Trell Blaze
Killing generic R&B...
I already did. Yesterday was my last day working! *jumps for joy* Wait...so now I'm poor AND unemployed.
Thanks for creating yet another sad moment for me, Vadoom...
Thanks for creating yet another sad moment for me, Vadoom...
giraffe
i love negative rep
biggest improvement:
tracking things with less bass, in general.
tracking things with less bass, in general.
superspit
idiots unite!
when I realised that you HAD TO BE IN THE RIGHT MOOD to play and record,...room treatments and equipment became more and more superfluous.
J
jbal122819
New member
For home recordings..............
1. getting good monitors & power amp
2. get a Tatoo on your forehead that says "Less is More"
3. don't touch EQ or Compression unless you absolutely have to
4. pay much much more attention to the quality of the SOURCE
1. getting good monitors & power amp
2. get a Tatoo on your forehead that says "Less is More"
3. don't touch EQ or Compression unless you absolutely have to
4. pay much much more attention to the quality of the SOURCE
G
gtr1960
New member
learning that all of it is effective for great recordings.... for great recording you need great musical performance. Pro studios see this all the time, crap bands, or musicians wasting money cause they're not ready for the studio yet. No amount of gear, room treatment, or engineering knowledge, can fix bad musical performance... you can help it out , but you can't fix it. That said , there is a reason pro studio buy pro gear .. it does make some difference in the hands of someone who knows how to use it..
If I could ( don't have the money) get my hands on expensive ssl boards and high end preamps .. it would be a waste of gear, because I don't have the experience and knowledge to work the gear properly.. That is why I pay someone else for the high end sound..
Knowing that gear is not everything either, I have spent money at a top end studio and I was not happy with the results.. went to a mid grade studio with a lot less gear and got great results. They still had great gear and fantastic rooms.
So after all that the greatest improvements in my home studio is learning , learning, learning(reading boards like these and asking pros questions), Experimenting, trying things out, and experience (what works well and what doesn't) Knowing the gear, and how to use it also helps,
especially with compressors, and eq's and mic'n techniques.
If I could ( don't have the money) get my hands on expensive ssl boards and high end preamps .. it would be a waste of gear, because I don't have the experience and knowledge to work the gear properly.. That is why I pay someone else for the high end sound..
Knowing that gear is not everything either, I have spent money at a top end studio and I was not happy with the results.. went to a mid grade studio with a lot less gear and got great results. They still had great gear and fantastic rooms.
So after all that the greatest improvements in my home studio is learning , learning, learning(reading boards like these and asking pros questions), Experimenting, trying things out, and experience (what works well and what doesn't) Knowing the gear, and how to use it also helps,
especially with compressors, and eq's and mic'n techniques.
Last edited:
C
chessrock
Banned
Ding ding ding.
At some point, you might have the opporunity to record someone who has good equipment (nice guitars, amps, expensive cymbals, etc), and knows how to tweak it to sound really good ... and who plays with good technique, etc.
If/when that happens, you'll get a quick reality jolt and realize just how insignificant you are in the whole scheme of things. Relatively speaking, that is. Yea, your mics are important, the preamps, converters, yada yada yada ... but the equipment you use to record isn't nearly as important as the equipment you're performing with.
.
Y
yoyo
At your service
Steve Henningsgard
New member
Yep. I posted a humorous blog about it on my recording page:
"Why does Band A sound so much better than Band B?"
I've had several bands ask me a similar question in the past couple of months, and so I figured it'd be a decent idea to post some helpful tips!
The things most bands screw up (other than refusing to believe the pro's are really that much better than you) are:
- Drummer having poor rhythm/consistency. Most kids these days try to emulate their favorite metal drummers, and double-kick as fast as they can, before they can even play a steady rock beat! Slow the fuck down, go spend $20 on a metronome, and start practicing to a click. Focus on hitting the drums consistently hard and even. Only when you can play consistently should you start trying to speed up. The drums are the foundation of the recording: if you're unsteady, the entire recording is fucked.
- Shitty equipment. NO amount of tweaking can fix shitty gear. NONE! If you have a $200 guitar with stock pickups and old rusty strings, plugged into a shitty broken cable, running through a Crate 2x12, it will sound like shit. If you're running a $2,000 PRS guitar with nice new strings through a $4000+ Framus/Marshall/Mesa half-stack, with Monster Cables, it is much less likely the tone will be shit (although 75% of tone is in the guitar player's hands, not the equipment!) Now, you don't NEED to spend thousands and thousands of dollars: get your inexpensive guitar intonated (meaning the notes are accurate all the way up the fret-board, so when you play chords up there, they're still in tune!), buy some nice strings (you should be replacing all of them at once, and at least once every 2-3 weeks and before shows), and get the nicest all-tube amp you can afford (none of that modeling crap if you can help it!). For drums, BUY NEW HEADS AND LEARN HOW TO TUNE THEM!!! Then tune, de-tune, and re-tune them every day for a couple of weeks. Buy drum tuning videos, go to a drum shop and ask for lessons, anything that can help.
- Not enough practice. You should be able to play through every song you want to record, all the way through, to a metronome, without screwing up once. Not once. If you screw up, keep practicing. If you get off-rhythm, keep practicing. If you miss one note, keep practicing. etc. etc. etc. Most of your favorite bands practice every single day for years and years and years, either on their own or with the band! Practice practice practice! If you don't give a shit if you play your parts correctly, then you have no business being in a band. Go home.
- Poor song writing. No amount of high-end equipment, practice, or million-dollar recording studios will make a shitty song good. As an engineer, I can make you sound louder, quieter, bassier, trebblier, punchier, and to a small extent cleaner, but I can not make a non-heavy riff heavy, a non-pretty riff pretty, or a non-catchy song catchy. Don't settle for passable, or OK! You have no right to expect people to listen to your OK songs. They'll be mad at you for it, and you'll deserve it! Of course, you can't always write amazing songs, especially if you're just starting your journey into the vast world of song-writing. But you owe it to yourself, your band, and your fans, to write the best songs you possibly can, and to love the songs you write! Keep the songs you're not 100% in love with to yourself: we don't want to hear them. They don't have to be amazing. They WON'T be amazing until you've written a bunch (unless you're Mozart haha), but you HAVE to LOVE your music. Otherwise you're just wasting your, and everybody else's time. Your songs should have a MEANING for you, and you should be trying your hardest to convey that meaning to others through your song. It doesn't have to be deep: your song could be about loving fried chicken for all I care, but it's the fact that you care about something that will make people want to hear about it. This even goes for death metal: it could just be about loving death metal, or horror movies, or just about having fun writing the grossest, most evil lyrics you can think of! Just don't settle for mediocrity.
It's impossible to make a shitty song sound good.
It's nearly impossible to make an amazing song sound bad.
I'm torn between wanting to take it down or not, as I may be scaring away crappy bands, who have more money than I do
NegadivOne
Alchemy slut
I second all these. My biggest improvement besides when I stopped mixing on my vf160 and started mixing on my computer, was when I learned the importance of proper mic placement. It doesn't matter how good your mic's are if you can't use them properly.
C
cello_pudding
Well-known member
when i found compressing isn't a magical sound better effect.
when i found better positions to mic an instrument.
when i became a better musician
when i found better positions to mic an instrument.
when i became a better musician
T
The Axis
Member
The truth hurts.
SouthSIDE Glen
independentrecording.net
Steve, this has to be the single best post I have read on this forum since I got here. Not only should you leave it up on your site (bad bands that think they're good enough to record themselves have enough ego that they'll think you're talking about someone else anyway, and yet quietly adopt at least one of your ideas without telling anybodyYep. I posted a humorous blog about it on my recording page:
"Why does Band A sound so much better than Band B?"
...
I'm torn between wanting to take it down or not, as I may be scaring away crappy bands, who have more money than I do
), but it should be stickied here and distribued to every website you can think of.I'd even put a copy of it on my site (with full, proper credit to you and your site, of course), it hits the nail on the head with a frikin' jackhammer!
G.
K
kludge
New member
1. Microphones hear things that our ears ignore. Some are problems with the instrument (crackles, squeaks), some are problems with the environment (squeaky chairs must be BANISHED!), and some are problems with the performer (thumps, scratches, badly-played notes). EVERY performer should try recording themselves at home, even using a cassette player, and LISTEN to what they sound like, before hitting the studio. Fix instruments and fix technique.
2. Some takes are just magical. Even if they're not perfect.
3. There's a difference between gear to expand your abilities (i.e. more inputs) and gear to refine your abilities (i.e. better preamps). It's easy to hide behind the skirts of G.A.S., saying "I need a better mic" or something rather than doing what we can with what we have. G.A.S. is about fear as much as anything - as if a new compressor is the only difference between rules and sucks.
4. PRE-PRODUCE!!! Know what you intend to play BEFORE you hit record. If it's a band, they should all know all their parts well, and be able to play them together well. Don't compose in the studio, unless you own the studio, and maybe not even then.
5. Emotions and tensions can run VERY high while recording. A lot of bands break up in the studio. Booze fuels fighting and undermines playing.
2. Some takes are just magical. Even if they're not perfect.
3. There's a difference between gear to expand your abilities (i.e. more inputs) and gear to refine your abilities (i.e. better preamps). It's easy to hide behind the skirts of G.A.S., saying "I need a better mic" or something rather than doing what we can with what we have. G.A.S. is about fear as much as anything - as if a new compressor is the only difference between rules and sucks.
4. PRE-PRODUCE!!! Know what you intend to play BEFORE you hit record. If it's a band, they should all know all their parts well, and be able to play them together well. Don't compose in the studio, unless you own the studio, and maybe not even then.
5. Emotions and tensions can run VERY high while recording. A lot of bands break up in the studio. Booze fuels fighting and undermines playing.
Steve Henningsgard
New member
Steve, this has to be the single best post I have read on this forum since I got here. Not only should you leave it up on your site (bad bands that think they're good enough to record themselves have enough ego that they'll think you're talking about someone else anyway, and yet quietly adopt at least one of your ideas without telling anybody
I'd even put a copy of it on my site (with full, proper credit to you and your site, of course), it hits the nail on the head with a frikin' jackhammer!
G.
Haha, thanks man! Glad I'm not the only one that feels this way
You have my full permission to post it wherever the hell you want!
M
midwesttribune
New member
basically just by not getting extremly frustrated when it didn't sound exactly the way i wanted it right from the start. often times i hear something im creating an im like "i suck at producing, i lost my skill for it" an then i finish it an let it sit fer a week come back, an really fuckin enjoy it, an get good reviews. Also not every musical attempt at recording is going to be good, so sometimes you'll right a whole song, an discover, you shouldn't record because you cant manipulate your sound to be the one you thought of in yer head
Todzilla
New member
Far and away, my biggest improvement (and not coincidentally, my biggest investment) was building a nice sized recording studio room. It's not huge, but at 16' X 23' with valuted 14' cathedral ceilings, it gives me enough space to record room sounds and not regret it.
After that, it was buying a buddy's Neumann mic when he was about to get evicted.
After that, it was buying a buddy's Neumann mic when he was about to get evicted.
sweetnubs
New member
C
Cosmic
Active member
Moments:
When I learned proper gain staging, and stopped trying to slam the levels when recording digital.
When I stopped buying Chinese mics and started buying German ones.
When I started completely finishing a song (arranging, rehersing, et. cetera) before recording, not just haphazardly trying to create it on the fly, track by track.
And that simplicity is king.
Best,
C.
When I learned proper gain staging, and stopped trying to slam the levels when recording digital.
When I stopped buying Chinese mics and started buying German ones.
When I started completely finishing a song (arranging, rehersing, et. cetera) before recording, not just haphazardly trying to create it on the fly, track by track.
And that simplicity is king.
Best,
C.