Zaphod B
Raccoons-Be-Gone, Inc.
As some of you may recall, I received a Tascam 2488 for my birthday in June. I've had a little time to play with it, and I thought I would jot down some impressions.
First I have to say that although I have many years experience as a musician (guitarist and vocalist), I have no experience recording anything other than direct into a stereo cassette deck. I'm finding that this is both good and bad. The bad part is that I'm having to learn *everything* and it makes my head hurt. The good part is that I don't have any preconceived notions about anything, and I'm not having to un-learn anything as I learn.
Here's my setup: I have commandeered the dining room, which is about 12' x 16' and very live. I record bass guitar direct, with no preamp or effects, into the front panel channel H input. (I bought an Ibanez SRX-300 for this purpose and it has very nice tone and playability for a cheap bass.) I also record guitar direct. I play a Strat Plus and Les Paul Special through a PodXT Live, and run the output into the unbalanced 1/4" rear input of one of channels E - H. (I use the rear input rather than the front input for Channel H since the PodXT contributes gain, and the front panel input is supposed to be used for passive electronics.) I do not use the 2488's multi-effects on the guitar since they are a bit noisy, but rely on the PodXt for effects. So far I am not using any live guitar amplification. I'm pleased with the Pod sound.
For drums I'm using the 2488 tone generator. It's not ideal and lacks programmability but works OK for what I need right now. I will probably end up with a drum machine at some point.
I have two MXL 601 mics that I use for acoustic guitar and vocals. Even though the 601 is not considered ideal for vocals, I find that they're not terrible, and sound a shitload better than an AudioTechnica dynamic mic that I have used for live performance vocals. I mic the guitar with a stereo pair, and this gives a very natural tone. For vocals I use a pop filter and keep a consistent distance of about 8" from the mike, pointing straight at my mouth.
On to the recording experience.
For my first song I decided to start with a bass track, using a click track for timing. I encountered a strange timing anomaly, where upon playback the recorded bass track and the TG click track diverged linearly, little by little, resulting in a timing discrepancy of about 1/2 second by the end of the song. I still don't know the cause, but I suspect it may be caused by some latency in either the recording or playback process.
So I decided to program a drum track and bounce the TG drum program to one of the pairs of stereo channels, and use this for my reference when tracking. (Thanks to the Tascam.com forums, and particularly user "Double" who has written a very nice, user-friendly supplement to the factory user's manual.) The synthetic drums are easy to arrange and don't sound too horrible. The main limitation is that you are stuck with a total of, like, 6 patterns per program, so the percussion gets a bit repetitious.
One advantage of having to program a whole song's worth of drum track is that you are forced to notate the entire song in some fashion. I don't know standard notation well enough to use it, but instead I write out the song in outline form and make a note of how many measures are in each section, and which drum patterns correspond to each section. Then I program the drums according to my notes and have a reference for further tracking.
Tracking is just so easy. I track everything dry with no effects or panning. On my first song I ended up with two stereo acoustic guitars (two tracks per guitar for a total of four tracks), two electric rhythm guitars, bass, stereo drum program, lead electric guitar, lead vocal, and two backing vocal tracks. Recording all these tracks down to my satisfaction took a total of about 10 hours over the course of a week or so.
Mixing is also a piece of cake. On the song I mentioned above, I ran the bass, lead vocal, and lead guitar dead center. I panned the two acoustic guitars pretty far over, left and right, with a bit of panning separation between the stereo tracks for each guitar. I panned the rhythm electrics left/right, a bit inside the acoustics. I left the TG drum program as it recorded. I panned one of the backing vocals slightly to the left of center, the other slightly to the right. My aim was to evenly populate the sound field, with each component of the music having its own discrete space. I don't know if this is an accepted technique, but the results were good.
I used no EQ on any of the tracks, but did use a little compression on the vocals to help level out the peaks and valleys in dynamic range. The mix ended up sounding very good, with nice distinction between instruments. The lead vocal may need a bit more tweaking to smooth it out.
One thing that's a little confusing is the concept of premastering on the 2488. There's no difference between playback in premaster and playback in normal mode, except that in premaster some of the functions are disabled. In either case you can set your channel fader levels, pan, EQ, etc. So I'm not sure what the purpose of premastering is, other than as a quick preparatory step to recording the master.
Anyway, sorry about the long post. I've recorded two complete songs at this point and am finding that the basics I've described above are very easy. I'm sure that there's more lurking under the surface that will befuddle me.
My biggest gripe is the user's manual. It's not very complete. Wait, that's a gross understatement. It doesn't cover some very basic stuff, like for example bouncing the TG drum pattern to a channel. And there is inadequate description of the various parameters than can be changed (for example, in the compression settings for MICX4, the compression level is given as a discrete number rather than a ratio...what the hell does that mean?) Fortunately, there is good information to be found in this forum as well as the Tascam.com forums.
I'll be starting on a new tune tonight!
First I have to say that although I have many years experience as a musician (guitarist and vocalist), I have no experience recording anything other than direct into a stereo cassette deck. I'm finding that this is both good and bad. The bad part is that I'm having to learn *everything* and it makes my head hurt. The good part is that I don't have any preconceived notions about anything, and I'm not having to un-learn anything as I learn.
Here's my setup: I have commandeered the dining room, which is about 12' x 16' and very live. I record bass guitar direct, with no preamp or effects, into the front panel channel H input. (I bought an Ibanez SRX-300 for this purpose and it has very nice tone and playability for a cheap bass.) I also record guitar direct. I play a Strat Plus and Les Paul Special through a PodXT Live, and run the output into the unbalanced 1/4" rear input of one of channels E - H. (I use the rear input rather than the front input for Channel H since the PodXT contributes gain, and the front panel input is supposed to be used for passive electronics.) I do not use the 2488's multi-effects on the guitar since they are a bit noisy, but rely on the PodXt for effects. So far I am not using any live guitar amplification. I'm pleased with the Pod sound.
For drums I'm using the 2488 tone generator. It's not ideal and lacks programmability but works OK for what I need right now. I will probably end up with a drum machine at some point.
I have two MXL 601 mics that I use for acoustic guitar and vocals. Even though the 601 is not considered ideal for vocals, I find that they're not terrible, and sound a shitload better than an AudioTechnica dynamic mic that I have used for live performance vocals. I mic the guitar with a stereo pair, and this gives a very natural tone. For vocals I use a pop filter and keep a consistent distance of about 8" from the mike, pointing straight at my mouth.
On to the recording experience.
For my first song I decided to start with a bass track, using a click track for timing. I encountered a strange timing anomaly, where upon playback the recorded bass track and the TG click track diverged linearly, little by little, resulting in a timing discrepancy of about 1/2 second by the end of the song. I still don't know the cause, but I suspect it may be caused by some latency in either the recording or playback process.
So I decided to program a drum track and bounce the TG drum program to one of the pairs of stereo channels, and use this for my reference when tracking. (Thanks to the Tascam.com forums, and particularly user "Double" who has written a very nice, user-friendly supplement to the factory user's manual.) The synthetic drums are easy to arrange and don't sound too horrible. The main limitation is that you are stuck with a total of, like, 6 patterns per program, so the percussion gets a bit repetitious.
One advantage of having to program a whole song's worth of drum track is that you are forced to notate the entire song in some fashion. I don't know standard notation well enough to use it, but instead I write out the song in outline form and make a note of how many measures are in each section, and which drum patterns correspond to each section. Then I program the drums according to my notes and have a reference for further tracking.
Tracking is just so easy. I track everything dry with no effects or panning. On my first song I ended up with two stereo acoustic guitars (two tracks per guitar for a total of four tracks), two electric rhythm guitars, bass, stereo drum program, lead electric guitar, lead vocal, and two backing vocal tracks. Recording all these tracks down to my satisfaction took a total of about 10 hours over the course of a week or so.
Mixing is also a piece of cake. On the song I mentioned above, I ran the bass, lead vocal, and lead guitar dead center. I panned the two acoustic guitars pretty far over, left and right, with a bit of panning separation between the stereo tracks for each guitar. I panned the rhythm electrics left/right, a bit inside the acoustics. I left the TG drum program as it recorded. I panned one of the backing vocals slightly to the left of center, the other slightly to the right. My aim was to evenly populate the sound field, with each component of the music having its own discrete space. I don't know if this is an accepted technique, but the results were good.
I used no EQ on any of the tracks, but did use a little compression on the vocals to help level out the peaks and valleys in dynamic range. The mix ended up sounding very good, with nice distinction between instruments. The lead vocal may need a bit more tweaking to smooth it out.
One thing that's a little confusing is the concept of premastering on the 2488. There's no difference between playback in premaster and playback in normal mode, except that in premaster some of the functions are disabled. In either case you can set your channel fader levels, pan, EQ, etc. So I'm not sure what the purpose of premastering is, other than as a quick preparatory step to recording the master.
Anyway, sorry about the long post. I've recorded two complete songs at this point and am finding that the basics I've described above are very easy. I'm sure that there's more lurking under the surface that will befuddle me.
My biggest gripe is the user's manual. It's not very complete. Wait, that's a gross understatement. It doesn't cover some very basic stuff, like for example bouncing the TG drum pattern to a channel. And there is inadequate description of the various parameters than can be changed (for example, in the compression settings for MICX4, the compression level is given as a discrete number rather than a ratio...what the hell does that mean?) Fortunately, there is good information to be found in this forum as well as the Tascam.com forums.
I'll be starting on a new tune tonight!
