I've been reading this BBS for 6 months.

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PushtoVent

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I've been reading this BBS for 6 months, and tomorrow my band starts production on our first full length album.

We have:
AKG C 3000B Microphone for vocals and acoustic instruments.
AKG D 112 Microphone for bass drum, and bass.
Sennheiser E825 S Microphone for snare
DOD 830 Series II Graphic EQ
DigiTech TSR-12 Reverb/Delay unit.
Alesis 3630 Compressor.
Tascam US-122
Audix D Pack for drum micing.

and the most hated piece here, but it's all we could afford, the Eurodesk from Behringer.

all cables with monster standard.

Recorded into Sound Forge one instrument at a time.
To be mixed in Vegas later.

And tips or suggestions?
 
Why not just record into Vegas...? Anyway...

For God's sake, get stuff to sound good right out of the gate. If you need to track the whole thing twice, keep that in mind. If it doesn't make your eyes light up, it doesn't sound good enough. You're stacking nickels here to make dollars. A stack of nickels makes a lot of noise when it falls over, you know?

Don't skimp on guitar strings (I change mine in the studio for every song) or bass strings (also every song as they lose "that edge" quickly). Make sure the drummer checks up his tuning every few takes. Don't use gear just for the sake of using it. If it doesn't "ask" for it, it likely doesn't need it.

Take breaks, but don't break a good groove. however, if it goes stale for more than a few takes, practice your multiplication tables (trust me - this works well) with each other. It stimulates the logical portion of the brain. As looking at paintings or art will stimulate the creative (if the guitaist can't come up with a lead).

Work in 24-bit. 44.1k isn't illegal or anything either.

TAKE YOUR TIME - One of the best recordings I've ever done was mixed in Vegas mostly with STOCK SF plugins.

Good God, I could go on for hours. Somebody help me here...

John Scrip - www.massivemastering.com

By the way - If you're having it mastered, make sure you don't mix with a bunch of limiting or compression across the buss! Even if you're mastering it yourself, leave this for a later date. Getting it all "loud" during mixing is tempting, but normally just a bad thing to do.
 
I've been using Sound Forge since I've been able to afford it, and I know it like the back of my hand, and feel ultra comfortable in that program, so for ease of use, and results, I've chosen that route. I've actually got your site bookmarked for that free sample. And in all honesty, (don't hate me) if what you do doesn't sound all that far away from something I could do, I might try to emulate it. But if you blow us away, you've got the gig. But as for the 24 bit, that's the man reason for the US-122, and the recording twice or more if needed -- we've got an August 8th release date to hit, so we've planned on taking a while. Thanks a lot for the response though! It's encouraging.

Chris Masters
 
Isn't Soundforge a stereo recorder/editor?

I'm not comprehending how you can do a multi-track project in this way..

please help me... I need to understand.... my head hurts....

:D
 
Stryder,
Nah, he was responding to the last paragraph of massive Masterin'g post in whuich he referred to getting the final thing mastered. They plan to use Soundforge apprently for the mastering process.
 
No, that's how I read it also - That's why I was asking why not just track in Vegas...

:confused:
 
I believe he is recording each track one at a time and then moving them to vegas..Thats what I came away with anyways..Why you wouldn't save yourself the trouble and just do it in Vegas?? It can't be to different that it wouldn't take you half an hour to learn how to record with it.

"AKG C 3000B Microphone for vocals and acoustic instruments."

I hope you like this mic more than I do cause I found it completely useless for the vocals I recorded...

Geoff
 
Travis - Thanks for the links, great info on those pages.

Yes -- I plan on recording every track, individually in Sound Forge. And then importing them to Vegas. Why not record straight into Vegas? Because when you click to edit the track, it just opens it in Sound Forge, so I'm saving myself the trouble there, and starting in Sound Forge.

Geoff -- Maybe it's my voice, or my guitar, but it seems to be doing the trick for me. I'll upload some tracks when we finish recording.
 
I'm still not seeing the recording into soundforge. Is it a multi-tracker? My impression was that it was mostly a stereo wav editor.

I would track straight into Vegas since you will be doing more work there with the mixing. I don't do much wav editing personally and woul rather just retrack the part if it sucks. That's just the way I work though.
 
spankenstein said:
I'm still not seeing the recording into soundforge. Is it a multi-tracker? My impression was that it was mostly a stereo wav editor.

I would track straight into Vegas since you will be doing more work there with the mixing. I don't do much wav editing personally and woul rather just retrack the part if it sucks. That's just the way I work though.
Click to expand...

We're limited to just two mono tracks, or one stereo track through the tascam US-122, so we're using a stereo wav editor. I would love to multi-track if I could, but with what we have, I have decided this is the best way to do it. Unless you guys know a better way to do it. I would love suggestions!
 
I love sound forge also.....

... but how are you keeping all the indiviual tracks in sync.

SF is stereo is a stereo recorder/editor so are you running two instances of SF.???

Just curious.

-mike
 
Believe it or not, playing the drum track in a downsized winamp, and recording to that, works like a charm. I've recorded other local bands this way, and keeping sync has never been a problem. The poor mics, and lack of a mixer was!
 
Nice.

Very creative workaround.

Good thinking.

One thing to consider ...... and I just recently got the full implications of this ....... if you use Vegas to record into you will be able to listen back to a partial mix (expanding with each overdubed track added) while recording the overdub and its nice to be able to tailor the sound (Tone knobs, mic postion, etc) of the overdubbed instrument or voice within the context of the mix (or partial) right at the front end.

This can make mixing down much more streamlined and most likely will require a lot less EQing and processing at mix down.

But the main thing is to use what ever method you need to to get the very best performances out of the musicians.

Good luck.
Have fun.

-mike
 
PushtoVent said:
and the most hated piece here, but it's all we could afford, the Eurodesk from Behringer.
Click to expand...

No, that would probably be the :eek: Alesis 3630.
 
Don't skimp on guitar strings (I change mine in the studio for every song) or bass strings (also every song as they lose "that edge" quickly).
Click to expand...
t is

after each song???? that is a lot of string changing... a bit unnecessary no? my elixers stay sounding good for a while. IN fact, i like them a couple of days old at least, they hold their tuning better i find. They are a bright stirng though, D'addrio's have a nice, soft sound to them.

Also does the Tascam US-122 record in 24 bit? i thought i was limited to 16. What sampling rate can it do. It only lets me do 41 Khz.
 
PushtoVent said:
We're limited to just two mono tracks, or one stereo track through the tascam US-122, so we're using a stereo wav editor. I would love to multi-track if I could, but with what we have, I have decided this is the best way to do it. Unless you guys know a better way to do it. I would love suggestions!
Click to expand...

I would definetely do the multi-tracking in Vegas, as you add tracks to the project, you can mix them right in Vegas to a rough stereo mix, so as far as the 122 knows, you'll only be playing a stereo output while recording 1 or 2 tracks at a time.

As already mentioned, there are many advantages to working this way, like being able to use effects on the already recorded tracks, and have a much better "working" mix to monitor while tracking more parts, that alone would have to make the songs much tighter, and cohesive, not to mention, the better the monitor mix, the more inspired the performance for the next track..
 
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