Your Best Little Trick...

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For a disgustingly thick kick sound for hard, hard rock. I place a 55 gallon plastic trash can in front of the kick drum so the open of the trash can is facing the head. Throw a condenser mic with figure 8 pattern about halfway down. gate and limit the new track and you have a solid tight boom you can mix in with your close mic'd kick drum channel. I've tried the trash can the other way but it doesn't work as well for me.

Sounds kinda lame but it works.
 
For distorted guitars (if you've got some layering going on), duplicate all the guitar tracks, so you have two sets of the same tracks. Take one set and route them to an buss, compress that buss hard and add it back in with the dry tracks to taste. This technique can also be used for background vocals.

BTW...right on about bass players never being satisfied with the mix.
 
For a metal kick drum where you want to get that "click" sound... use a wooden beater, and duct tape a big metal washer to the kick drum batter head right at the contact point. I'd suggest putting a few pieces of duct tape on the kick batter head before applying the washer, just to give it a little extra padding so that the washer doesn't tear through the batter head.

Using a Shure Beta 52 is a good large dynamic kick drum mic for getting that metal "click" sound.
 
Is it just me? I have the feeling there has been a thread like this one not so long ago, in which Harvey started to explain the cowbell trick.

Anyway, there's this trick to fix a recorded dull snare sound: send the snare sound to a bass amp, put the speaker on the back, speaker facing the ceiling.

Put a snare drum upside down on the speaker and mic the snare bottom, there you have the crisp.
 
Ah yes, the old speaker triggering snare trick....Good One!

Large sounds trick.Works really well with bass and some guitar noises. This is how we did it back in the analogical daze before music became zeros and ones....Of course now, it would work even better due to the lack of loss in duping tracks and head-passes...

Take your largely inneffective sound you want to be bigger and dupe it several times.EACH time add or remove a small section of EQ and even print it with a touch of delay for width.

Take all these mono tracks and sub-bus them. Do a mix to a stereo(or mono) track ...You will be able to use Dot's trick in this also flipping phase on different tracks within the bundle and create space in this way.

Season to taste.And BOOM...large individual sounding noise played just like it shoulda been in the first place.

For even cooler noise involving the guitar, do the same process only throw in a couple more passes of the same part using a different guitar or a guitar with a capo or different scale-length.

Remember to TAKE out with EQ in reprinting each part.This allows for a larger space without a buildup of particular frequencies.Which frequencies can only be determined through trial and error.
 
cavedog101 said:
Ah yes, the old speaker triggering snare trick....Good One!
Click to expand...

Geoff Workman did that on The Cars stuff at one point, essentially reamping the snare. Pretty inventive stuff.

War
 
Han said:
Anyway, there's this trick to fix a recorded dull snare sound: send the snare sound to a bass amp, put the speaker on the back, speaker facing the ceiling.

Put a snare drum upside down on the speaker and mic the snare bottom, there you have the crisp.
Click to expand...

Reminds me of a technique Greg Ladanyi used on Jeff Porcaro's drums once. He brought in a pair of bass cabinets and put them on either side of Jeff's bass drum. He routed the kick through the bass cabs and then mic'd those for extra punch/ambience.
 
alanhyatt said:
There are many tricks to the trade, as long as you have the tools.

First trick I can offer is to read about recording and engineering to learn at least the basics. Buying software, a few mikes and some effects does not make anyone a good engineer.

If I can make one comment for beginners, that would be do not stop experimenting, when it comes to Dynamics and DSP, less is more. Listen to the source you are recording, but I mean really listen. Then try to capture that sound you have in your head as accurately as you can.

For vocals, put up a few mikes if you have them. Work with the placement of each mic. Then choose the mic that will best help you get that sound you have in your head. No one mic does it all... In real estate, its location, location, location. In recording, its room treatment, room treatment, room treatment....
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Very true. I often try different mics and pre-amps without trying to analyze it in my mind. A few minutes taken can yield surprising results. Placement is absoultelt everything and can turn an "old" mic into a "new" mic in a hurry. I find that inexperienced engineers tend to do the same thing each time. They learned where to place everything for each track and copy that each and every time. I have had many of these guys get really upset when I move a mic or try different settings with their equipment. If it is unknown to them, they feel lost maybe.
 
It's not a trick, perhaps, but an observation. Drum claws can go just about anywhere. They can clamp to the edge or handle of a guitar cab. They can hang from a water pipe and hold a pair of overheads in the basement. They can go on a shower door for the amp in the bathtub, or the edge of a table in your bedroom or living room, or a Leslie cabinet. They can hold onto a road case handle. Occasionally, I even use them on drums.
 
PhilGood said:
Reminds me of a technique Greg Ladanyi used on Jeff Porcaro's drums once. He brought in a pair of bass cabinets and put them on either side of Jeff's bass drum. He routed the kick through the bass cabs and then mic'd those for extra punch/ambience.
Click to expand...

David Bottril uses a small PA set up high and behind the drummer, then runs the close mics from the snare and kick through it. With tasteful EQ'ing, this adds a lot more punch to the OHs.

This allows you to use more of the OHs in the mix and less close mic, plus the kick and snare pick up more of the tracking room reverb so you may not need to add any in mixing. I never much liked the dry OHs and huge snare reverb combination.

You may need to time-align these tracks, but take care to place the PA so that the OHs are essentially equidistant from the kick/snare and the PA.
 
Leonard Bernstein’s father was also a conductor of some small note, and he once did a concert of Sousa marches. But he played them all pianissimo. He wanted people to pay attention to the brilliant melody and harmony of the pieces, and not get caught up in the stirring emotion of the march.

As the concert progressed, some members of the audience became increasingly aggravated, having come to listen to a Sousa march. Finally, one rather irate audience member shouted out, "PLAY, GOD DAMN IT."

The elder Bernstein turned around to the audience, and gave the single most important piece of advice any audience member (or AE, for that mater) has ever received.













"Listen."












Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
boingoman said:
It's not a trick, perhaps, but an observation. Drum claws can go just about anywhere. They can clamp to the edge or handle of a guitar cab. They can hang from a water pipe and hold a pair of overheads in the basement. They can go on a shower door for the amp in the bathtub, or the edge of a table in your bedroom or living room, or a Leslie cabinet. They can hold onto a road case handle. Occasionally, I even use them on drums.
Click to expand...

Now if they could just hold a beer.

...and refill it!



...often!!
 
Ac Gtr Processing

My tricks, actually just my own reminder list for processing solo acoustic guitar - nylon or steel str:

Don’t use any processing going in. After that…

Leave everything alone above 2 kHz. The sound lower than that can be massaged with EQ or a good split band compressor without crapping the sound out, but if a track has problems higher up I'm usually better off retracking. Every time I sugar coat the upper end with various processing, I regret it later with repeated listening. It’s like it depersonalizes the sound and just makes it generically sweet. Occasionally I'll give in and use a little EQ on a problem upper end if it was a really good take expressively and I’m rushed for time, but it reduces the naturalness of the sound.

Use just enough reverb to take away the dry quality, but not so much that you notice the reverb itself. I always have to fight the cycle where more reverb sounds better to me at first, but worse with repeated listening.

Keep the original unprocessed wav file labeled clearly and in a file folder organized so I can find it in the future when I decide all my previous processing ideas were crap and I’ve finally seen the light. (happens periodically) :D

Tim
 
Probably nothin new to most here but I read and found out that tracking and mixing in the same day usually doesn't work out that well. I used to feel that a time crunch was forcing me to track and mix ASAP but learned that I almost always had to back track and remix the stuff.
Not sure of the logistics but when I give my ears and my head a break (a day to a week)...I found my mixes always turn out better and cleaner.
my .02..............
 
Dogbreath said:
Probably nothin new to most here but I read and found out that tracking and mixing in the same day usually doesn't work out that well. I used to feel that a time crunch was forcing me to track and mix ASAP but learned that I almost always had to back track and remix the stuff.
Not sure of the logistics but when I give my ears and my head a break (a day to a week)...I found my mixes always turn out better and cleaner.
my .02..............
Click to expand...


...this one is a "Must!"...how many times have you come back to a mix done hastily and said to yourself, "what the hell was I thinkin'!?"...keep these as a "ruff mix" for reference, but always save your project files in a secure manner so you can do a proper mix(es) at a later date (when you're more objective about the project)...
 
If you want "jangly" acoustic guitars, double them with a solid body electric (a strat works nicely) that isn't plugged in. Just mic it like you would mic an acoustic guitar. It'll give you a nice thin sound that mixes nicely with a traditional acoustic sound. You can even try panning the acoustic and electric tracks far left and right for an interesting effect.
 
Let's say you start a song with just a guitar and vocal, but the guitar is making the vocal sound a little muddy. Restring the guitar as a "Nashville 6", or "High-strung 6" for a very clean guitar that stays out of the way of the vocals. Especially good for finger-picked intros, but it works well for strumming too. You just use all the high strings of a 12 string guitar set.

Another trick is using the busses for getting a hugh drum sound. Use Buss 1 and 2 for your stereo drum mix, and send the insert out to a compressor. The compressor is set for a slow attack and slow release, with the threshhold set about -8dB. That helps make the general drum levels a little more constant.

Now, send the output of that compressor into another compressor, with the attack set fast and the threshold set at around -2 or -3dB. That tames the initial peaks, and send the output of that second compressor back to the inserts. You wind up with a huge drum sound.
 
Harvey Gerst said:
Let's say you start a song with just a guitar and vocal, but the guitar is making the vocal sound a little muddy. Restring the guitar as a "Nashville 6", or "High-strung 6" for a very clean guitar that stays out of the way of the vocals. Especially good for finger-picked intros, but it works well for strumming too. You just use all the high strings of a 12 string guitar set.
Click to expand...

On a similar note (this is a commonly used trick and works well), you can double an acoustic part with a capo high up (first part in open tuning, then the second part transposed up a 4th [capo 5] or 5th[capo 7]). Pan the two parts to the opposite sides (partially, or hard pan) for a nice sound that tends to translate better to mono than two guitars playing the same exact part (less comb filtering).
 
Take several felt cymbal washers and insert them under the bridge of your bass guitar. Experiment with how many you need to get the right decay. Using a plectrum, and without muting with your palm, cleanly and strongly strike notes - I notice that it's useful for simple lines and best for straight 8th notes backed by a kick drum. Triple or quadruple track these lines.

The sound is very percussive, dark and complex and compliments drum and piano work well.
 
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