General questions about advanced recording/mixing

nal1200

New member
Hi, i'm new to this forum and have several questions about various recording and mixing processes. Any help is appreciated!


1. In most popular recordings the vocals for a chorus seem to be panned out in stereo, as to give more depth to the vocals. Am I mistaken or is this called "stereomicing?" How would I go about doing this?

2. When recording drumkits, where exactly should the mic be placed in correlation to the kit? Most recordings have the snare in the middle, with the hihats, tomtoms etc on the outside channels, how is this done if you're recording everything at once?

3. I'm wondering if my new laptop has the sysreqs for good recording, here are the specs:

Inspiron I6400
1.6GHz processor
1022 MB of RAM
32-bit OS
SigmaTel High Definition Audio (Soundcard, I think?)

Thankyou!
 
1. Double tracking - recording the vocal twice - 2 sep takes when ever possible - cloning( & altering EQ delay etc so that the 2 are no longer clones) if not.
2. That's a whole forum on it's own - do a forum search for drum mic'ing.
3. Apart from the audio card all seems cool. If you're using an external card or firepod etc etc then it's not such an issue otherwise you need to get a recording quality card. I mainly use a P3 with 256 Meg RAM and only a 30 gig hard drive & it runs quite well BUT I use an INCA card with 8 I/Os.
You can start with the card you have but the A/D/A conversion will probably let you down once you've developed a taste for quality audio.
 
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well, with only one mic on the whole kit, you're not going to be able to pan each drum seperately, so on that one, i guess your answer is it can't be done with the equipment you have to use.
 
You can mic an entire kit with one mic. Walk around the kit with someone playing it and listen. Find the spot where it sounds most balanced and put the mic there. Experiment till you get a decent balance of the kit. Start out if front of the kit a couple of feet about the height of the snare and play with it.
 
You could do that but you'd be pretty stuck later on if you want to change individual drum levels, eq, compression, etc. You also can't pan different drums to different locations if you're using a single mic. If you want the ride to be on one side, you need to record it on it's own channel and pan it there. For recording the drums you're best off to rent a bunch of equipment (it's actually surprisingly cheap) and mic them separately if you want to pan everything. For the vocals there are also alot of plugins that add stereo effects in addition to the double tracking ones. Reverbs for example can be controlled to have stereo effects. Also check out things like Waves S1 stereo imager. "Stereomicing" is often used for recording instruments.
 
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