Common Newbie Recording Mistakes-Examples?

N

Noplasticrobots

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Mics being out of phase is bad. Boosting too much on the EQ will give you lots of noise. Flutter echoes are intolerable. But is there any place where people new to recording can hear examples of most of these common mistakes?
 
hehehe.

when i've been using my Yamaha MG 12/4 - i kept on forgetting to press the ST button to send the signal to the main stereo outs... i'd play a great take, then realise that i didn't have anything :D. pretty careless, especially when i felt i'd just played that 'killer take' and i can never repeat it. now i tend to just leave those buttons on, and just bring up the faders.

Andy.
 
I used to be so excited about finishing the last track of a tune that I'd start mixing down immediately. Now, I take a break of a few hours, or maybe even wait until the next day. Then before pressing "play" for the song I want to mix, I put in a CD of a band who's sound or style comes close to what I might be going for.
 
I am more patient (some might say more particular or demanding) with the tracking phase than I was when I started out. Used to be I was happy to lay down something as long as it didn't go red, a string or a drumstick didn't break and there were no major gaffes on the part of the performers. A bit of the "fix in the mix" attitude.

Now I am more apt to go for a better take or two from the performance (though I know not to be a perfectionist or to demand perfection) or to do an alternate take or two with different mic technique, to give me better source material to work from at the outset.

Budget and timeline considerations notwithstanding, even though mixing is my favorite part of the process still, I know now not to be in a hurry to get to the mix or to expect the mix to be the solution to an insufficient tracking.

G.
 
I would get my drum and bass tracks down, which I always used to take my time doing to get them right.
"THEN" I would rush through and lay my guitar tracks down just so I could listen to the song as it was being constructed. I would start tweaking everything, getting carried away, putting to much emphasis in something only to find the guitars would need to be tracked again.
Being to keen to hear my new chord progressions along with the bass and drums resulted in me having to double back and record the guitars again (how they should of been done in the first place) :eek:

I have now learnt to be a little more patient in the recording process. If it's worth doing it's worth doing properly!
 
Turning off the furnace for some vox takes in the middle of the winter, forgetting to turn it back on, and leaving for a few hours. Got back home and it was 50° F!
 
yeah I agree with the above statements about patience. for years right when I got an idea for a song, I would run and track it in an hour, always using the first take. sometimes I wouldn't even finish writing the song, just throw up a mic and hop on the drums and lay down a track. then bass-line...hit record before even fiddling with the music...I was just so happy to be recording my ideas... unfortunately when I go back and listen to my creations they are pretty horrible.

I still use a similar process, but I will at the least work out a part before I hit record, make sure the song is finished and I can play all the way through on guitar and vocals, and make sure I get a take that is maybe not perfect but at the least something I won't be embarassed with later on. back in high school anything I put onto tape sounded cool as shit... now its like keeping up with real studios...

oh yeah and air conditioning or ceiling fans turning on or off will put a guitar out of tune instantly.
 
apl said:
Turning off the furnace for some vox takes in the middle of the winter, forgetting to turn it back on, and leaving for a few hours. Got back home and it was 50° F!
Click to expand...

hehe. that sounds really REALLY warm to me :p - silly celcius/farhenheit differences!

Andy
 
andydeedpoll said:
hehe. that sounds really REALLY warm to me :p - silly celcius/farhenheit differences!

Andy
Click to expand...

That's why I put °F in the original post, andy, for our metric friends.
 
here's an easy first time mistake to avoid

happens often:
finish a mix, listen to it on stereo=sounds like poo

wrong answer:
go back and crank the piss out of the hi's and low's in "mastering"

correct answer:
Ideal: retrack offending instruments
less ideal but will work: correct sound of individual instruments probably
with eq or whatever. (not entire mix)

you really only ever have to do this one time to figure out it's a bad idea.
 
The most common mistake newbs make is thinking that the room doesn't matter, and also thinking the sound comes from the gear instead of good recording technique.
 
Common recording mistakes?

Having a noisey recording system (60 cycle hum in the background). Hook everything up to the same outlet (without overloading the circuit with too much combined wattage). Iso-Patches can help but not always or completely.
 
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