Suggestions?

[Mikee]

Actually, if you read a little deeper, I'm using Reaper.

And I was using Mixcraft 4.5 when I was still using that program. Thanks though!

 

[Jim Lad]

Yup!
I missed that.
I've looked at reaper a few times too and liked what I saw.
I also have a few other DAWs but can't seem to wean myself off Mixcraft.
If it was causing me grief, I would though.
Best of luck.

Edit

p.s On the monitor thing. The difference is that you are going to hear the production at its best. Not its "Warmest" or "Nicest" but at it's purest.
Thus, when you hear it on someones brand new 5 & 1 system or old warm speakers, the only surprise will be how great it sounds. I learned this the hard way.
Using cheap monitors and then bugging all of my friends to play it on their home systems. Then back to the studio to remix........ Trust me. Good monitors will bring you peace of mind.

 

[Jeff_D]

Hey Mikee... About the monitors. Your goal isn't necessarily to have better speakers than your audience. Your goal is to have speakers that allow you to actually hear what is happening in your mix so that you can make good decisions on how to adjust it. A cheap set of monitors are going to have a smaller set of drivers, which will be a bit anemic in the low end which is where you'll undoubtedly have the most mix troubles anyway. A cheap set might get you by if you were just doing vocal/acoustic guitar type stuff where you don't have a dense mix with a bunch of instruments competing for space, but IMO, for the full rock band you'll make your life much easier (and more enjoyable) if you hold off and invest in a decent set of monitors.

Before you buy ANYTHING pertaining to acoustic treatment, stop by the Studio Building forum. There is a LOT of misinformation and marketing 'info' out there and its EASY to totally waste a BUNCH of money on things that won't help. I've never seen musiciansfriend sell anything but foam, which will be a waste, so don't bother. You can get the stuff that actually works for the same amount or less, but you'll have to do a little leg work to get your hands on it. Also plenty of people have made portable treatments that can be stored in a closet or a corner. Most call them "gobo's".

Maybe see if you can keep rights to the parents basement and setup your studio down there? Sounds like your dad is into music too.

 

[moresound]

And at the moment, my step-dad has a full set of main Peavey's and some very nice subs. The only thing wrong with them is that the horns are worthless. I'm going to see about using them for the final mix though.

Are you talking about Live sound Peavey cabinets?
You really want to check out studio monitors!

 

[Mikee]

Alright. Still waiting on that first band. I'll be recording them the first week of April for sure. I'm budgeting some nice studio monitors into my setup as well.

Here's a question about Reaper though, since I've been toying with my own acoustic songs and some vocal covers for a potential band (They have some rough recordings they sent me, and I'm tracking my vocals over them to see if they like what they hear. I'm laying one raw track down that definitely matches their sound, then I decided to put in quality vocals just to learn Reaper better)

So question 1:

Not that I'm singing out of tune, because if I was, I'd just redo the track, but say I record someone who IS out of tune/off key. How do you suggest fixing it with Reaper, or am I better off using another piece of software? I tried the auto tune effect and it seems to work decent as long as the singer knows what key he's singing in, which with the first band I record, I highly doubt he's going to know...

Question 2: When I record myself screaming (Not true screaming, but the act of using your throat to heat your vocals as you use your diaphragm to actually create the scream, and I say this because my scream is just louder than my speaking voice, so I've really had to eat the mic to get enough volume.) I get a lot of sound in the beginning of the scream and it kind of fades toward the end. This is a big deal in places where I scream short phrases or words where I take breaths in between. Now, I've never recorded an exhale scream before... ever... so it might just be me doing it incorrectly. I'm using a double pop filter which is perfect, but I need something to fix the volume. Is there a way to level all the sound? Probably a noob question... But I honestly have never done this before.

My step dad suggested using a gate or compressor effect, but I've only used compressors on acoustic stuff to take the fuzz out of live recordings and make the vocals stand out more.

Any suggestions?


Thanks guys!

(P.s. sorry I haven't posted in a while. I took a trip to the hospital thanks to a short-lived game of baseball... )

 

[moresound]

Compressors, but read up on them first there's a lot to take in.

 

[Jeff_D]

So question 1:
...but say I record someone who IS out of tune/off key. How do you suggest fixing it with Reaper, or am I better off using another piece of software?

The autotune with Reaper seems ok. If its way out, then really the only fix is to retrack until you're satisfied IMO/IME regardless of what DAW software you're using.

Question 2: When I record myself screaming (Not true screaming, but the act of using your throat to heat your vocals as you use your diaphragm to actually create the scream, and I say this because my scream is just louder than my speaking voice, so I've really had to eat the mic to get enough volume.) I get a lot of sound in the beginning of the scream and it kind of fades toward the end. This is a big deal in places where I scream short phrases or words where I take breaths in between. Now, I've never recorded an exhale scream before... ever... so it might just be me doing it incorrectly. I'm using a double pop filter which is perfect, but I need something to fix the volume. Is there a way to level all the sound? Probably a noob question... But I honestly have never done this before

compression will probably help. Read up and experiment though, because you can really mangle some tracks if you don't know what you're doin . Use the volume automation in Reaper to ride your vocal track volumes.

 

[Mikee]

Yeah, I started with a volume envelope but after what seemed like a lifetime (Closer to 45 minutes though,) I gave up and decided that there HAD to be a better way to level out the volume. I'll start reading. Thanks for the help guys.

I'll keep you posted with any other questions!

 

[Mikee]

Alright. I've got my studio all set up, complete with studio monitors and my Presonus FP10 interface. It sounds beautiful. Especially running my vocals and 12-string acoustic.

However...

I started recording the band last week and we started off with the guitars playing to a click track. They're very good guitarists. In time and extremely talented. I'm lining in from a Line6 modeling amp head and the guitar sounds like it was recorded for a 1980's video game. I figured it was due to the modeling amp, but I'm not sure.

I downloaded Acme Bar Gig (A VST guitar processor), and I think they'll be able to get the sound they're looking for through that and get a much better tone, but if they can't, are there any other suggestions? Any VSTs that will give me a good variation of distortion sounds for guitars, rather than using the setup I am now?

Also.. question 2.

I set up and mic'd a huge drum kit. The kid has 2 kicks, 5 toms, and a huge cymbol setup along with the standard pieces of course. He wanted to use Nady's to mic the kicks and we got a HORRIBLE dead sound out of them, so finally I moved the mics and mic'd the heads of the kicks and got a better sound, but with hardly any bottom end.

We used SM57's as overheads and some PG52's for his floor toms and split his higher toms between a '58 and another lesser dynamic mic I'm definitely not proud of.

The kit is well balanced and sounded good, but it has this horrid compressed sound. It sounds like you're listening to it through ear plugs even through my studio monitors. I really hope it's not because I recorded in a carpeted basement with no acoustic treatment or anything of the sort. I don't have any reverb or white noise, but the sound is so dead and has no color at all.



Question 3:

I've never recorded anything other than acoustic before, but when I record in reaper, all my volume levels are pathetically low, but if I turn them up anymore I clip like crazy. Is that standard? Compared to a professional quality mastered song, my recordings are about 50% of the volume, but if I open a finished song (Big band) in Reaper, it clips bad too. My step dad seems to think that when you master a song, you nearly double the volume, which I'm hoping is true because I don't know how to get the volume out of their mix without making it sound like shit.


I'll admit, the most I've ever done with mixcraft was record, mix, and render. I honestly have no idea what mastering is or how it's done. Any pointers or links where I can read up?

I haven't recorded vocals yet and we're still trying to fix the guitar sound so I can retrack them, but after it's all done, I need to figure out how to add some color to the drums, a better guitar sound, and how to master it to get a semi-professional sounding record.

Any help or tips would be overly appreciated.

Thanks guys.

 

[floorpuncher]

For guitar modeling I was just turned on to Amplitube 3 by IK Multimedia. It's a pretty powerful (and limitless) piece of software. There are a large number of presets available and you can tweak your own sound by changing out heads, cabinets, rack effects, mics, mic placement, EQ, compression, etc... it's a wonderful piece of software and something I wish I had years ago. Up until I started using Amplitube I had been using Line6 Gearbox/POD Farm. I have no problems with either of these pieces of software but Amplitube is so much more versatile and it sounds more "real" than I could ever get out of Line 6.

As for the volume level, I typically mix quiet to avoid any clipping and what not. I will save any final volume adjustments for the "mastering" phase. I'm not saying that is the right way but it's just how I do it. I feel like I get a better feeling for the mix when it's quieter. Like I said, that's just me.

 

[Mikee]

Awesome. I'll definitely look into that right now. Is Amplitube free? That would be nice.

Also, when and how do you turn up your mix after you're done and ready to master? Do you use reaper? If I try to turn up the master volume everything clips. I'm mixing it pretty low right now, and I don't mind. It's easier to hear, so I agree with you.

But when it does come time to turn it up, what do I do?

Also, the drum sounds I fixed with a really nice GlissEQ VST I found. It worked perfect and they now have much more color and I'm super happy with the sound for now. Now I can hear a lot of places where I need to move around off kicks and muddy snare hits though. I've got a lot of work to do now that I can hear it. lol.

 

[floorpuncher]

Awesome. I'll definitely look into that right now. Is Amplitube free? That would be nice.

Also, when and how do you turn up your mix after you're done and ready to master? Do you use reaper? If I try to turn up the master volume everything clips. I'm mixing it pretty low right now, and I don't mind. It's easier to hear, so I agree with you.

But when it does come time to turn it up, what do I do?

Also, the drum sounds I fixed with a really nice GlissEQ VST I found. It worked perfect and they now have much more color and I'm super happy with the sound for now. Now I can hear a lot of places where I need to move around off kicks and muddy snare hits though. I've got a lot of work to do now that I can hear it. lol.

Amplitube is not free. Depending on the package you get it will run you anywhere between $200 - $300. It's money well spent though, I can assure you. Do some looking around, I'm sure you can find it cheaper somewhere.

As for volume adjustments, I use another plugin from IK Multimedia (the same dudes that make Amplitube) called T Racks ($400 from guitar center) that I run the final mix down through. I usually add slight compression, maybe a limiter and I will make any final tweaks to the EQ and volume adjustment to bring it up to an appropriate level. Use a professionally recorded song of a similar style as a reference.

Like I said, once I'm done mixing, I will mix everything down to a single track then run that single track through the mastering process. You don't need T Rack to do this. It can be done with your DAW and any of your audio plugins just to "polish" the song and to bring up the volume. T Racks just makes it easier for me!

 

[Mikee]

I watched a few youtube videos on this and think i've got it figured out. Now if these guys weren't so flakey and would just get back in and finish recording their vocals so I can move on. Lol.


Also, I've been looking into renting a studio building to set up in. It looks like they run about $300 - $1000 a month around Tucson for a good 3 room studio. Is that a good idea? And if so, how much should I be charging once I've got a few home-recordings done and they sound up to par?

Someone told me I should charge $100/track to master and $25/hour to record. That seems good, but for starting prices that's pretty high, isn't it? I've never recorded with a real studio before in any of the bands I've been in, so I'm not really sure. I guess I should do some research in my area and find my competition's prices and go from there.