Random Tips and Tricks: Post some, read some

  • Thread starter Thread starter zoetrope
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"For a dead vocal booth, use a closet full of clothes. Can't beat it at any price."
---Bongolation

How much for the skirt with the lovely flowers, and those white pumps?

Great stuff; Here's one for the MOVER shaker..

For a great console setup, go to the second hand store and buy a 32"x6' banquet table with folding leg assemblies/the kind with the lock rings. You can drill into it, cut into it and you can move it when ever you have to. Walnut looks nice.
It can hold hundreds of lbs. of mixer/keyboards/DAWS/Monitors
So everywhere you go you will feel (right at home).

--Rick
 
snare casserole

drum machines tend to have weak snare sounds.. here's a recipe to help add some top sirloin to your drum tracks:

take a dry tom sound (preferably one you don't use elsewhere in your song) and tune it upwards toward the pitch of the snare. Have this tom play with the snare hits, and you'll get punchier and more realistic snare attacks when other instruments are thrown into the mix..

Peel back foil to expose tator tots, heat on high for five minutes..

Cy
 
redheadedboy said:
here's a drum recording trick we've used with success:

to get a huge kick sound, build a cardboard (or other material) tunnel sticking out from the kick drum about 4'. close mic the drum and stick another mic at the end of the tunnel. mix those two together.
Click to expand...

Hey Red....Go down to the carpet store and get the cardboard roller. It's perfect for what you're decribing but don't stop there. Place it sticking out from your guitar amp for analog caveman flanger. Put mic at far end of it, Man's first effect.
 
Drum machines sound too purty. Run them through a tube guitar amp to scuff 'em up a little.
 
For a very nasty and unusual vocal,connect an accustic guitar that has a pickup inside, to a J-station or POD ect.. and find a distorted verby setting and crank it up,sing into the sound hole of the guitar.You can also use hundreds of other settings on the multi effects box to get cleaner or stranger. Also try playing the guitar while someone sings into the sound hole. way cool!

Monty,
 
hey cerealchamp2000,

thanks for the tips... i'm gonna try the analog flanger this weekend!

--tim
 
Preamp the mix

Another stolen gem from the Tape Op book, although this one requires access to a very good preamp. One guy said rather than use a compressor he runs his mixes through a very very good preamp and it warms up and unifies the mix while compressing it slightly. I guess it could work. More than this specific idea, I just like the general idea of using tools in new ways, experimenting and seeing what you can make your gear do. Makes yah think . . .
 
Phase free mic placing technique:

Here's a trick to eliminate (most of) the phasing problems when placing 2 or more mics;

Flip the phase on one of the mics (so that the signal gets very quiet) then move the mics around and try to get the absolute quietest signal that you can get. Then when you find that "quiet" spot, undo the phase on the mic and you should now have a good strong sound with virtually no phasing problems.

-tkr
 
Great phasing tip. That definitely falls into the "why the sh*t didn't I think of that" category. Good ideas always seem obvious after you hear them.

Here's a neat trick. You can use it anywhere in a song, but it works best to make a bridge sound more "swelling", before building into the outtro chorus.

Get a megaphone and speak the bridge lyrics a couple feet back from a descent condensor. Do it so that it works out where the spoken lyrics overlap the lyrics as they are sung. Here's where it gets cool...

Find a big cathedral reverb that you like on it. Now ditch the original sound. You could do this by not sending the original signal to the subgroups on your console if you're not in the digital domain.

The resulting sound will be like the lyrics to the bridge being whispered in the wind before the singer says them. People won't know what it is at first, but then when they listen closer... wow it's the same lyrics.

...A neat twist on the much overdone AM radio sound that's crept up in the past few years.

BTW...

Tom- cool noise reduction idea!

Brad Gallagher
http://www.just-for-musicians.com/
 
what do you do to flip the phase of a mic?

i'm sorry i'm a year newb. Sorta you know, screwed up in the head (i'm 15, almost 16, a teen, go figure)
 
Hehe, I'm 19, still a teen, but only for another month......Woohoo!!

MDA, most preamps have a phase switch button on them, some mixers do too, but if your like me and none of your equipment has a phase reversal switch on it then you can rig up a cable to reverse the phase by switching pins 2 & 3 (in a mic cable) on one end of the cable ONLY and for a guitar cable switch the two wires (on one end only).

Here's another one kinda similiar to xtremedb's idea (which is a very cool idea BTW), take the original vocal (or whatever) and reverse it in a DAW and then add a reverb or delay to it and reverse it again. Now you've got the reverb before the vocals (or instrument) aaand iiit kkkinda sssounds lllike ttthis. It gives another "wisper in the wind before the vocals start" effect. :)

-tkr
 
hey.. is that how they do that in the studios? Reverse the track, add reverb and play back? ala STP's "Where the River Goes"?

I've always wondered how they pulled that off..

Cy
 
Tip #1. To wake up a snare track, place a speaker face down on a snare drum, cover it with a towel and mic the bottom of the snare with a condensor mic. Play back the snare track you're trying to wake up thru the speaker/snare combo and record it to another track. Mix with the original snare to taste. This works really well on drum machine snares to make them a little more "real".
Tip #2. To make a drum set you've already recorded sound bigger ( or any instrument really) is to play it back thru loud speakers at high volume and mic the speakers with a couple of SM-57s and record it as a stereo pair. Mix with the original tracks to taste.:D
 
I was responding to the previous post which suggest using the para eq to cut hiss and so forth.By selecting a region of "silence" to analyze,you capture room tone basically.Every space has its standing waves and phase cancellations,you have electrical hum from the gear or florescent lights or...you get the picture.
Use the frequency analyzer to graph the trouble spots out with great precision,THEN use the parametric EQ to knock em back in line.More of a surgical strike then a blunt instrument because you can use a very narrow Q that won't disturb your program material.

Tom
 
Got an ring in that snare?
Mic the top as usual, then the bottom: out of phase. The cancellation helps decay the ring a little quicker. Proper tuning is more important though, but you know how those drummer are. ;)
 
To warm up a snare... I don't know if you would consider this a trick, so much as a standard... Add a tambourine to the hits you want to accent (usually to add punch to the two and four or their equivilent in the rhythmic structure). This is an old standby and can be heard on lots of tracks.

Brad Gallagher
http://www.just-for-musicians.com/
 
When recording guitars, mic the amp or dub the guitars tracks three times. Have one track panned hard left with a little delay. Have on panned in the middle, with no effects. Then have the other panned hard right with a slight chorus.


Tee Hee.
 
Fix the Phase Flip Trick

Tekker just reminded me of this one over in this thread --> https://homerecording.com/bbs/showthread.php?s=&threadid=31368 , referring back to a post by Harvey Gerst.

You've got two mics recording the same source and want to minimize phase problems. Flip the phase on one mic and position it so you have the MOST phase problems, in other words, listening in mono the sound becomes hollow, empty, odd. Then flip the phase back again. You should now have the LEAST amount of phase cancellation. Works well for drum overheads or whatever. Part of this complete breakfast.

Yup.:D
 
Speaking of phase, I recently had a lot of luck with a new trick. I used this for live reinforcement, but it should work equally well in the studio. Double mic one speaker in a cab, but put one at a 90 and the other at a 45. If you get them set up right, you can adjust the blend of the two mics to work against the phasing. (Does that make sense?) Basically you blend them to achieve a sound in much the same way you would use eq. It works great to change the vibe at certain points in a song in a smooth fashion.

Brad Gallagher
http://www.just-for-musicians.com/
 
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