B
benji_willis
New member
G'day everyone,
just thought I'd get some opinions and perhaps some tips to help me out.
We've just gone through the process of recording the basics of a demo in my band "Sleepless Empire", minus the vocals (we're still searching). The gear was extremely low end; a mish mash of available tools and techniques, and yet I have to say I'm reasonably happy with the end results. I feel like next time they will be considerably better, as I've learned a BUNCH in the process ... and have since been inspired to bigger and better things in the musical recording world.
Anyways ... enough of that stuff, here's how the recording worked/looked:
Drums - In our practice studio (converted storage unit), carpeted walls and floors, long narrow room (~4-5m x 10-12m), not great, but fairly dead without losing too much feel.
Recorded without click, me playing guitar (unplugged) for visual cues while drummer just banged it out ... definitely not perfect, but probably demo worthy.
_____________________________________________________
Drum kit -->
3 microphones: 1 SM57 = XLR *overhead*, 2 el'cheapo's = Line-in (unbalanced) *1 near tom1/snare/hats & 1 near floor tom* & 1 bass-drum mic -->
what I think is a Behringer limiter of sorts -->
16 Channel mixing desk: applied Eq's here to the mic inputs, boosting kick & toms with some extra lows, low mids and what I thought were the appropriate highs --->
1 track mp3 player (AA battery type) with microphone input: records to 320kbps mp3 tracks, & sounds surprisingly good and clear.
unedited drum track mp3:
http://www.4shared.com/file/68063612/ca17b304/Sleepless_Empire_-_Track_2_Drums__original_.html
____________________________________________________________
From there I pasted the drum tracks in Adobe Audition 3.0 and messed around. I came up with a combination of two 30 band EQ's boosting the individual drums to my ear and cutting the top end almost completely (cymbals were simply too loud re: SM57 overhead too close and powerful).
I also added a limiter and a multi-band compressor to bring out the kick and toms further.
Guitars & Bass - recorded layered, 1 at a time, with multiple tracks, and for the majority of guitar parts, 2 layers panned to varying degrees of the left and right channel respectively for each guitar.
_____________________________________________________________
ESP LTD EC series (Les Paul copy) w/ Seymour Duncan humbuckers
PRS Santana w/ stock (bridge) and Seymour Duncan humbuckers
Warwick Corvette Rock bass 5 string, active pickups
Zoom G9.2tt multi-fx/modeller w/ 2 x 12a7 tubes
Zoom mfx (an early mid 90's thing my guitarist INSISTS upon keeping)
All guitar/bass tracks were run through the Zoom g9.2tt with the tubes for warmth, a noise reducer, and an almost flat eq, just a slight low/high end boost.
So we recorded our guitars/bass in a multitude of ways, combining our multi-fx pedals inbuilt sounds and using a Line6 Toneport UX2 with the standard packs.
All effects were done using guitars, an E-bow, and built in effects in our equipment or Adobe Audition.
The vocal track you can here is an excerpt from a speech by renown physicist Richard Feynman, that has been cut and edited.
______________________________________________________________
Upon completion of mixing the tracks, and spreading the instruments and effects across the sound spectrum, I used the master effects rack in Audition to add the following:
Mastering tool (exciter, loudness maximizer, reverb, eq, etc)
Stereo Widening tool
Tube Compressor
Okay, that's pretty much it. So here's the "final" of what I've done so far. We're pretty much at the point where we think it's good enough to find us a vocalist, but I'm picking it apart and working out where to go better next time.
Without further stalling, here's the track:
http://www.4shared.com/file/68063445/2a80068c/Sleepless_Empire_-_The_Perfection_of_Man.html
_____________________________________________________________
So I think that I need to be more mindful of the cymbal mic position, I'm thinking only mic the kit itself and leave the cymbals to splash, I want to isolate the kick further by throwing a towel to dampen the splash there, and I definitely want another mic primarily aimed at the snare to get all the nuances lost in the mix, also allowing me more focus on the toms.
With guitars, I'm still having trouble finding really good sounds ... I know it's direct in and all ... but I couldn't get a sound even half as good trying to mic using the Toneport so gave up.
I've actually found the clean sounds to be decent on the toneport, and have since tried using my pedals inbuilt amp models (which were decidedly better than the Line6 Pod XT Live to my ears) to get high gain sounds, the results are a little clearer, more definition and less hiss/fuzz/clipping.
I'm thinking of re-doing my guitars which seem to clip the most at high gain, though nothing can beat the clipping of the crash cymbal during the breakdown/solo.
___________________________________________________________-
Anyways, tell me what you think, or just have a listen ... and yeah, glad to be here.
Cheers,
Benji
just thought I'd get some opinions and perhaps some tips to help me out.
We've just gone through the process of recording the basics of a demo in my band "Sleepless Empire", minus the vocals (we're still searching). The gear was extremely low end; a mish mash of available tools and techniques, and yet I have to say I'm reasonably happy with the end results. I feel like next time they will be considerably better, as I've learned a BUNCH in the process ... and have since been inspired to bigger and better things in the musical recording world.
Anyways ... enough of that stuff, here's how the recording worked/looked:
Drums - In our practice studio (converted storage unit), carpeted walls and floors, long narrow room (~4-5m x 10-12m), not great, but fairly dead without losing too much feel.
Recorded without click, me playing guitar (unplugged) for visual cues while drummer just banged it out ... definitely not perfect, but probably demo worthy.
_____________________________________________________
Drum kit -->
3 microphones: 1 SM57 = XLR *overhead*, 2 el'cheapo's = Line-in (unbalanced) *1 near tom1/snare/hats & 1 near floor tom* & 1 bass-drum mic -->
what I think is a Behringer limiter of sorts -->
16 Channel mixing desk: applied Eq's here to the mic inputs, boosting kick & toms with some extra lows, low mids and what I thought were the appropriate highs --->
1 track mp3 player (AA battery type) with microphone input: records to 320kbps mp3 tracks, & sounds surprisingly good and clear.
unedited drum track mp3:
http://www.4shared.com/file/68063612/ca17b304/Sleepless_Empire_-_Track_2_Drums__original_.html
____________________________________________________________
From there I pasted the drum tracks in Adobe Audition 3.0 and messed around. I came up with a combination of two 30 band EQ's boosting the individual drums to my ear and cutting the top end almost completely (cymbals were simply too loud re: SM57 overhead too close and powerful).
I also added a limiter and a multi-band compressor to bring out the kick and toms further.
Guitars & Bass - recorded layered, 1 at a time, with multiple tracks, and for the majority of guitar parts, 2 layers panned to varying degrees of the left and right channel respectively for each guitar.
_____________________________________________________________
ESP LTD EC series (Les Paul copy) w/ Seymour Duncan humbuckers
PRS Santana w/ stock (bridge) and Seymour Duncan humbuckers
Warwick Corvette Rock bass 5 string, active pickups
Zoom G9.2tt multi-fx/modeller w/ 2 x 12a7 tubes
Zoom mfx (an early mid 90's thing my guitarist INSISTS upon keeping)
All guitar/bass tracks were run through the Zoom g9.2tt with the tubes for warmth, a noise reducer, and an almost flat eq, just a slight low/high end boost.
So we recorded our guitars/bass in a multitude of ways, combining our multi-fx pedals inbuilt sounds and using a Line6 Toneport UX2 with the standard packs.
All effects were done using guitars, an E-bow, and built in effects in our equipment or Adobe Audition.
The vocal track you can here is an excerpt from a speech by renown physicist Richard Feynman, that has been cut and edited.
______________________________________________________________
Upon completion of mixing the tracks, and spreading the instruments and effects across the sound spectrum, I used the master effects rack in Audition to add the following:
Mastering tool (exciter, loudness maximizer, reverb, eq, etc)
Stereo Widening tool
Tube Compressor
Okay, that's pretty much it. So here's the "final" of what I've done so far. We're pretty much at the point where we think it's good enough to find us a vocalist, but I'm picking it apart and working out where to go better next time.
Without further stalling, here's the track:
http://www.4shared.com/file/68063445/2a80068c/Sleepless_Empire_-_The_Perfection_of_Man.html
_____________________________________________________________
So I think that I need to be more mindful of the cymbal mic position, I'm thinking only mic the kit itself and leave the cymbals to splash, I want to isolate the kick further by throwing a towel to dampen the splash there, and I definitely want another mic primarily aimed at the snare to get all the nuances lost in the mix, also allowing me more focus on the toms.
With guitars, I'm still having trouble finding really good sounds ... I know it's direct in and all ... but I couldn't get a sound even half as good trying to mic using the Toneport so gave up.
I've actually found the clean sounds to be decent on the toneport, and have since tried using my pedals inbuilt amp models (which were decidedly better than the Line6 Pod XT Live to my ears) to get high gain sounds, the results are a little clearer, more definition and less hiss/fuzz/clipping.
I'm thinking of re-doing my guitars which seem to clip the most at high gain, though nothing can beat the clipping of the crash cymbal during the breakdown/solo.
___________________________________________________________-
Anyways, tell me what you think, or just have a listen ... and yeah, glad to be here.
Cheers,
Benji
