The Secret To Great Recordings

[moresound]

Being on both sides of the fence ~ recording and live sound ~ I fine it much easier to accomplish a good mix and get the great job slap on the back when the musicianship is of the best quality.
Good stuff in -- Good stuff out.

 

[kcearl]

Must have been the EP so!

Why I'll give you so!

 

[noisewreck]

Room is irrelevant in purely electronic music. It's all about the player, the composition, the arrangement, the sounds, the production, the mixing, the mastering....

and drugs and alcohol

 

[noisewreck]

For example - One guy overlayering multiple instruments, and electronic sounds, over a long period of time and many sessions, in order to create a soundscape, is not truly capturing a 'performance' is it? Multiple performances maybe.

So? If it sounds good, it sounds good.

Also, you can think of it in the Zappa way: "The Studio is the Instrument". The lines between performance/creation/sound sculpture get blurred. Can be a great thing, can be a wall splattered with shit, or could be some mediocre nonsense... just like a "pure" performance.

 

[benherron.rrr]

What makes a great recording?

. . . self acomplishment. . . when I first started recording, I came up with the worst recordings ever. BUT!!! I loved it cause it was mine.

a great recording is veriable with every human. for me a great recording is making a great reprisentation of the song. I would say led zep are far better than lets say lady gaga. but the clarity of production is so much better in a song done by lady gaga.

I think the best recording in the world is a song that would not need to be mixed, heavily edited and produced. a song that is just played and thats it. and a song where the panorama is all mushed perfectly together so you can look forward and almost see the band playing there in your mind

 

[kcearl]

i would take cover if i was you

 

[philbagg]

I think the best recording in the world is a song that would not need to be mixed

That would be a mono song

I get what you're saying though. It's like how some might say that the perfect mix doesn't need to be mastered.

 

[John Willett]

The most important things are:

1) the music, the performer and the instrument

2) the room

3) putting the mic. in the right place

4) choice of mic.

Everything else comes after this.

 

[Todzilla]

The most important things are:

1) the music, the performer and the instrument

2) the room

3) putting the mic. in the right place

4) choice of mic.

Everything else comes after this.

I agree, and more interestingly, you are sequentially giving more importance to those elements starting at the sound source and giving less importance as the sound moves toward the capture technology.

 

[Supercreep]

And as i said, the vast majority would say direct guitar is not preferrable to a miced amp in a good room. We can test this theiry at your decision with a poll on gearslutz, up for it?

Why do you keep referencing GS as if they were the font of all knowledge?

Perhaps you are on the wrong bbs.

 

[Greg_L]

Why do you keep referencing GS as if they were the font of all knowledge?

Perhaps you are on the wrong bbs.

He has a nice little following at GS.

 

[Supercreep]

I'm late to the party, but I gather this is a semantics discussion where "great recording" is being interpereted by some to mean "great song". I suppose a technically great recording wouldn't include comb filtering or "low-end smear", whatever the fuck that is.

But this is an absurdly academic argument, kind of like "a great car has tires".

Why is this an interesting topic?

 

[Supercreep]

He has a nice little following at GS.

The only thing at GS worthy of my time is the Moan Zone.

 

[SouthSIDE Glen]

There's two semantic problems here. The first is the definition of "great recording", which has been argued back and forth here ad nauseum. I think enough has been said about that on both sides.

The second is the definition of "great room". There seems to be an assumption on one side that you either have a great room, or you get stuck with all those acoustic issues listed. It's that old forum crapola of a choice between two extremes, your room is either great or it absolutely sucks, with nothing in-between. That's pretty obvious baloney; there are a whole lot of rooms that I would never classify as "great rooms" but in which perfectly fine recordings can be made - or at the very least can be made without the issues being constantly referenced here.

This is just another example of a thread that started out fine and grew into a bullcrap fictional black-and-white argument real quick.

G.

 

[frederic]

Grey area is overrated though

 

[WhiteStrat]

Why is this an interesting topic?

Obviously rhetorical, and yet still worth answering: It's not--or at least it ceased being so when jeff seized it as an opportunity to hold forth on the almighty perfect room.

 

[CaptGoldenEars]

After 30+ years, I finally rediscovered the secret to good recordings.

It's not the gear (duh!)
It's not the engineer (wha?)
It's not even the room (heresy!)

It's the players.

This may seem obvious, but I swear, older recordings I made in shitty rooms with shitty equipment sounds better than newer recordings I made in a nice room with boutique equipment and better engineering skills with less than kick-ass players.

Now, either flame away in disagreement, or pummel me for my grasp of the obvious.

Oh yeah! I would rather hear an average recording with above average playing given the choice. I'm always working on the quality of my recordings and they're getting better all the time. But, an awesome quality recording can never make a lousy performance better.

 

[frederic]

1) the music, the performer and the instrument
2) the room
3) putting the mic. in the right place
4) choice of mic.
Everything else comes after this.

If you don't mind my commenting, I would put mic placement and mic choice above the room.

The reason being is there cardiod mics available with very tight, close patterns and they're very useful when recording in a less optimal space. What you do is put the mic in front of the singer, and their back is somewhat close to a wall, standing at a slight angle. Their head/body mostly blocks reflections off the back wall and the length of the room dissipates the vocals enough that the mic doesn't pic it up well enough for the most part.

Another option is to use a shotgun mic, as they too have very focused areas. I've had decent luck placing them on a stand near the ground, pointing up at the vocalist's face, and if they're a fairly stationary vocalist it will work out fairly well, again, mostly eliminating the room.

Anyway, that's why I think mics would be over room.