Where do I start?!

H

headshox

New member
Hi guys,

I recently got together with a friend to have a go at making a demo tape/CD to send out of his brother's music. The guy sings and plays electric and electro-acoustic guitar. We want to record a few tracks, some of each style

We have been given use of our school theatre, though not designed for recording, it has the best sound equipment around that we know of. We have:

12 channel mixer
3 x good omnidirectional XLR mics
1 x Shotgun mic
1 x radio shack flat mike
Minidisc Recorder
Tape Recorder
DAT Recorder
Computer with Cool Edit Pro, Soundblaster 128 Gold card and CD Writer
Feedback defeat rack unit
Effects (reverb mainly) rack unit

At home I have got Cubase 5 VST/32

We also have all the equipment for monitoing the sound from the control room, and for supplying onstage monitors.

This is all great stuff, but where the hell do we start?!! I have absolutely no idea! Do we get him to play the guitar track without singing, then sing without guitar while playing back the guitar recording to him on headphones? how do we record the guitar? Should we do reverb live on the effects unit? or afterwards in Cool Edit or even later in Cubase? Should we record the parts on minidisc, tape, DAT, cd or as WAVs on the PC?

Many questions I know, but any guidance on the order in which to do things, how do to particular things would be greatly appriciated.

Kind Regards,
Seb
 
Yo Head of Shox:

I can give you a couple of suggestions but it sounds like you really need a savvy person to engineer your recording in the school setting.

First, you can use reverb for the headsets of the vocalists but don't record it. Add the reverb when mixing. If you do reverb direct into the recording, you're stuck with it and you may not like what you hear. [those just starting out tend to overuse reverb and wind up with that echo canyon product]

If you're doing vocals, a good mic is important. Don't know much about the mics you mentioned but if you use the search function here or go into the mic forum, you should get more answers.

Good luck.
Green Hornet
:cool: :cool: :cool: :p
 
Thanks

Thanks, sound advice!

A few things that are still worrying me are:

The guitars, should they go into an onstage guitar amp then through the line-out on the amp to the mixer and onto the recorder. Or straight from the guitar to the mixer then from the mixer to an onstage monitor and the recorder?

What kind of sample rate should we use if recording straight to Cool Edit?

Would the sound be cleaner going onto the DAT then optically transferred to the PC, than recording straight onto the PC's mini-jack line in?

Any tips for cheaply reducing the blowy 'whooomsh' effect we get when the singer sings right onto the mic?!

Thats enough for now, but i'm sure I'll come up with more questions for you pros!

Regards,
Seb
 
Yo Seb of Shox:

Heh, heh, you ask the same questions I asked when I started out the old home studio.

I would suggest you record with the normal CDR 16 bit mode. It produces a nice CD. I have a 24 bit mode on my Yam 2816; however, I cannot burn a CD from that mode; but, I can run it into tape or DAT and good old cassette is not dead yet.

About the "whoosh" into the mic? Not sure what you mean but I use a popper stopper screen; you can buy one or make your own from one of your girl band members' right leg nylon and some type of plastic frame. Or, you can buy one.

Your thoughts about running the G-tars hither and thither is interesting. You need to experiment with all methods and see what happens. That's why recording is so interesting to musicians and non-musicians -- there are so many paths you can follow and invent your own with a mental bulldozer.

I had a good friend of mine, a very good bass player, stop in one day and do a bass line for a novelty tune I wrote. I ran his bass into a KG speaker which had a plug to bypass the speaker; then I ran the signal right into the recorder and adjusted the volume and, when mixing, I adjusted the EQ to get a funky thick bass line.

Doing it from the G-tars speaker is harder as you have to try mic placements, etc.

Hey, mon, get in there are experiment and send me the Mercedes soon.

Green Hornet


:D :D :p :p :p
 
There are a lot of variables there.

I'd recommend getting a pre-out line from the guitar amp, directly into the mixer, mixed with a close-mic of the guitar amp itself, for fullest guitar sound.

The easiest remedy for that 'whoompfff' sound, is for the singer to back to at least 12"-18" off the mic, or more, and have the singer sing 'out' more, and adjust input gain to fit the new mic distance, and acoustic levels. That works best with the vocalist in isolation, and is less practical when doing a group live-in-studio.

If it's more group-live-in-studio, just get a foam windscreen, and maybe adjust high Eq a bit, to compensate for the rolloff.
 
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