Am I in lala land?

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bones27

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Hi guys,
I've been a lurker here for a while and have learned so much, i'm hoping I can get some advice on something i'm pondering, which i'm not too sure is a stupid idea or not. At the moment i've been recording with a fast track pro at home, mixing myself etc, which is fine for demo's. I'm now wanting to record a fairly professional sounding EP (solo artist, no band), do you think there's any chance in hell I can achieve that with the following process:

Get an Mbox 3 (have heard they've got decent pre's, and sound better than the 003)
Get a 'mic thingy' (those mic shield mini booth things to negate the 'bedroom factor'), and use my Rode NT-1 for vocals. I mainly record electric guitar so would be close mic'ing the amp with a 57 or other condensor anyway. Bass guitar would be DI'd, and drums would be either recorded in a studio or I might try one of the 'online session "send me your tracks i'll send you back a drum track" drummers'.

THEN, spend decent money getting the tracks mixed and mastered professionally. (apart from hearing decent enough reviews, compatibility of pro/tools bundled with the mbox 3 seems important for this stage)

Straight up, the reason why I'm not keen to actually record the tracks in a studio is due to the sheer amount of time I take to work and I like to get things perfect etc.

Anyways, feel free to give me a good slap in the face if I need it, or if it sounds like a reasonable enough plan, i'd love to hear that too.

Thanks in advance for any responses,
Cheers
 
I've always wanted to go to lala land!

What you want to do has quickly become the norm in recording.
Drums are hard without the right space but not impossible.
Vocals are another part of the recording that people go to the studio for.

As far as a DAW you can use anything you want right down to the $40. Reaper download.

So if I were you do what you can do at home the try the vocal and drum tracks if your not satisfied then go to a studio to finish up your project. Mix and send out for mastering. Then duplication if that is the route that you are going.

Next time save me a seat on the bus to lala land!
 
First of all, welcome aboard!

It sounds like a good plan but keep in mind that as a musician, the experience you gain from mixing yourself (and even at least trying to master) will be extremely good to have both in terms of future work in studios, but more importantly in terms of ear training.

Now I don't know how much experience you have, probably more than me :D

I'm just saying.

Any chance of hearing your work?
 
dainbramage said:
First of all, welcome aboard!

It sounds like a good plan but keep in mind that as a musician, the experience you gain from mixing yourself (and even at least trying to master) will be extremely good to have both in terms of future work in studios, but more importantly in terms of ear training.

Now I don't know how much experience you have, probably more than me :D

I'm just saying.

Any chance of hearing your work?
Click to expand...

Cool, thanks for the replies guys. The forum software won't let me post a link but some of my stuff i've done myself is at reverbnation /mattburke
I've tried the mixing thing and tbh, it was a process which used to excite me, but as you can hear with the stuff up there i've become abit lazy with it and its become abit of a chore, aswell as the fact that I know enough about it to know what I don't know, so am happy to throw money at that problem :)

Thanks again guys
 
Sounds good apart from the DI bass. You really want to use a good quality bas amp and split the signal so you have DI and microphone on amp. I would also use as many mics as you can on the bass amp speaker for more control at Mix down.
Same goes for guitar, good quality guitar amp, DI, and also mic'd with as many mics as you can.

For vocals you could put up a bed duvet in the corner of a room and then set up the mic and pop shield so the singer is singing into the corner of the room with the duvet up in it. This will help reduce room reverberation.

Good luck. You should post a sample of your work.

G
 
No worries, thanks. Last time I tried ripping out some old matresses and putting them around me in a make shift vocal booth with blankets over them. Produced the best vocal result I've ever achieved technically, problem was they were so dusty my nose started running and vocally they were probably the worst :)

Do you think something like the Mbox3 (or avid mbox, or whatever its called atm) would produce significantly better results than something like my fast track pro? I thought I'd just get the best integrated PT system I can afford (nowhere near HD unfortunately) but if its worth my while spending twice as much on a soundcard and just buying PT outright then I'd go down that path if it'd achieve a significantly better result.
 
moresound said:
...As far as a DAW you can use anything you want right down to the $40 Reaper download.
Click to expand...

I take exception to how this was phrased! Reaper is a fantastic DAW in every measurable sense. It just happens to be inexpensive (which I choose to assume is what you meant by 'right down to' ;) )

Any way, to the OP: Honestly, as far as getting Pro Tools in order to have professionals track/mix/master your stuff, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Yes, the format portability of Pro Tools sessions can certainly be convenient if you are taking a session from studio to studio, but the reasons for this are somewhat nullified if you aren't going to be doing any of the mixing yourself. It really depends on what sort of work you want the outside engineer(s) to be doing. Will you be editing everything yourself? Or will you want the mixing engineer to also edit your tracks (as in, fixing takes, editing out silence between parts, moving parts around, etc.)? If you're going to have someone else edit your tracks, you'll have to track your session in whatever format they'll be editing in. For instance, if you were to hire me to edit your tracks, I'd request that the sessions be tracked in Reaper or Pro Tools, as those are the formats/DAWs I'm most comfortable with, and it's much more convenient for me to be able to simply open up your session and start working. However, if you were to hire me to mix your tracks, I'd ask that you turn any non-creative effects off (as in, unless you're using in-the-box effects as creative tools to create the sound you're going for, turn off any effects you were using to pre-mix/pseudo-mix your stuff) and bounce each track from zero, locking in all of your edits and takes. That way, I'm starting out my mix knowing that all editing work has been done, and I can import your tracks into whatever DAW I wish with ease.

Get what I'm saying? I suppose this doesn't really help you decide which interface to get, if indeed that is your main question. If you're not recording drums, pretty much anything that has one or two XLR inputs, phantom power, and doesn't sound like complete dog shit, will do just fine for guitars/bass/vox/whatevs.
 
Brilliant song Steve. I am not usually into screaming vocals but I can handle this since the song is so good. :)
The vocals are at the perfect volume, not too in your face.
Nice Mix also.

G
 
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