Post your favorite production tricks!

R

rpc9943

New member
Hi,

Just wondering if maybe we could all post our favorite tricks and tips!

My favorite include:

Doubling up on vocal/guitar/shaker tracks. When i'm recording people or myself, I find it always sounds almost beatlesque to record people. The trick is, make sure they are playing/singing the same notes and rhythm. Some variation is good but it sounds so fresh.

Reverse ghost effect. A typical effect used in bands such as Tool (I don't personally like them). Simply done by reversing a wav, then adding reverb or echo effects, then reversing the wav back. I find this tool can be used in many different areas.

Space effect loop- Echo with high feedback - you can get a very spacey sound by extending even a second clip of something and applying an echo many times, and then using dynamic EQ to make early-pinkfloyd/radiohead "ok computer" type space sounds.

Harmonic Underwater/Space Effect - adding multiple reverbs with very high amounts of sustain, and bringing in minimal chorus, will bring out choirs of harmonics, sending notes into a blurry haze of blissful notes. If you keep plodding down these effects, it will sound like an oceanic field of whales/angels singing.

Spacial reverb/compression (for use on guitar mostly)- Taking each side (left/right) and individually applying reverb to create an ethereal, early-U2-ish guitar sound.


Anyone have their neat tricks?
 
Cowbell - Hit hard and just ahead of the drummer, then buried DEEP in the mix.

Whisper track - Vocalist monotonously whispers along with the vocal - No voice-box, no tone - then compress, chorus and enjoy.

It's a good thing.
 
Same effect as the whisper track:

Mic an unamplified electric guitar playing the rhythm and then mix it deep in the mix with the distorted rhythm parts. Sometimes I add a clean track too. Does anyone else do this or am I the only one?
 
What he said above.

Also, cloning a clean guitar track, panning one 50% to the left and the other 50% to the right, and detuning one of them 2-4 cents. Awesome Alex Lifeson-esque effect.
 
Nice one, man. But then, sometimes they say "Captain's log, supplemental." They got extra stuff stored up there?
 
The Seifer said:
Same effect as the whisper track:

Mic an unamplified electric guitar playing the rhythm and then mix it deep in the mix with the distorted rhythm parts. Sometimes I add a clean track too. Does anyone else do this or am I the only one?
Click to expand...



i personally haven't tried that..but if you listen to a lot of zeppelin and such you can hear especially in their mid-70's stuff they do that a lot...4 or 5 guitar tracks..2 OD, 1 or 2 clean, and one acoustic..or some setup like that..it makes a difference!! lol..
 
One of the first things I did when I got nearfields was play Tool's "Undertow" cd and get my drum machine's sound as close as possible to Danny Carey's sound. Although the result wasn't the same sound, I somehow tweaked the kick to some weird default so that the drum machine plays two kicks simultaneously, one with the "click" and one with the "boom". Combined on one channel, the result is a massive sounding kick that because of the frequencies of each, eats only the headroom of one instrument in that range.

Another trick I swear by is taking the high tom and tuning it to the top note of the key of the song and having it play with the snare. Double the work in programming drum tracks, but when buried under the snare in the mix gives an extremely powerful smack.
 
Well, one I just got to really appreciate was the use of reverb to bring things forward or push them into the background in a mix. It's quite simple to achieve; you set up reverb as a send effect as usual, however the send should be set to 'pre-fader'. This means that the level of signal going to the reverb is independent of the volume of the original sound. Hence, the further you turn down the volume of the original track, the more the balance of the reverb and effected sound favours the reverb return. By turning it down you can hear the orignal track sound more and more as if it's coming from further away. It's very useful when used with reverbs set to a reasonable size of room but a very short decay time, of say less than 1 sec or thereabouts. It's far more effective than say setting a huge reverb, which will just muddy everything.

It's easier to do than to explain.... try it out.
 
My favorite production trick? Make the band rehearse eight hours a day for two weeks before you go into the studio.


Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
I found that when I recorded my band, we went a lot better if our singer/guitarist wasn't there when we were doing the other tracking!
 
I know this isn't very exciting, but I like to hard-pan reverbs. Like place electric guitar far left, then either place a distant room mic far right or pan a reverb far right. Add a little predelay to the verb track, and it has an effect of widening the stereo image in a nice way.

Another one: record tamborines / shakers, basically any hand percussion using a binaural head. Sounds kind of fun with headphones on.
 
Much like the pork industry uses the whole hog. I like to use scratch tracks for all that they have to offer. For example...

Singing guitar players often sing and play while the band gets basic tracks recorded. I use that vocal track for all kinds of things including compressing the hell out of it and using the sound of the unamplified guitar for that percussive "stringy" sound in the breaks or non vocal sections. Someone else mentioned this technique earlier. I first noticed it on Steve Earl's Jeruselum album.

If it's a good singer I will use if for a double sometimes or use this track for all the vocal effects and leave the main vocal bone dry. It all depends on how junky the take is. If it just smears the mix too much then I let it go.

I cut up guitar parts to create doubles from one guitar track by copying later cycles of the same part to thicken things up from time to time. Sometimes I process only this track and just mix the effect of this artificial double.

Ya know, whatever sounds good. Sometimes this stuff just sounds like crap and no amount of perfume will take away the stink. How's that for mixing metaphors?

Cheers.
 
Alchemist3k said:
Well, one I just got to really appreciate was the use of reverb to bring things forward or push them into the background in a mix. It's quite simple to achieve; you set up reverb as a send effect as usual, however the send should be set to 'pre-fader'. This means that the level of signal going to the reverb is independent of the volume of the original sound. Hence, the further you turn down the volume of the original track, the more the balance of the reverb and effected sound favours the reverb return. By turning it down you can hear the orignal track sound more and more as if it's coming from further away. It's very useful when used with reverbs set to a reasonable size of room but a very short decay time, of say less than 1 sec or thereabouts. It's far more effective than say setting a huge reverb, which will just muddy everything.

It's easier to do than to explain.... try it out.
Click to expand...

If I understand, you're doing the same thing they did on the vocals (at the end of the songs) for both Bob Seger's "Main Street" and Elton's "Rocket Man" - both of which the vocals get more reverby and distant as the song fades.
 
Sidechain compression

Using the kick (or the frequencies of the kick you want to bring out) as the source to side-chain compress loud guitars slightly (4db maybe), or guitars and bass, or everthing except vocals.
 
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