Oh, to Make a Perfect Record in an Imperfect World Since recording my daughter, Kara’s band live here last week I’ve been musing over the recording process. In the forty years that I’ve been recording music, I’ve never once ended up with a recorded song that completely satisfied me. That’s not to say I don’t really like a lot of them, but each is always lacking in some way. BTW, this started out as an email to my daughter, but became sort of a note to myself to clarify my thinking about my own set up. Its purpose is rather muddled I know. Others may or may not find something useful in here. Read at your own risk. So what makes for a perfect record, theoretically? I think the basic components in order of importance are: 1) A great song or composition 2) A great performance 3) A great recording Generally speaking, a great performance cannot make up for a lousy song and a great recording certainly cannot make up for a lousy performance. Heck, some very poor recordings of well performed, well-written songs have become long-lasting hits. A great recording of a lousy performance will never do well over the long term. So for the recording process, you’ve got to make sure that in your effort to get a stellar recording, you don’t do anything to stifle the inspiration of the performers. This is why it’s generally a good idea to get everything set up in advance so the musicians aren’t bored, tired, rushed or irritated by the time you’ve got all the microphones positioned correctly and the levels set. A producer’s most critical job is getting an inspired performance of a well-crafted piece. Everything else is secondary. Anyway, I believe the major components for getting a great recording are: 1) Sound quality of each source 2) Tracking 3) Mixing 4) Mastering If the source sounds like crap, you’ll be polishing a turd for the rest of the process. If the source sounds great, then your job is a much simpler one of not ruining it. For anything recorded with a microphone, the acoustics of the room are important, though mitigated somewhat with close miking. I put a good deal of effort into treating my modest recording space and believe the acoustics in there are good enough that a near-perfect recording is at least *possible*. Of course, the instruments need to sound great. Guitar players should have freshly changed strings for example. Microphones need to be placed in acoustic sweet spots where the tone of each instrument is particularly good. This is far easier said than done unfortunately. Generally, I just make a good guess though I have done a fair amount of experimentation on my own, which I hope helps when it comes time to make those guesses. Separating the instruments is ideal, but that can be tricky. That’s why most recordings are usually done in layers, with vocals recorded separately from say, the drums. The problem with that is that you might lose some of the magic that can occur when musicians are performing live together in the same acoustical space. And besides, some engineers say sound bleed is good. That is, a recording where some of the sound of one instrument or voice going into the microphone meant for another yields a pleasant outcome. That may be true, but too much bleed makes for a mixing nightmare. I had exactly that problem with the recording I did last week where there was far too much bleed from the hi hat going into the vocal mikes. I was able to control it with EQ and by riding the volume control on the mikes, but I’ll never be able to turn these tracks into a great mix. The hi hat will always be just a bit too loud. The best solution would have been to record the drums separately from the vocals and acoustic guitar and hopefully that wouldn’t have diminished the performance. But if live is the way to go in the future, then I think I need to build some acoustic screens. I think I might try making something like a folding privacy screen out of Owens-Corning 703 fiberglass boards wrapped in light cloth. That should cut down the bleed to an acceptable level, though I wouldn’t know until I actually tried putting a pair of such screens up in front of singers in the room with live drums. For tracking, I always go with a simple direct signal chain. I tend to believe the quality of the track is determined in order of importance by: 1) The sound quality of the microphone used (appropriate to the source) or direct signal (e.g. direct box) 2) The quality of the pre amp set to a proper level that doesn’t ever clip 3) The quality of the analog to digital converter I never put anything else in the signal chain for tracking. No EQ. No compression. Nothing. Of these three, I believe the sound quality of the microphone is by far the most important factor. That’s not to say a microphone needs to be expensive to be great. Modestly priced SM 57s are fantastic mikes, useful for a wide variety of purposes. Now my DAW only has six analog inputs, which has been perfectly adequate for the overdubbed recordings of Self Animation and Ironia, but which created a significant challenge when trying to record Wyland live. I definitely could have used a couple more tracks, though in the end the results were serviceable with the exception of the hi-hat-bleed issue, which, again, makes me want to build a couple of portable acoustic screens for next time. Recording the drums separately from the vocals (i.e., overdubbing the vocals) would, of course, also solve the shortage-of-inputs problem. I generally record electric bass with a direct box. For acoustic bass, I generally use a large diaphragm mike in front of the bridge, back about a foot. For electric guitar, I generally use an SM 57 microphone or something similar fairly close to the cone of the amplifier. I point it straight in. I also always try to get a direct out from the guitar itself, which I almost always later use either for added clarity, to re amp if necessary, or by mixing in a virtual amp on top of the real amp. Every now and then, I’ll end up using only a virtual amp if it sounds better in the mix. I’ve never tried it, but if I had enough inputs and DI boxes, I’d take a DI directly from the guitar and a second one from the output of the pedals. That would give me the most flexibility at the mix. I currently only have two DI boxes though, so that would be impossible in a live recording situation. I always track MIDI on any instruments that have MIDI outputs. Mixing and Mastering are deep subjects. Mixing is the initial process of adjusting the volume and equalization of each track. Here is where you add in effects and filters so that the mix of tracks sounds good. It’s a complex process and you can never know so much about it that there’s nothing left to learn. You mix down a song to a stereo audio file. That file is then mastered for final release. The conventional wisdom is that almost nobody is great at both mixing and mastering. I sometimes think that great mastering engineers are freaks with alien brains that hear and process music differently. While that probably is not true, the process of mixing and mastering is sufficiently different that I do believe great engineers generally must specialize in one or the other. Another factor is that it’s a good idea to get a fresh set of trained ears on a recording that’s important. Now I generally master my own material and certainly everything I put up on YouTube, but I’m fully aware that I’m not particularly good at it. I did once hire a mastering engineer for a project over a decade ago, but he was really no better at mastering than I am. Still, my mistake then was picking the wrong engineer not in seeking one out. For the next Self Animation CD, I definitely intend to scrape together enough dough for professional mastering. This time though, I will carefully check the person’s credentials and get someone with a clear track record (pun intended). Anyway, those are my thoughts for the day on pursuing the perfect audio recording. --Nick
Posted on: Fri, 23 May 2014 17:07:22 +0000
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