2002

Before you start recording your CD, take a look over these recording tips taken from a Disc Makers (website) pamphlet entitled "37 Recording Tips: A commonsense guide to making the most of your time in the studio."

Before You Go In

Record your songs during live gigs and pre-production rehearsals. Even a simple cassette recording on a boom box may reveal weak parts of songs.

Have all the musical and vocal parts worked out. (Know your guitar solos!)

Using a computer or sequencer? Prepare all sequenced material before the session.

If you plan to use a click track, make sure your drummer is comfortable playing to it. (To get "tight," practice to a click track at a very slow tempo.)

Rehearse more songs than you plan to record. You never know which songs will sound strong on the final tape. (If you plan to have a four-song EP, prepare six songs just in case.)

Take core of your body before and during your recording sessions- Eat well, gel enough sleep, and keep your ears rested and clear.

Setting up

Be early! At some studios, the clock starts running whether you're there or not. Find out about their cancellation policy as well,

Make the studio a comfortable and relaxed place. If its not it will show in your finished product.

Make sure you and the engineer have the some "vision" — go over your song with him/her before recording.

Before booking your studio time. Ask to hear other material the engineer recorded.

Depending on whether your studio has 8,16, 24 or 48-track capability. Plan out how you will leave room for all the essential parts. This should simplify the mix and eliminate the need for bouncing tracks later.

Use new strings, cords, drum sticks and heads — and bring spares!

Find out the hours of the local music store just in case....

Don't use new gear or different equipment that you haven't used before, even if it's "better than what you have."

The Recording Process

Remember, it's emotion and feeling that make the best song, not necessarily the best technical rendition. If you mess up a part while recording, don't stop and start over. That con easily cause you to burn out. Instead, check to see if the engineer can punch in the correction,

You don't have to fill all the tracks on the tape — don't try to force something that won't fit.

Always keep in mind the focus of your music. If it's the vocals, plan to spend the most time on them. Don't waste time on things that don't highlight the focal point.

Get the sound you want while recording. (Never assume that you can fix it in the mix)

Unless you have unique effects, record individual tracks clean and add effects later.

Don't necessarily double track everything. Doubling c lead vocal can hide all the subtleties that make a song personal and likable (although it can work well for a chorus).

Know when to quit for the day. If you're tired it will show.

Keep guests out! It's your recording, Guests will distract you and may sway your opinion of how the music should sound.

Make backup copies after every recording session.

Tune up often.

Singers: always bring water but don't use ice! Ice constricts your vocal chords, Hot tea with lemon and honey works just as well.

Always get a track listing and accurate time log from the studio.

Monitoring the mix

Listen to your music at moderate levels in your car or on a boom box. This is how most of your fans will listen to it, and mixing at loud levels will fatigue your ears and distort the "true" sound.

Sometimes it's good to take a day off and come back to listen. The same applies for mix- down. Ears don't last very long in the studio!

As you review each mix make sure you can comfortably hear all of the instruments, Tweak the mix on a small pair of speakers at an extremely low volume. Headphones are also very valuable at this stage, but don't base your final decision on them. You should be able to pick up each instrument even at this level.

Know when lo quit for the day. You're better off quitting a session early when you're tired than wasting time making a bad mix that will have to be redone anyway.

Mixing

Listen in the studio to CDs you're used to hearing on your home stereo to get an idea of how the studio's system sounds.

Determine a band spokesperson ahead of time. An engineer getting five different opinions on how to mix will grow tired and fry to rush through the job.

Once you have selected an engineer (or a producer) to mix your recording, have them do the first mix- Their ears are better trained than yours. Try to keep on open mind.

Think about the songs as a whole and not just the individual instruments. Otherwise everyone will want their instrument louder

If mixing somewhere other than the recording studio, make sure you use the same speakers. If not the mix will sound completely different.

Decide which format you wont the finished mixes to be on; DAT, one-off CD, PMCD, reel to reel, or 1630. (Your studio may not offer every option.) Use the format that is most practical and economical for you.

Count on and budget in unforeseen delays.

Extra Bonus Tip

Always, always, always make a safely DAT or CD-R. It preserves your recording investment should your original master tape get damaged.

http://www.athensmusician.net/archive/2001-06-05_discmakertips.shtml

http://www.virtualstudiosystems.com/tipstrix.htm

Recording Tips and Tricks

VSS is proud to provide this list of useful tips and tricks geared towards the home recording artist.  If you have any favorite tips and tricks you'd like to share with the rest of the world, please send them in!

Big thanks to Home Recording Magazine for letting us publish their...

Top 100 Recording Tips and Tricks

Sometimes, in a middle of a long recording project, you hit a wall; you reach the point where you're missing that certain sound to put your project over the top, or you can't find the right musical figure for that guitar part, or you're faced with The Hum That Wouldn't Go Away! Sometimes, when you just can't get it to sound right, you have to dig into that bag of tricks that only grows with experience, and pull something out that gets the creative juices flowing again, puts everyone in the studio back on track, and reaffirms the fact that you really were the right person for the project. But if your bag isn't built up yet, behold the following tidbits.

We contacted a group of Home Recording's regular contributors and editors, including: Thad Brown, Rusty Cutchin, David Darlington, Craig Jackson, Tom Mulhern, Pete Prown, Michael Ross, David Simons, Arty Skye, and Rock Stamberg. This group includes multiple gold (and platinum) record award-winning engineers, touring musicians, and music journalists, all with decades of recording experience. We asked them to send us the most useful tips, tricks, and techniques they could come up with. Some tips focus on engineering techniques, some on musical approaches, and some on recording philosophy, but any and all could come in handy on the right project and at the right time.

1. Add the ambience last in your mix. Get it pumping with no verbs or delays, and then introduce them to taste. You'll be surprised at how many boxes you don't need.

2. Use radical EQ. It is not important for the vocal or instrument to sound good by itself as long as it sounds good in the mix.

3. Nothing digital exists unless it is in at least two places. In other words, until your files, performances, audio, and presets are backed up, they can all be gone in the blink of an eye.

4. Listen to your mix from another room with the door open.

5. Upgrade your cables. Each time you have some spare bucks, invest in higher-grade cables, starting with the connections between instruments and mixer, and mixer and recorder. The sonic difference may be slight, but every bit helps.

6. Plug-ins are like Pong. They're fun and useful, but nowhere near as sophisticated as they'll be in a few more years. For completely new effects and number crunching, embrace them, but don't throw out that outboard reverb (one of the first analog modeling devices). Even if you have to record it on its own track, use it.

7. Almost all synth modules and samplers have extensive implementation of MIDI continuous controller messages. Learn these deep parts of your synths, because they almost always unlock the most interesting and exciting parts of the gear.

8. Normalization is a great tool, but can work against you if the audio track hasn't been recorded properly (i.e., if there is unwanted noise on the track, it will just get louder when you recompute the overall track level).

9. Record all your guitar parts naked as Steve Vai frequently does. On second thought - don't!

10. Try recording an electric guitar by close miking the guitar's strings, along with an amp, and by plugging it straight into the board. You'll find that you can manipulate the resulting signals in interesting and diverse ways.

11. Reversing phase on the kick drum mic while recording a live drum set will cancel out some of the bleed from other mics on the kick track, and at the same time it will cancel out some of the kick signal that the other mics are picking up. This gives you more isolation and a tighter sound.

12. Here's a quick and easy way to make your own collapse drum booth. Mark off a space around the drum kit that is about 8' x 10'. Get some old bed sheets (preferably old comforters or flannel sheets) and use four mic stands to create temporary walls around the drum kit. This will eliminate most of the offensive reflections and will allow you to get a reasonably dry drum sound until you can muster up enough cash to build that live room.

13. Try putting the drum machine MIDI tracks through an analog synth with only the noise settings on.

14. Be cautious about new or borrowed equipment. The new stuff can lead you down the path of time-sucking exploration when you should be making tracks. If you aren't familiar with the gear, you can waste a lot of time, lose good ideas, or overuse an effect just because it's new to you.

15. When mixing to cassette, if you're using high-quality tape, you don't have to worry about the peaks on your LED meter; it's the continuous levels that create distortion. If the LEDs above 0 are flashing, you're okay. If they're constantly on, turn down your record level.

16. Put your amp in the basement, hang a mic 25 feet away, put another mic right in front of the amp, or put a speaker in a tiled shower stall, then send your vocal signal through it and back into the mix for real live reverb.

17. Bounce tracks only when it's absolutely necessary, especially when you're recording on analog tape. Not only do you lose a generation, but you're also locked into the bounced mixes and about to erase the original tracks! Better to mix to a second machine-- even the native 16-bit audio of a computer--- and transfer that back to a new multitrack tape.

18. Vary the surfaces in your listening environment. Use rugs to soften up that basement floor, or add glass picture frames to liven up the shag carpet.

19. Don't fall in love--- with a car, a house, or a sound. Using the same reverb, the same bass sound, or the same singer for all your projects destroys creativity. Always search for new sonic tools to get the message across.

20. When troubleshooting, eliminate as many links in the gear chain as you can to start tracing the problem. Mute all channels except the ones in question. Put input channels into the L-R bus to isolate instrument problems from routing problems. Switching a suspect cable with its adjacent stereo mate is the fastest way to tell if it's bad, which is usually the case.

21. When recording repetitive parts, like percussion, in a digital audio sequencer, save hard-drive space by recording a small portion and copying it to fill the song, instead of recording right through the whole piece.

22. Use your printer to print cassette, DAT, and CD labels. Your results will seem much more professional, and your clients will be impressed.

23. Use one device as the master digital clock in your studio, and slave all other machines to it. This will result in clearer sound due to lower "jitter", and is necessary for most digital devices to communicate properly.

24. Use the library functions in your console or plug-ins to store favorite EQ and compression settings. When the same artist returns for a second session, set-up time is reduced.

25. Use two different mics on the same instrument and then blend them in the mix to control tone, rather than using EQ. For example, a bright dynamic mic and a warm condenser mic on acoustic guitar can be blended to make a very full sound, and brightened to taste by the balance between the two signals.

26. Print your mixes back into the digital audio sequencer to store them, and also facilitate editing by bars and beats. Need eight fewer bars of intro? Click- Click!

27. Surge suppressors and / or battery backup systems: Use them, especially if you're using a hard disk recorder or other digital-based recording system. With a battery backup system, your recording system will not be damaged should you experience a power surge or a blackout. Nor will you lose your work; the backup system will automatically switch on during a power disruption, at least long enough so that you can shut down your system without losing any data.

28. Use good connection cables. Don't scrimp on this point. To get the best signal, shielded cables are recommended. Try not to use longer cable length than you need. Some people make a case for gold - plated connectors, but that's really only necessary if you're worried about corrosion issues.

29. Trust your ears. If it sounds the way you want it to sound, then it's right. Remember: Recording is an artform and innovation is often initially met with skepticism .

30. For a fresh perspective, try overdubbing electric instruments without headphones (i.e., through your monitor system). Doing so eliminates the frustrating claustrophobia that can come from wearing headphones for hours on end.

31. Capture the moment - don't work a good idea until it's stale. Try to record your song, solo, or idea in a few takes while the idea is still fresh.

32. Have your gear set up and ready to go. When inspiration hits, you don't want to lose an hour hooking up your mics or fiddling with MIDI cables.

33. When bouncing down final mixes, always bounce to at least 24 - files and dither later. The sound will be much better than a straight 16 - bit bounce.

34. Try miking your guitar amp from different angles. By varying the angles and distances from the speaker cones, you can achieve a myriad of unique tones. For example, try close (a Metallica / thrash metal sound) or distant (Led Zeppelin style) miking to hear the dramatic differences.

35. Sometimes a bigger guitar tone can come from a smaller guitar amp. Lots of people swear by small tube amps in the studio. For example, Jimmy Page's mighty solo on "Stairway to Heaven" was cut on a small Supro amp.

36. For fat rhythm - guitar tracks, try doubling in stereo. Double the tracks on the left, and then double 'em on the right. Some players even triple tracks in stereo.

37. Afraid of out - of - tune, double - track vocal overdubs? Try a second pass but only use 25% of it in the mix, just enough to add a little extra flavor (and you won't have to worry about making it a perfect match, either).

38. Try to record percussion parts live . Unless you're a master studio programmer, your sequences are never going to sound as good as a real drummer or percussionist. Use the MIDI sequences for your demo, but when cutting the final track, go find yourself a real drummer - your music will be infinitely better for the effort.

39. The P. A. Way: Get a big live feel in a little room by running bass drum or vocals through a few P.A. speakers. This works great and is surprisingly easy to control.

40. For quick and easy demos, position a single mic just above the bass - drum and pointed toward the snare, add a touch of compression, and presto - no -fuss drum track.

41. Chuck the headphones, pull up a big monitor speaker, and do your vocal overdubs. The bleed - through won't hurt, and you'll probably sing better as well.

42. Don't gob your guitar tone up with too many effects. If you want a big, fat tone, put away your rack processors and most of your stompboxes, all of which create a longer signal path that sucks tone away. Always think of the Angus Young theorem: Guitar + cord + tube amp = monster guitar tone.

43. For acoustic guitar with gusto, track two identical parts with maximum compression on each, using the second part as a 25 - 50 % "fortifier" in the mix.

44. Run your vocals into an old guitar amp's spring reverb, then back out into the board for an "old - style" echo-chamber sound (works great with both pre-recorded and live vocal tracks).

45. Little Amp, Big Sound: Stick a small amp directly in front of a bass drum for a nice, full "resonator" effect.

46. Warm and Fuzzy: Run your vocals through a distortion box for a quick and easy sludgy sound.

47. Why settle for a one - dimensional rhythm guitar track? Try five or six versions of the same part, altering the tone, effect level, and mic/amp placement for each pass. You can then weave the different parts in and out of the mix, creating a single part with nicely shifting colorations.

48. Try putting the echo on while tracking vocals and adding compression to the kick drum mic during the actual take. Sometimes it is okay that what you are hearing through the monitors is what you are getting as your final sound.

49. Record a vocal with two mics - a dynamic and a condenser - and blend the sound.

50. In digital systems (ADAT or hard drive), instead of delay, record a track onto another track, then offset one of the tracks from the other and pan accordingly.

51. If you don't want to use a gate to prevent bleeding into your snare mic, here's a trick that solves this problem. Get a cardboard paper cup and pop out the bottom. Next, mount your snare mic on the mic stand and put the mic through the cup, allowing the cup to cover the entire shaft of the mic. Next, tape the cup on to your mic (any tape will do) and then stuff the inside with Kleenex (this will prevent a comb filter effect on the snare). After you've done this, position the mic perpendicular to and about an inch or two above the snare. That's it! Easy isolation without using a gate.

52. Eschew perfection; respect performance - a year from now you won't hear the "mistakes," but you will notice if the performance is lifeless.

53. Use cheap guitars for unique sounds, and use small amps - because no one will know the difference.

54. Use a magnetic pickup on your acoustic guitar, run it into an amp, and mic the amp.

55. Problems with digital dropouts on your DAT, ADAT, or DA -88? Here's something that can help prevent this in the future. Before using or formatting new tapes, always fast forward and rewind through the entire tape. This will help remove particles that may contribute to causing dropouts.

56. Set specific goals for each session, accept the results, and move on. For example, if the goal is to record drum tracks for a single tune from 7p.m.- 9p.m., accept the results at the end of the night, even though you might think it could be better.

57. Are some of your effects and outboard processors giving you problems with ground hum? Check to make sure your audio cable does not cross over any power supplies or come in contact with power cords. Audio cable will pick up the "noise" emitted from an electrical power supply and, in general, should be isolated from power sources. If they must intersect, keep them at right angles.

58. Start your stopwatch on the first beat and stop it on the 11th. Multiply the seconds by 100, and you will have the approximate milliseconds for a 1/4 -note delay. Do it two or three times and take an average.

59. Few people explore the breakpoint editing - capability in Acid. Don't be one of them; you can achieve many cool sounds working with it.

60. Today, virtually all recording musicians are posting music on the web in the form of MP3 files. In order to create an MP3 file, you need an encoder, and there are many shareware versions of MP3 encoders available on the web, with varying degrees of quality. If you care about the audio quality of your music, purchase a full version of your favorite MP3 encoding software. This usually costs only about $30. It will make all the difference in the quality of music that you post on the web. Try Audio Catalyst as well as Music Match encoding software.

61. Bus a snare to a DBX160x compressor or similar (not all compressors will do this). Set the ratio to oo:1 and the threshold close to minimum until you hear a tight smacking sound. Add this sound slowly to your existing snare, and you'll get an overall sound of the stick smacking the snare hard. You can try this on other drum sounds as well.

62. Bus your source sound and patch the bussed signal into a fader. Take the fader out of the stereo mix and send it to a delay through another send or bus. Using automation, bring up the fader on only the words that you want to delay.

63. Multiple mics can help provide an accurate sonic picture of sound as you hear it from your live room. An especially great combination for miking guitar cabinets is a Shure SM - 57 combined with an AKG D112 (kick drum mic). The SM - 57 will allow you to get the essential mid/high frequencies, and the AKG D112 picks up the low end that the SM - 57 misses. Before I used this combination, I found myself having to overcompensate on the EQ in order to get an accurate sound.

64. I like to put my bass through a light stereo chorus, which spreads it out a little and leaves the center a little emptier for vocals.

65. Want to get that telephone voice sound ? One kHz is the magic frequency here. Equalize and filter out all your highs and lows, and just boost the hell out of 1k. You can even overload the channel to get some pleasing distortion.

66. A stereo compressor and 20 vocal tracks, what's a producer to do ? Subgroup 'em, baby. Subgroup them all to two tracks and only process those two tracks.

67. If you're miking a guitar amp in a dead space that has a carpeted floor, and you want to add a bit of natural presence to your sound, get a 3'x 3' piece of Plexiglas at your local hardware store. Place the Plexiglas on the floor so that it abuts the front of your speaker cabinet (do not set your cabinet on top of the Plexiglas). Next, place your mic stand directly on top of the Plexiglas and position an omni-directional mic about three inches away from the speaker cabinet. This will allow the reflections from the hard surface to be picked up by the mic and your sound will be brighter.

68. The number six divided by the BPM will give you the milliseconds for a 1/4 note delay (forget the decimal place). Divide by two for an eighth note, and multiply by .75 for a dotted eighth note (very useful in dance music). Conversely, six divided by the milliseconds for a 1/4 note will give you the BPM (again, forget the decimals).

69. Try backward reverb and/or backward delay on the lead vocal track.

70. To turn your compressor into a de-esser, split the vocal track and send one track to the external in on the compressor, and patch the other track across the compressor normally. On the external track, boost the high frequencies and set the threshold so that the compressor kicks in when the "ssssss" become too much.

71. When sampling vocals on a sampler (such as an MPC) to fly into the track, start the recording of the sample on the beat before the actual singing. When you fly it into the track, begin the playback on the same beat. This way you won't have to truncate the sample and cut off the natural "breaths" before the start. 

72. Buy an impedence transformer and run your tracks through stompboxes, guitar amps, consumer tape decks, etc.

73. If at all possible, mic the top and bottom of a snare drum. The bottom mic gets more of the snares, of course, but even if you don't need the extra snare sounds, it can be used for special effects in a final mix.

74. Recording at home can sometimes give you a sonic advantage. Each room will have a particular sound, so try instruments in all of your available rooms before choosing where to track. You'll find some surprising differences from room to room.

75. If you are using a computer, remember that it is an electro-magnetic radiation nightmare for all of your other gear. Monitors are worse. Isolate them as best you can.

76. Being able to get an idea down quickly can be the difference between getting lost or not. Have a basic set of samples, sounds, drum kits, and loops that you can use immediately; there's always time to tweak later.

77. As much as some drummers may hate it, the most critical parts of a drum track, regardless of the musical style, are the kick, snare, and hi hat. Be sure these parts sound right, and are recorded and played right before thinking about anything else.

78. When working with digital audio, sample rate conversion is one of the worst things you can do to an audio file. If at all possible, use the same sample rate throughout a project (e.g., if it is destined for CD release, use 44.1k as the sample rate). If you need to sample rate convert, do it once, with the highest quality software you can find, or do a last D/A/D conversion if it sounds better.

79. Mic your kick close as you normally would. Then, place a second mic one inch or less above the hardwood floor, about four feet away from the kick with baffles behind the mic in a V shape. It gives the low frequencies room to travel, the floor acts as a sounding board, and the baffles keep the background noise reduced.

80. Change your guitar and bass strings. Old dead strings will give you a muddy tone. New strings will be brighter, cleaner, and deliver a better-recorded range of guitar frequencies.

81. The audio editor in Cubase has a function to match the tempo of a song to a selected segment, by either changing the tempo or time stretching the file. If you have a master loop, it's the quickest way in Cubase to figure out the tempo that matches that loop.

82. Recording electric guitars with single coil pickups next to computers and monitors is, unfortunately, almost impossible. Turning off the monitor will help a lot, but it might be best to learn to like humbuckers, or move into another room for playing.

83. Invest in power conditioning. One crackle, one buzz leaking into your system can ruin a take. A UPS with surge suppression can stop snap, crackle, and pop, and make your electronic equipment last longer, too.

84. Set a daily "freshness limit" on your ears. Though they aren't often seen as studio equipment, your ears are the most critical piece of gear. They get tired, and your brain gets mushy after prolonged listening. Know your limits and head off bad sonic decisions.

85. Periodically turn all your equipment's knobs - even the stuff you don't use all the time. You usually can head off scratchy, crackly knobs just by turning them regularly.

86. Put microphones away after every session. You might leave the cords where they are, and the stands, too - they're relatively unbreakable and affordable - but when a mic costing a couple hundred bucks hits the hard floor, it can be permanently damaged, meaning down time and costly repair or replacement.

87. Clean the room and not just the tape heads. Take a vacuum cleaner to everything at least once a week, and you'll find that your gear looks and plays better, and doesn't get as lint-laden. Plus, placing a mic 3" from the beater brush gets you the sound of a 747.

88. Get rid of clutter. If you don't use it, pack it up or sell it. Old gear, magazines, books, and anything else that isn't a contributor to your recording is either a distraction or a nuisance. Give yourself as much room in your studio as you can get, and you won't feel suppressed, repressed, or compressed.

89. If your using a stand-alone digital hard-disk recorder, periodically check the manufacturer's web site for updates and software upgrades. Most companies regularly offer free downloads to their existing customer base, usually in the form of new effects that can be loaded directly into your machine via MIDI.

90. Keyboard shortcuts can cut the time you need to perform tasks by multiples. Learn any and all that you might use regularly in your favorite application.

91. Buy a phone indicator light. Even if you unplug the phone in your studio, someone may come barging in to tell you that you have a phonecall. Having a light that illuminates when the phone rings elsewhere will give you a heads-up (such lights are cheap and easy to find at Radio Shack).

92. A barely audible 1/8- note delay will thicken up the backgrounds, add a sense of space, and smooth out the inaccuracies of the durations between the individual vocals.

93. Don't listen to a mix for 24-48 hours after you are done- perspective, perspective, perspective.

94. Listen to the mix at different levels. You will find that when you bring the volume down, the placement of the instruments will change. Working to find a mix that sounds good under these varying SPL levels is as important as testing your mix on different monitors.

95. For acoustic guitars, nothing beats a mic. Going direct from your piezo-powered acoustic/electric guitar may be convenient, but as of today, the technology has not been able to surpass a good non-cutaway acoustic (ye olde Martin and a fine condenser mic).

96. Get a chair that doesn't squeak. Almost everything today is made of, or with, plastic. In the case of office chairs, most squeak, especially when you pivot or tilt. An open mic will pick it up, even if you're oblivious to it. Get a solid, non-swiveling chair. Instead of bells and whistles, opt for solid and quiet.

97. Invest in a decent "recording chain," including microphone, mic preamp, and compressor. The quality of your recording begins at birth.

98. Try not to over-equalize, - compress or -process your signals. Let the music flow and try to keep the signal as pristine as possible.

99. With digital recording, don't allow your record levels to exceed the peak of 0 vu. The resulting sound is extremely unpleasant to your housecat. But you can go over peak on console input to alter drum or guitar and bass sounds. The resulting sound is extremely pleasant to Techno cats.

100. ENJOY THE PROCESS--- the journey is often the best part of the trip, so have fun while you're doing it.