E.P. Recording. Tips would be cool.

  • Thread starter Thread starter kidkage
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kidkage

kidkage

Bored of Canada
I've been recording for about a year or so. Mainly the stuff has really just been as im writing. I do the drum, guitar, vocal, bass parts. Just 1 take once its wrote, live, no splicing multiple takes, on a tascam dp008 8 track through headphones and just put the stuff together and try to limit clipping. so i guess it would be demoing(/ field recording?). I'll be upgrading to a Tascam 2488 24 track daw, i'll also finally be buying some monitors (just some krk rokits) and want to record an E.P. this summer. I'm looking for any tips anyone wants to give to make things as legit as possible so i can take the project to its maximum potential (i.e- "do multiple takes", "get on a schedule", "plug the lava lamp in beside the drums"...anything)

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1) Have fun while you're doing it.
2) Get others to listen and give constructive criticism. Either it's very easy to be too self-critical (constantly wanting to re-do tracks) or to be uncritical.
 
In the same boat with you there bud. I plan on taking extra care in drum mic setup and getting new drum takes every time we record. We have no special outboard gear. I also want to make sure that we are happy with a song before moving to a new one. We will be using a click for the first time in the studio as well. Mainly, just take time and not rush is the plan.
 
My advice? Mix low. You don't have to have everything all green touching yellow and, for the love of god, no red! Worry about volume when mastering. It's commendable to be able to pull everything off live but save yourself some frustration and take advantage of the technology too. Watch the low end. It's a tricky sumbitch.
 
You have at least realized the importance of Lava Lamp. From there everything will work perfectly!
 
thanks for the advice.
another question: how is pre-production defined?
 
how is pre-production defined
Click to expand...

To me it is a rough recording that you bring to an engineer to give him a rough idea of what kind of material you are gonna be working on and such. If you are working on producing something yourself with your own material pre-production is kinda pointless. But that's just me. Really, pre-production would probably be anything you do before you record anything that will be final.
 
Get the drums right first. They can be tricky, and everything else is easier to redo.

Listen, mix, relisten, remix, repeat 100 times.

Oh, and take it easy on the compression and effects, it is easy and tempting to compress the life out of everything, EQ the highs into outer space, and put enough reverb on each track to make it sound like it was recorded at Westminster Abbey. I don't put any effects on until ALL tracking is done just to avoid overdoing it.
 
A good rule of thumb for using effects is to add them until you start to hear them, and then back it off a notch or two. That way you make the effect blend in without standing out.
 
Take breaks fairly frequently. It's easy to get listening-fatigued and to make bad mix decisions after listening for ages.
 
Also, don't let anything get past the first listen. If you listen to a track back and hear a mistake, re-record it. It's easy to say 'will it notice?' but it usually will and since you'll know it's there, you won't be able to ignore it and it could ruin the track for you.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I'm taking note of everything. The tip about reverb seems very interesting, but makes sense. I guess ive always made the mistake of looking at is as an effect, and not a "sonic enhancer"
 
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