Your Best Little Trick...

[kidvybes]

...OK...most of the members who post here on a regular basis have enough experience recording at home or in their project studios to have come up with some interesting micing techniques...
...now I don't expect anyone to give up their best stuff, but what little trick have you worked up that you are willing to share with the rest of us on this site?...so let's call this "Your Best Little Trick...You're Willing To Share"...
...there's lots of newbies on here that could really gain some valuable info if we're all willing to give up a trick or two...
...who wants to be first?... (yeah, I know...I'll be jumping in myself shortly...)


...let's get this BB back to constructive/instructive subject matter and let the DJL issue fade...

[Harvey Gerst]

Turning mistakes and bad moments into useful information.

We all make mistakes. But what we do with the information can be very different from person to person. I've miked things, and thru sheer stupidity sometimes, produced some of the most gawdawful sounds to ever be heard in a recording studio. But, rather than say, "That sucks!", I mentally file away what I did for possible future use.

Because, several years down the road, somebody is gonna come up and request a certain type of sound for a particular song. That's when I reach into my "mistakes bag". They're always amazed; "Geez, that's it!! How'd you know to do that?"

I usually just smile and say, "Experience." Like running a vocal thru a guitar amp simulator to get a little distortion on the vocals; adding just a little "grit" on the loud notes. Makes it sound like the singer is so powerful, he's distorting the system. Doesn't hafta be loud, just enough to be felt rather than heard.

There are some songs where the whole group will drop out, except for the vocal and maybe one guitar. Having the drummer play straight fours on the kick can add an air of excitement and drive to that section (and keep the tempo a little more consistent).

Cowbells, whisper tracks, stacked background vocals, gated vocal reverbs can all help, but remembering mistakes (rather than forgetting them) is the number one trick, at least in my book.

[kidvybes]

...I knew I could count on Harvey to kick this off!...Thanks Dr.G!!!

[alanhyatt]

There are many tricks to the trade, as long as you have the tools.

First trick I can offer is to read about recording and engineering to learn at least the basics. Buying software, a few mikes and some effects does not make anyone a good engineer.

If I can make one comment for beginners, that would be do not stop experimenting, when it comes to Dynamics and DSP, less is more. Listen to the source you are recording, but I mean really listen. Then try to capture that sound you have in your head as accurately as you can.

For vocals, put up a few mikes if you have them. Work with the placement of each mic. Then choose the mic that will best help you get that sound you have in your head. No one mic does it all... In real estate, its location, location, location. In recording, its room treatment, room treatment, room treatment....

[mshilarious]

Originally Posted by Harvey Gerst

Cowbells . . . [are] the number one trick, at least in my book.

The great Bruce Dickinson has spoken!

[timboZ]

[ozraves]

One of my fave mix tricks is when the drums or Akai box or whatever I'm doing that's passing for drums gets solo'ed in a track... Is to totally roll off the low end. I do the same thing when I got vocals and the only other thing going is the drums. When everything else comes back in I remove the low end roll off. It makes a decent juxtaposition. I kind of came up with it on my own but since I discovered it I've noticed it's sort of a mix staple in pop music that I'd overlooked before.

[cavedog101]

Treeks??? We don need no stinkin treeks....


Heres a good one..Use the batteries for all stomp boxes being used in the studio instead of power supplies.They simply sound better.

[wesley tanner]

Originally Posted by cavedog101

Treeks??? We don need no stinkin treeks....


Heres a good one..Use the batteries for all stomp boxes being used in the studio instead of power supplies.They simply sound better.

less noise, too.

I love to use proximity effect to get crappy toms to sound meatier.

don't count out SDC's for room mics, even when recording heavy guitar. stick one where your ear says 'yes' and yuo may have something sweet to mix in

[kidvybes]

OK...I got this tip here on this site, so it's not new, but for those of you who may have missed it, it works GREAT...if you are recording a singer/rapper on a LDC mic and you're getting too much sibilance and popping even when using a pop screen, try adjusting the mic (hanging inverted) so that the capsule is lined up with the bridge of the singer's nose (this forces the singer to sing upward, therefore opening up the windpipe) and tilt the mic slightly forward (tilting towards the singer)...have the singer step back a few extra inches and adjust the gain accordingly...I've had great results with aggressive singer/rappers using this technique...

[giraffe]

record good source material.


beg, borrow, steal, rent, and kill the elderly (if you have to) for good gear.

i don't mean mics, or pre's (yes, important)
what i'm talking about are good sounding, well set-up, and tuned instruments.

NOTHING seems to make life easier to me.

(sorry, thats not much of a trick)

[capnreverb]

1. Having the drummer tune his heads right. There is no mic that can make a badly tuned drum sound tuned.

2. Lately I have been enjoying using one mic as an overhead instead of two.

3. A drum spot i use a lot is about a foot back from the middle of the snare between the bass drum and the high hat. If the drummer is tasteful, a lot of times only one overhead is needed in conjunction with this. This snare mic position picks up the high hat/snare/and kick in a pleasing way.

4. At3525's are a good but forgoten about condensor mic that needs a lot of gain like a dynamic. This allows them to be used in situations where a normal condensor gets overloaded, and I like how they sound. I see them go for as little as 60 bucks on the internet.

5. Putting things like drum machines/keyboards/turntables/tape players through guitar effects. You can make the crappiest pre-programmed beat sound like the beat of god if put through the right wall of effects.

6. The sound of the room. A good sounding room can make everything sound so much better. One nice thing about larger rooms, is they dont get overdriven as quickley, and this is especially apparent on drums.

7. Less cooks in the kitchen can make for an easier recording/mixdown atmosphere.

8. Bass players are never happy with the mix.

[Dot]

This is not really for a whole mix, but more for a few tracks like bkg vocals or guitars that you want to give a really wide stereo image.

In this case it's for bkg vocals [ but will work for two tracks of guitars ].

1. Mix your chorus bkg vocals to a pair of L R stereo tracks
2. Copy that stereo pair to a second pair of L R stereo tracks.
3. Take the second pair and reverse the phase on them.
4. Then on the second pair reverse the panning. Make L to R, and R to L.

Set the first stereo pair up in your mix. And then start bringing up the second pair - which has been phase reversed and pan reversed. As you turn up the volume of the second pair you'll hear the image go very wide. You'll get to a point as you increase volume that it will start to be less wide as you begin to introduce too much phase cancellation from the second track. At that point, just back off on the volume of the second track until you hear that it's at its widest.

Try it. You'll be surprised. It's an old trick. : )

[OneRoomStudios]

This is a great thread! I wish I had more to add, but here's my humble addition:

If you're looking for a sort of light phazer sound, something to sound nice on acoustic guitar without sounding cheesy, this might work for you - record the guitar in stereo (or double the track if you have to) and put a little flange and a little (very little) delay on one track, then put some reverb on both tracks. If you play around with the amount, you can come out with some pretty cool sounds. I used this on a Dispatch-style instrumental that I guy I recorded did and it turned out really well.


By the way, I vote this thread becomes a sticky.

[kidvybes]

Originally Posted by OneRoomStudios

By the way, I vote this thread becomes a sticky.

Thanks ORS...I hoped that this thread would inspire some of the talented people who frequent this site to give up a little of what they know, and share the bits and pieces that make the creative process so unique...so far so good!...keep it comin!...

[giraffe]

Originally Posted by capnreverb

8. Bass players are never happy with the mix.

how f'n true that is.

[snow lizard]

Dot's stereo image suggestion reminds me of something else.

First, I haven't done a whole lot of mixing. I'm here to learn as much as possible, because frankly I need to.

Anyway, I read about this somewhere and actually tried it on a sample track with a Wurlitzer, but I'm not sure if I remember correctly what I did. It was something like this...

I recorded a mono track. I copied it twice in Cool Edit. I set up 2 tracks panned equally left and right, at the same levels. The third track stays in the center. The center track gets phase inverted. When you play around with the level of the center track, it has the effect of pushing the image of the Wurlitzer outside of the stereo image (created with other instruments of course). It doesn't seem like the type of thing you'd want to do through a whole song, but it's a bizarre kind of effect that might help to push a mix beyond the edge of reality for a couple of bars, and by keeping the center to edge ratio slightly off balance, I'd expect it could be manipulated for some kind of mono compatability as well.

I'd really like for someone to build a rotating capsule microphone, but it's more of a theory/fantasy than an actual trick...


sl

[Warhead]

I don't know if it's a trick, but it's something I do often with snare mic'ing to create bigness. Start with a well tuned snare that sounds right.

I take an SM57 or other comparable mic and bring it just inside the hoop, pointing at the edge of the drum (not the middle / strike area) at a distance of about 1/4" off the head or practically touching it. You get nothing but ring, not whack or crack, just ring.

During mixdown, I often end up phase reversing it and compressing it in a pumping / breathing fashion and blending to taste. Ring can really add a bigness to the drum, which is arguably the most important drum in a rock mix. The image can be huge using a ring mic in addition to more standard snare mic'ing.

War

[Warhead]

From my blog over at www.mojopie.com:

Some thoughts on bass track mixing:

Compression and limiting, done right can keep bass right where you want it. Dont just squash the bejeezus out of it...pump it in rhythm with the music with compression (pay attention to the attack and release times, have the release set to where it's pretty much all the way back up before the next beat) and set a threshold with a limiter.

This gives you a smaller dynamic range to work with, and an opportunity to make the bass track breathe and sound more alive at the same time.

EQ is your next best friend in line (EQ after compression is typically a better idea, you cut / boost frequencies before a compressor and the compressor is going to react more to that frequency that's been pushed out front and won't typically yield you the control you want) and you're probably going to want to bring out those wonderful mids you tracked (another key, when tracking bass be sure to have plenty of mids to work with later as they will define the bass...particularly at lower listening levels and on smaller speakers). Mix at very low levels while working with bass tracks, it will tell you a lot about what's actually going on and make it easier to put it in its space.

So controlling the dynamic range but not killing it, and using the compressor to actually add dynamics by adjusting the attack and release characteristics of the bass to flow with the timing / rhythm of the song. Then, setting a limiter where the bass won't jump out of place drastically and leave it's defined space. EQ to bring out frequencies that make the bass more audible "in" the mix. Monitoring at low levels will also be key at placing it as well.

War

[Dot]

OK, here's another trick. This is a technique for someone who wants to sing and play acoustic guitar at the same time.

Set up the vocal cardioid mic at the height of the singer's mouth about 9" away – give or take a few ".

Put a second cardioid mic down past the bridge - out about 1' or so away from the guitar. And angle the mic at 45 degrees so it's facing the bridge of the guitar.

Set levels and make you're recording.

Then, at mixdown, take the track that used the mic to record the guitar at the bridge, and pan it hard right and reverse the phase. And the track with the vocal should be panned dead center. What will happen is that the guitar track [ while being played with the vocal track on ] will suddenly spread to both speakers and "back up" a bit in the mix – and any of the "boominess" will be gone due to the phase cancellation with the vocal mic. And the track with the vocal will have more room and sit in this nice hole created in the center.

Very effective, and can give a nice, polished sound.

[HogansHiro]

For a disgustingly thick kick sound for hard, hard rock. I place a 55 gallon plastic trash can in front of the kick drum so the open of the trash can is facing the head. Throw a condenser mic with figure 8 pattern about halfway down. gate and limit the new track and you have a solid tight boom you can mix in with your close mic'd kick drum channel. I've tried the trash can the other way but it doesn't work as well for me.

Sounds kinda lame but it works.

[EleKtriKaz]

For distorted guitars (if you've got some layering going on), duplicate all the guitar tracks, so you have two sets of the same tracks. Take one set and route them to an buss, compress that buss hard and add it back in with the dry tracks to taste. This technique can also be used for background vocals.

BTW...right on about bass players never being satisfied with the mix.

[Dot]

For a metal kick drum where you want to get that "click" sound... use a wooden beater, and duct tape a big metal washer to the kick drum batter head right at the contact point. I'd suggest putting a few pieces of duct tape on the kick batter head before applying the washer, just to give it a little extra padding so that the washer doesn't tear through the batter head.

Using a Shure Beta 52 is a good large dynamic kick drum mic for getting that metal "click" sound.

[Han]

Is it just me? I have the feeling there has been a thread like this one not so long ago, in which Harvey started to explain the cowbell trick.

Anyway, there's this trick to fix a recorded dull snare sound: send the snare sound to a bass amp, put the speaker on the back, speaker facing the ceiling.

Put a snare drum upside down on the speaker and mic the snare bottom, there you have the crisp.

[cavedog101]

Ah yes, the old speaker triggering snare trick....Good One!

Large sounds trick.Works really well with bass and some guitar noises. This is how we did it back in the analogical daze before music became zeros and ones....Of course now, it would work even better due to the lack of loss in duping tracks and head-passes...

Take your largely inneffective sound you want to be bigger and dupe it several times.EACH time add or remove a small section of EQ and even print it with a touch of delay for width.

Take all these mono tracks and sub-bus them. Do a mix to a stereo(or mono) track ...You will be able to use Dot's trick in this also flipping phase on different tracks within the bundle and create space in this way.

Season to taste.And BOOM...large individual sounding noise played just like it shoulda been in the first place.

For even cooler noise involving the guitar, do the same process only throw in a couple more passes of the same part using a different guitar or a guitar with a capo or different scale-length.

Remember to TAKE out with EQ in reprinting each part.This allows for a larger space without a buildup of particular frequencies.Which frequencies can only be determined through trial and error.