What's limiting YOUR recordings??

  • Thread starter Thread starter noisedude
  • Start date Start date

What's the weakest link in your recordings?

  • My recording chain (mics, pres, etc)

    Votes: 156 18.4%

  • My monitoring chain (monitors, phones)

    Votes: 66 7.8%

  • My room(s)

    Votes: 258 30.4%

  • My own ability

    Votes: 368 43.4%
  • Total voters
    848
Definitely my monitering. I don't have isolated headphones, so the playback leaks into my other tracks. :(

I need to get me some ASAP.
 
A Reel Person said:
The next things would have to be lack of space and disorganization.

I'm pathetically overstacked with high quality recording gear, with not enough room to break it all out at once. Strategic items are accessible, and that's it. The rest is either covered, padded and double-stacked, or in storage cases or boxes. There's also a huge weight machine in the middle of my studio that doesn't really fit. That's a big problem. My house is full of a lot of stuff; the clutter of a family of 6. Noone in the family is an organized type, except me, and I struggle with it too. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed. We're basically packed and double-triple stacked, everywhere you look, with STUFF! Geez, I must have a thousand VHS tapes, alone! Books! Collections! Toys! Exercise equipment! TV's! VCR's! Technical gear! Recording Gear!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!

I could build a homeless shelter out of Tascam gear. I could support a 3rd world country on what I've spent on gear.

I may also be a hopelessly compulsive pack rat.

The stuff that's really accessible, are the Squier Bullet, the 388, piano, drums, and,... eh,... a 244 and 234 sittin' by, pretty handy. All my other stuff, recorders by the dozen, are not readily accessible. I could take time to set them up,... however,...

today's pre-production is just tomorrow's nasty mess'o wires. :eek:

Or, so it seems. :eek:

Anyway, I should add, that anything that's on the top tier of junk is more or less accessible. That includes an FD-8, 564, FD-4, 424mkII, 488mkII & a second 388 rig. Other stuff may be accessible but not wired up. I have a huge rack of Tascam rackmount components. I have various other gear halfway accessible but not hooked up. Almost e'thing's covered in plastic, when not in use, which is most of the time.

When I have energy, ambition & inspiration, I do have a fair amount of stuff that's at least half way accessible, I must admit. A lot of stuff is not clearly accessible or just packed & stacked. A lot of it I'm sure I just take for granted, havin to step over it every day. Maybe it's more of a lazy streak, than anything, that's limiting my recordings. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggghhhhhhh.
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If you want i'll have some of it?

Please?
 
!!!

That post, (above), sounds pretty pathetic, I bet.

Lately, I've been working on producing simple stuff from the ground up, and on the simplest & most minimal setup I could find at the time. I've also made great strides to unstack and rearrange my studio space into a more functional environment. I've given up buying gear, for the most part, and I'm concentrating on using what I have & getting the most of it!:eek:;)

Stuff is still double-stacked & triple-stacked in some cases, but it's more functional, overall.

I've been challenged to set aside the time to work on studio pursuits. That's hard for a guy like me, with a job, a wife, 6 kids and 2 houses!:eek:;)
 
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Nah man, working with less is sometimes more. But my offer stands: you don't have space, I don't have a lot of equipment. I see a perfect opportunity to fix both our problems! :P
 
Most new/2nd hand/old/eBay pieces of gear I get adds something but then again some just sit there as in all reality I don't know how to use it to make an improvement.
I plod along, learn from the MP3 Mixing Clinc and try to apply that knowledge but real progress is painfully slow. I have fun at it though.
 
Farview said:
The musical education of the bands coming into my studio. It is hard to make anything better when the musicians don't have a musical vocabulary so you can explain something to them.
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Amen. This is the biggest part of any recording. I was tracking a nashville session drummer yesterday, and the producer wanted to use the console pre's instead of the nice outboard's we had... While I've had success with both, it always blows me away how much better a real player, with properly tuned drums sounds...even with inferior preamps, and some mic choices I wouldn't have made. There's just no substitute for those first two links in the chain.
 
Monitors, at the moment.

I record mostly guitar and vocals, while adding tracks recorded and emailed to me by my writing partner.

I use Yamaha PC speakers, with a Yamaha sub. Not too horrible, but I could do way better.

I usually have to do a lot of A/B-ing with stuff I have in iTunes, as well as listening in the car and at work. Which I guess you have to do to some degree anyway, but I'd like to be able to dial it in quicker on the first try.
 
changing my answer. poor song writing, no recording skills to mention, and the idea of "in the box" recording that's been implanted into my head by marketing. chasing gear doesn't help either. short answer: too much misspent time.
 
travelin travis said:
changing my answer. poor song writing, no recording skills to mention, and the idea of "in the box" recording that's been implanted into my head by marketing. chasing gear doesn't help either. short answer: too much misspent time.
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I hear ya on that last point. I've spent a lot of time on equipment or instruments that simply ended up teaching me poor technique, or lessons that one really shouldn't learn about recording. I've also spent a lot of time on equipment that had major inherent flaws, that, after having spent a bit more money, got cleared up.

It isn't difficult to amass a small mic locker of decent, inexpensive to mid-line mics, a small set of good preamps, and an interface to your computer, but if you don't know what to look for, you are screwed. Even this site gave me the run-around for a while simply due not to people posting the wrong things, but mostly due to the volume of information available.

I would have gone out and bought two SM81's 2 years ago if I knew about them, but they didn't seem to appear in any acoustic guitar discussions at the time, nor did I hear about them in searches, so they got overlooked. Now that I have one, coupled with a good LDC and a decent acoustic, I am getting great results.

Might I add that a smaller-bodied Taylor acoustic (like the 312) makes a great recording acoustic, because, when coupled with a good LDC, the lack of bass gets cleared up, and a nice even balance is discoverd. Or at least that was my experience :)
 
Some big fat stupid guy keeps coming into my studio and tripping over mike cords and knocking over mike stands ! Then, he spends 3 frikken' hours trying to tune his guitar. To top it all off, he can't get all the way through a single take without forgetting the song.

He always wants to "help" produce the mix, but he can't remember how to setup or operate the Roland Workstation, so he just randomly twiddles knobs and buttons until he gets tired and gives up.

I guess that is the biggest "bottleneck" around my studio. I HATE that guy !
 
Yea i'm glad this poll wasn't disabled, very interesting thread.

Originally posted by raddo

... I'd say it's more me than anything else.

I have some decent equipment, ...not bad at all.

I've noticed my problem is lack of motivation or displaced attention. I guess it all comes down to the human condition. ...Once I get the coveted piece of gear, the novelty soon wears off and I set my sights on something else. I think we all do this to some degree).

I notice I spend more time: looking through Recording magazines, checking out Ebay, spending time on forums like these, etc., etc., etc. than I do spend actually upstairs honing my skills not only as a musician, but as a recording engineer as well. I'm always lusting after a new piece of gear or a vintage tube mic, or whatever it may be. I need to spend that time writing songs, refining those songs, and recording those songs all with the gear I have right now.

One of my New Years Resolutions was to spend more time in my studio,... Need to work on that.
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Aint that the truth. Seriously, i get something play around with it til the novelty wears off, then hunt something else down.

Whats limiting me is the amount of time I DON'T spend playing, writing or recording. But new gear is just so much fun.
 
One of the things that limits me is the combination of the fulltime job and the fact that I am tired most of the time (due chronic illness). If I didn't have the job, I could sleep iiiiin, wake up, work on the music, then go to bed again. Of course, then I couldn't afford the gear, the apartment, the food I eat, etc etc... so I think I'll hang on to the job and just work on the music in my spare time.
 
Lemme guess cube, hypothyroidism? I have that too, if that's what you have. Just guessing.

I'm surprised there isn't an "all" option LOL.

My room SUCKS!!!!
 
jrhager84

I'll give you a hint; it's your snare not your "room".

the snare sound....it needs some attention. as it lacks attack tune it up, hit it, listen to it, has it got attack? no? do something else until it does.

which could include getting a new snare, another one if you are tracking a slower song would be to tune it right way down like the skin is just almost sitting there... you have to hit it hard but frequency wise there will be now a large amount of attack.

here is another one; play to a grid mic the snare hit and record about three or four instances of the snare all as good as you can get them at optimum level work on the sound of the snare only cut and sample these four randomly across the track in place of the recording you do "live" this should take about 10mins.

you would be terribly surprised how many "big" name artists drummers and producers do this...(or just replace) and we never know, do we?

other than that get a dam fine Snare sample EQ cut and use that.

do anything..

nothing is limiting your recording.

except your human energy as Cusebassman says there correctly.


i mean seriously if i could play drums i believe i'd have written so many more great tunes actually if i could "play" like a musician I’d have helped so many musicians by now.
but i can't...you can, so now learn production, that's about doing what it takes, that's what I’m about.
 
Yeah

doing what it takes.

and sometimes doing what it take means diving in deep water trenches looking for a funky ball of tits from outer space.

or kissing a donkey.

but not limited to that.
 
The Axis said:
Some big fat stupid guy keeps coming into my studio and tripping over mike cords and knocking over mike stands ! Then, he spends 3 frikken' hours trying to tune his guitar. To top it all off, he can't get all the way through a single take without forgetting the song.

He always wants to "help" produce the mix, but he can't remember how to setup or operate the Roland Workstation, so he just randomly twiddles knobs and buttons until he gets tired and gives up.

I guess that is the biggest "bottleneck" around my studio. I HATE that guy !
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that's hilarious.

i've got a "friends" band who wants me to record them. i've never heard them, but i think they suck. the guys been playing electric for 6 months, and says he can play with the rest of them, they've got a keyboardist, and a BACKUP (wts???) keyboardist, a lead singer, with two "backup singers" and a drummer. no bass, just a ton of keyboards and vocals. i think they think they can hum there way to glory.....

i'll record them if they pay me good:D. that way i can make money, and i wont haev to spend hours mixing and mastering cuz there tone sucks, there band probly sucks, and will suck until they get decent equipment. they can't blame me;)
 
^ No offense dude, but if you really have such little respect for your "friend" or his band, you have no place touching ANY of his material. When you track/mix/master you do so with the utmost professionalism and moreover; respect. Doing a mix for money and money alone with such resentment in your heart only hurts your credibility, and in the long run has negative effects on you as a person. Don't be dick. Refer him to someone else...

Ask any engineer. That's your name out there in that recording. Treat the track with a little respect, dig?
 
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