10 Easy recording tips

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Post by B45-12 »

Kristie_Amperzahn wrote:Awesome tips :lol: But what would be really great, would be tips on speicifically recording accoustic guitars.... Have been doing a little of that at home lately, and not quite getting it to sound how I want it too....
I've been enjoying myself at home with this recently - my setup is a variety of guitars fed into a Fender Accoustasonic 30 amp and then a line out to a 4 track recorder (Fostex X25 from memory).

Although mine's a Fender, there are all sorts of similar accoustic amps (about 30 watt 2 input 1 for guitar 1 for mic) at a variety of prices - no need to pay for the name BUT trying to get a decent amped sound through ordinary guitar amps, stereos etc seemed to be impossible - could be just me but allways sounded like 'turd under a pillow'.

Pickups on the guitar vary from Barcus Berry Hot Dots, chinese pizeo passive to Maton AP 5 system - have a Bill Lawrence soundhole one I've not tried yet. For warmth/dynamics I use a noname mic (think it was an el cheapo from Dick Smith) on a mic stand at an angle (about 45 degrees) about a foot away from the soundhole and slightly above it. Needless to say the sesssion usually result in curses and swearing as the mic stand chooses to drop or slowly sink during a particularly important bit. The mic feeds into the mic side of the amp (it's 2 channel).

I don't clip the levels but drop them about 10 percent below red and you have to play evenly with less dynamics than you'd normally use (or use a comptressor) touch of reverb is nice and judicious chorus use can highlight different passages. Plus panning to one side is good to seperate from the other stuff.

Guitars are bog standard dreadnaughts with light to medium gauge bronze strings ranging form el cheapo chinese Saehan to Martin D28 - less difference amped than you'd think! Use a medium pick (1mm Herco/Dunlop and similar) as I think thin ones sound tinny. Never worry too much about strings - say if older than a month I'll change them for a particularly important bit but otherwise don't bother.
You can't do THAT on stage!

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Post by thehenderson »

johnny mullet wrote:However, its always difficult trying to polish a turd anyway

Hehehe. :mrgreen: Horrible mental picture though
Every part of the chain is important though for getting good sound quality

If you're recording someone, you have no control over the actual quality of their playing (unless you're doing producing or something, but dont even get me started on that! haha)

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by MuckRaker »

thanks for this

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by sopachrga »

6 year old dredge..... really?
Ummm....

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10 Easy recording tips

Post by Capt. Black »

An old dredge but a good dredge. Some things are worth repeating repetitively.

I sure miss Ascend.

Anyone else interested in lobbying BG to add a dedicated recording section to the forum? I reckon we all have heaps to share and learn from each other.

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by Bg »

You know lobbying only works if cash is attached.
So, is that low alcohol or no alcohol at all? mmmm, no alcohol, do you want to try it? Noooooooooo.

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by bluesbass »

BG wrote:You know lobbying only works if cash is attached.
True. Just ask Nick Smith...
The opinions expressed in the post above may differ from the opinions expressed by other people with different opinions.

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Post by Danger Mouse »

thehenderson wrote:A 57 is good for guitar, but not great. A nice AKG condenser will pickup alot more detail.
Yep, bought my brother an SM57 as a pressie when he started home recording. It was good, but he then bought an AKG C1000S, which was noticeably better.
The older I get, the more disappointed in myself I become.

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10 Easy recording tips

Post by Capt. Black »

BG wrote:You know lobbying only works if cash is attached.
For you mate, I'll lobby for free. ;)

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by nzsimon1 »

I have 3 only of the Alan Parsons 10 hour long , 3 dvd recording course left rrp $199 but can let go for less make me an offer you will probably get lucky

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by mr_sooty »

Thanks for the dredge, I found the OP quite interesting. The Parsons DVD set is tempting too.

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by Timi »

I don't like using the word "wrong" when talking about recording, but assuming you're recording digitally tip #1 is bad advice and your recordings should sound considerably "better" by keeping your levels more conservative and leaving more available headroom, mine certainly sounded a hell of a lot better when I started being more careful with gain staging.

Of course, whatever sounds "best" is the right way....

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by Capt. Black »

That's a very interesting discussion to me Timi. I've come from a digital imaging background and the whole argument of noise floor and dynamic range is basically the same but manifests itself much more apparently.
Too much exposure and you clip the tone scale, too little and you run into problems with noise (ugly grainy shit in the shadows) if you want to make big adjustments.

I've mostly followed the philosophy of recording fairly conservatively to avoid clipping on too hot a signal. But more recently I've been quite successfully tracking drums, guitars and vocals with as hot a signal as possible to use up all the available bits/dynamic range. It does mean spending a fair bit of time using a very good metering plugin and getting the levels just right. The Waves Durrough plug in can be set to whichever scale your interface treats as 0dB. Typically -18dB I think. I calibrated my interfaces to show -20dB in the DAW with the desk faders at -20. This was very safe because the desk at full +12 was only hitting about +6 in the DAW. Not that I would go that high. This just illustrates the slightly conservative buffer that provided.
(SSL also does a free meter plug in that reads in bits as well as dB specifically for this purpose. I just like the Durrough cos it's a bit easier to read.)

I kinda changed tack and recalibrated my desk/interfaces to give me 1:1 between the desk and the DAW at 0dB which put a hotter signal to "tape". As long as nothing clipps it is fine. The Durrough meters show any peak clips if they exceed 5 or 6 samples so it was just a case of checking the vocals during the warm ups and finding a max signal that sat just under 0dB.
The last track I was working on was one where we had decided to chuck out the previous performances and start again fresh. So I knew the song well. The singer had really good technique so she would back off when needed and she was very consistent take to take. Between the vocalist and a tiny bit of riding the fader, I didn't need to use any compression to keep things contained.
The end result was a much juicier track that responds much nicer to tweaks and sits heaps better in the mix compared to the older version.

I guess if you have time, as I did, it's worth the effort. But I completely concur with the idea that there's safety in the lower numbers.

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by Capt. Black »

Sorry Timi, I should have read your post more thoroughly. Paying attention to gain at each stage. YES. Huge payoffs. I ran tones though each channel to find the optimum gain on the desk the desk, then set the desk faders to -20 or later on, 0dB and adjusted the interface inputs until the DAW showed the corresponding level. What a difference. It was like taking a blind fold off.

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Re: 10 Easy recording tips

Post by bender »

Timi wrote:I don't like using the word "wrong" when talking about recording, but assuming you're recording digitally tip #1 is bad advice and your recordings should sound considerably "better" by keeping your levels more conservative and leaving more available headroom, mine certainly sounded a hell of a lot better when I started being more careful with gain staging.

Of course, whatever sounds "best" is the right way....
This. Big time.

Something to bare in mind reading through Capt's post- there are a lot of different flavours of 0dB. 0dBFS ≠ 0dBu ≠ 0dBSPL ≠ 0dBLKFS etc etc.

Recording at 0dB on a correctly calibrated VU meter is good practice. Recording at 0dBFS is a guarantee of digital clipping.

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