Okay...here we go...
Thanks for the feedback people! I see there are a bunch of questions as to what I used to record, so here it goes...
On the recording side, I used the Studio Projects B1 and plugged it into the Midiman Audio Buddy as a pre-amp (It's nothing special, but does the trick to power the B1 and give a good clean sound...plus it has the 2 channels so you can plug in two sources at once, phantom or regular). Then from there, I plug the Audio Buddy into the Behringer ULTRA-DYNE PRO (which is a Digital 2-Channel Multiband Compressor/Limiter/Gate/Peak Limiter, which ironically, I'm really not 100% how to use...but fortunately I know enough to plug in some basic settings. The thing has this "automatic" option where you play in and it will adjust the output depending on what it hears. This is great option for someone clueless like me when it comes to the finer points of compression.). Then from there I just plug straight into
my Roland VS 880-EX (which is a 8 track digital studio I got a couple years ago with a ton of virtual tracks...This is where most of the "magic" comes from. I'm just now realizing the potential of this recorder. It's got amazing capabilities including lots of stereo effects, compression, limiters, all that stuff...that you can pretty much adjust to your liking, as well as offer mastering capabilities. It's really sweet! The problem is the thing is about as complex to use as anything. It's like 15 steps to bounce down tracks, but well worth it when you've got a step by step list in front of you. I don't think they make this anymore, but have updated versions). Anyhoo, I pretty much record everything dry (no effects) in to the Roland. Once I have 6 tracks, I bounce those tracks onto tracks 7 and 8. From there I can add another 4 tracks (use virtual tracks to save the originals) + the 2 bounced tracks and bounce all of those to the other available 2 (virtual tracks). Does this make sense? Then, whenever I get it the way I want, I apply some of the "Mastering" options to my stereo bounced down pair. Since I'm an idiot and have some old school stuff, I analogly (with a guitar chord one track at a time...one for right and one for left) transfer it on to my Mac where I just put the two files together again in stereo and save it out to an MP3 or AIF format for the web or CD.
Does that make sense?
As far as the specifics for this song go, I think I did something like this for the tracks in this order...
1. Track 1: recorded a simple drum beat to be used as a metronome
2. Track 2: recorded a live performance of the tune into the B1 (guitar & vocals) obviously you don't need to do this, but I find I get a better performance out of my self in the long run. When recording I've got the drums in track 1 softly going so I don't get too off beat.
3. Track 3: recorded rhythm guitar into the B1 that was panned to the 3 on the left (not all the way, but pretty far). When recording I had tracks 1 and 2 going loud enough to hear, but soft enough that I could hear the new track louder. No effect added at bounce.
4. Track 4: recorded vocals. Turned off Track 2 so I couldn't hear it. I basically no longer need it now that I've "sort of borrowed" the energy from it in the Track 3 guitars. I kept it panned center. I think I used the preset "Vocal Room" as a reverb and turned down a bunch of the settings making it much more subtle at bounce down.
5. Track 5: recorded bass. Listened to everything during the recording but track 2 again. Panned center. No effects used at bounce down.
6. Track 6: recorded lead guitar. Panned way right at 9 to "offset" the other guitar in the left speaker. I think I added the same "tweaked" "Vocal Room" effect from above.
7. Recorded over Track 2: added the little shaker. I thnk I panned this pretty hard right as well. I can't remember if I added an effect on this or not. I think I used a heavier reverb on this at the bounce, but I can't remember.
8. Recorded over Track 1: I no longer need the really bad metronome simple drum beat, so put a back up vocal on that. Panned slightly off center to right. No effect on this at bounce down.
9. Then I took these 6 tracks and bounced them to the empty Tracks 7 & 8. This is where I added some light reverbs on some tracks 1-6 as mentioned above.
10. Virtual Track 1 and 2 (to get a stereo pair): I programmed 3 simple drum parts on the Boss Dr. Rhythm and tracked them straight into the Roland bypassing the pre-amp and compressor. The Dr. Rhythm has nice stereo drums, so all I need to do is pan them left and right on two tracks and we're in business. Reverb was added here to kind of help mush it back.
11. Virtual Track 3 and 4 (again to get a stereo pair): realized I wanted a little more bang in certain parts and didn't feel like redoing the previous drum programming, I programmed a couple little parts to over lap the chorus this is basically where you hear the Snare and a little more bass drum. again, one track is panned hard left and the other hard right. Reverb was added here to kind of help mush it back.
12. Bounced all of these tracks down again into a stereo pair again and added another back up chorus panned slightly off center with no effects. Then I bounced this back again to 2 other virtual tracks. Then I applied the Master options to these 2 tracks and got what you hear now.
DAMN! All done! I hope that helps. That was pretty much my process step by step. Hopefully this answers all those questions, and maybe will help some of your recordings if you need it...also, feel free to offer advice as well.
