takes time and shoe leather to get it out to the public. Use your web site to advertise and get as many cool-looking posters out as possible and plastered on every wall, telephone pole and street corner.
SET GOALS The first thing you need to do is to make all the money back you spent on the CD recording, posters, prom items and such. Then the next thing is to make a profit. Then you get to buy new gear from proceeds of your sales.
NATIONAL DISTRIBUTION Up to now, you have been going at it alone, and you are still unsigned and unsolicited; in other words, you have no agent. If you are having good sales and good shows, it might be time to step it up and find an agent. Record companies are painted as corporate bastards, but they, like you, need to make money to exist. The best thing they do is to promote and distribute CDs nationwide since they have lots of capital to do so. The only two questions they will ask you are, "…...how many CDs have you sold, and how many people have you appeared to?..........."It's harsh, but companies have to have sure things before they invest in getting your CDs out to Wal-Marts nationwide. 14,000 CDs sold is the magic number of that record companies consider the break-even point, then they start to make a profit, and they must make a profit, otherwise, they are engaged in a non-profit endeavor.
DON'T GIVE UP The music drives you-you love it, right? Stay true to yourself and why you play.