Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes to the way I think/work/do

  • Thread starter Thread starter fritsthegirl
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fritsthegirl

fritsthegirl

Taste of home
When I started on this recording thing a while ago I impressed myself quite a lot by getting a driver to work with my usb interface. Never mind about levels & timing and all that. Then I posted my first thing to the mp3 clinic and nothing has been the same since. :D

It's impossible for me to have the same casual attitude about what I'm doing as I did when I started, and it's slowed the production down quite a bit. Everything goes through a severe inspection, if I'm not happy, I start all over. And then I'm still not happy. I'm not really a perfectionist, but I'm becoming a pretty severe one over this. I hope this is temporary and just the steep learning curve that I have to go through to get the basics of recording under my belt. What do you guys reckon?

Anyone else go through the same thing when they first started recording?
 
I'm sure it's different for everyone but that pretty much matches what happened to me.

I discovered that I could make recordings and that immediately superseded sliced bread.
Then I realised they sucked but I could spent hours tweaking and nitpicking; That took up a substantial portion of my life.

Now I'm in a happy-medium. I honestly think that being over critical can be incredibly destructive in a recording/mixing session.
Everyone has to find their own balance though.

It's funny you should mention this. I've noticed that if I'm working on a session with someone, it immediately falls to sh1t if I let them know how I'm doing things.
If I just do it, we're fine.

For example, "Can you make that snare louder?" (tip tap click whatever)...how's that? Fine.

If I let them see me increasing midi velocity or drawing a volume envelope, all of a sudden I'm shifted out of the seat and we're in for a four hour sitting of someone zooming right in on finest details and tweaking things that either a: just don't matter, or b: will stand out like a sore thumb when listened to in context.
I definitely try to give people a fish rather than a fishing rod.

Summary? Get the attention to detail in in the performance and then you won't have to in the box. :)
That's been my experience.
 
Yeah...I think that's often forgotten, ignored or just not appreciated as much as it should be and as it use to be, moslty due to the DAW revolution.
For a lot of folks just getting into it, the mindset about recording has changed, and the thinking is now more about what should happen AFTER the tracks are in the DAW, instead of while out on the studio floor and/or during pre-production.
There's too much focus on all the processing/FX that can/should be applied once the tracks are recorded, and how to tweak them to extract the right sounds....rather than thinking about the sounds during tracking.
 
miroslav said:
and the thinking is now more about what should happen AFTER the tracks are in the DAW, instead of while out on the studio floor and/or during pre-production.
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I should point out that I only recently saw the light. :facepalm:
 
Best advice, I'll heed it then. Cheers for that, it's always really useful to get a different view on these things. It sparks up an otherwise dormant part of my brain. I should most definitely spend more time on the preliminary preparations. Like testing the mic positioning and getting everything sounding right before I start recording. I'm pretty sure I've been told this before but I wasn't ready to hear it. :)

I don't like being too precious on the creative side, but this has kind of made me think the recording side of things is more physics than anything. There's no fudging maths and science, just changing equations to fit the problem. I need to get my head around it.
 
I play a lot of instruments on the recordings that come my way, and often I don't know the tracks inside out while I'm fudging bass, keys, guitars etc.
Sometimes I find myself recording sections, or just recording until I make a mistake and then rolling back a few bars and trying again.

I can wholeheartedly say that it makes a world of difference just sitting back and practicing your part to the mix a handful of times.
That rehearsal time doesn't just mean you're likely to make the recording in one take; It means you're likely to commit to the recording.
All of a sudden you play with more confidence, and that really comes across, in my opinion.

Of course I don't always practice what I preach because I'm very lazy and it's not my record. :p
 
Steenamaroo said:
Summary? Get the attention to detail in in the performance and then you won't have to in the box. :)
That's been my experience.
Click to expand...


Smarter recordist words have not been spoken. :thumbs up:



When I go into a project I know in my mind's eye/ear what I want the finished masterpiece to be in terms of performance.
Not many people will listen to the intricateness of a song rather they will put their attention to the melody or the story being told.

Lots of times I just can't get a good take even after multiple takes. Those go on the back burner and can stay there for years until something clicks with it.While other projects darn near record themselves to perfection.


The only time am at totally full blown obsessiveness is my foley recordings (very interesting work - LQQK HERE), and voice over.

Both of these fields need near perfection to convince the listener.
 
moresound said:
The only time am at totally full blown obsessiveness is my foley recordings (very interesting work - LQQK HERE), and voice over.

Both of these fields need near perfection to convince the listener.
Click to expand...

That's a top exception, Henry.
I've done very little foley, but I'd certainly spend hours nit picking and focussing in on smaller details with that kind of work.
 
Steenamaroo said:
That's a top exception, Henry.
I've done very little foley, but I'd certainly spend hours nit picking and focussing in on smaller details with that kind of work.
Click to expand...

I'll have to post up the foley art that I made along side for a live reading of *Twas The Night Before Christmas*.
You would get a big kick out of that masterpiece. :thumbs up:
 
All DAWs by their extensive functionality create that post-tracking black hole....where there's too much temptation to use everything, or the mis-belief that whatever was wrong, unfinished, unrealized during tracking, can all be taken care of in the DAW.

With my choice to still mix OTB, I kinda limit myself to what I do while I'm in the DAW...which is primarily to clean up the hash, do some spot-editing, and some comping...and even that can suck you in to where you start micro-editing, but I've pulled back more and more from that with each new song production, and gotten back to getting it all (trying to) during tracking, leaving only minimal stuff to do in the DAW.
I'll use the DAW mostly as a final safety net...where if needed, I can make that hard spot-edit happen, and save and an otherwise good track. For everyone doing their entire production ITB....it's easy to get in too deep without noticing.
 
fritsthegirl said:
It's impossible for me to have the same casual attitude about what I'm doing as I did when I started, and it's slowed the production down quite a bit. Everything goes through a severe inspection, if I'm not happy, I start all over.
Click to expand...
When I first started multitracking, I was so excited to be able to get all the ingredients of a song recorded and I used to record with effects and it was only when it came to mixing that I often realized that I had a mush that was really hard to mix. Obviously this improved over the years but I've eventually reached a point where I am both casual and picky at the same time. I'm by no means a perfectionist but neither am I 'anyhow', neither slick nor slack.
It's very rare for example, that if someone is contributing to a song, that they'll be coming back to redo their part. We chase it until we lay it down. I like to get things straight away rather than endless takes and probably 95% of the time, that's what happens.
It also helps that things can be recorded in sections, so the part can be run through a couple of times then recorded. I usually have an idea of which parts go where. If it's improvising, then we just roll the machine {I was going to say tape} and go till we get something I'm happy with.
With me a song could take 10 years or a week to be finished, I always have so many songs on the go at the same time so I can't say I worry about productions being slowed down ! Very rarely do I begin again. It has happened, but rarely.
 
miroslav said:
For everyone doing their entire production ITB....it's easy to get in too deep without noticing.
Click to expand...

100%
I do find it amusing though when I catch myself on.
I mean, I'm aware of this phenomenon and have learned through experience, but I still get up in the morning sometimes and listen to yesterday's work and just think "yehp....that was a wasted day".

It's unreal what fresh ears can reveal sometimes, huh?
 
It's easy to get 'too critical' of your own work. After the umpteenth listen to a mix, you may hear subtle noises you never noticed before or the opposite - you no longer really HEAR it because your memory takes over.
When I'm tracking I will lay down multiple takes, even when I think 'the last one was it', until I run out of time (bed, work, family arriving home). During mixing become my own worst critic, trying to find the best take or piece of take to use.
In the end, its probably much like performing live - 90% of the audience won't notice a little flub - only the musicians (or othe rhome recordists) will.
 
The editing thing can go way too far.......but it is worth going through the whole cycle. It's often overlooked/not known/ignored that the same thing used to happen long before there was any digital machines in existance. Engineers spent all night for days editing with blocks and razors. I've just finished reading Mark Evans' autobiography and his description of the way some of AC/DCs early songs came together via the hand of George Young is most revealing.......and surprizing for 19775/6/7.
 
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