I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

[Frantic_Rock]

Hi guys.

We have recorded 9 bed tracks for our first album 2 days ago in a studio.
The studio is in this guy's basement. He used to work for Metalworks so tons of experience and good equipment. The basement is soundproofed properly.

- Bass is recorded directly
- Lead guitar recorded directly
- Rhythm guitar miced and isolated with matresses and pillows (yeah... thats right)
- Drums are miced up properly - using 2 overheads for the high hats, a bass mic, a snare mic, and 2 tom mics.

The beds sound good to my ears. This is before we start to engineer all the individual sounds and apply digital effects to them.

Next session we have will be lead vocals (singer) and lead guitar (me).
Do you guys know if we should engineer all the drum sounds and guitar sounds, compress and pan everything first, before recording leads, OR should we record all the components first (vocals, leads, harmonies) before trying to engineer the sounds and mix everything?

Are there any things to watch out for? Too much compression? Too much reverb? Too much panning? Too much anything ? Too little anything?

Any advice about studios or links to some reading material will be appreciated.
I can post clips of the bed tracks when I get home.

Thanks,

 

[vinterland]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Record everything before you try and get into mixing. Compression should not be overused. Compressing vocals is a given but other than that it should be lenient. Sometimes bass guitars need a little... occasionally drums, maybe a lead guitar but thats about it. The mastering process will bring everything to a nice equilibrium level anyways.

 

[Benjy_26]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

I agree with everything Vinterland said. Also, don't go crazy with the 'verb. Too much reverb can make a recording sound muddy and trashy and too little can make things sound clinical. Use your ears and your judgement.

 

[J Moose]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Next session we have will be lead vocals (singer) and lead guitar (me).
Do you guys know if we should engineer all the drum sounds and guitar sounds, compress and pan everything first, before recording leads, OR should we record all the components first (vocals, leads, harmonies) before trying to engineer the sounds and mix everything?

Are there any things to watch out for? Too much compression? Too much reverb? Too much panning? Too much anything ? Too little anything?

Absolutely!!!

Really man, there's no "right" or "wrong" way to do things. Earlier today I pulled out a record I finished about a year & half ago and everything is different on every song. Granted we cut basics at two different studios & three sessions, but we did all the overdubs & mixing in one shot in my old shop. I've "broken" all kinds of rules...massive amounts of compression to none at all; chaining compressors, reverbs, and/or EQ's together; running drums & vocals through a Sansamp or Leslie cabinet...whatever it takes to make the song come across.

Sometimes we'll build the mix while the overdubs are going down and spend another couple of hours massaging things at the end, before the mix is printed and we move onto the next song. But more commenly we'll track everything and set aside a seperate block of time for mixing. Part of it depends on budget and how it's going to be used...also depends rather largely on what the purpose of the recording is. I don't make "demos"...everything is always approached as a record whether it's two songs or twenty. But there's a difference between banging out a few tunes as an EP to get gigs & promote the band a little and doing a full blown comnmercial release. There are thousands of ways to approach it.

One thing though...you're always engineering at every step. Make it sound like a record from the start. At the most basic level you should be able to throw faders up & have it sound pretty solid without much effort. Fixing it in the mix isn't always a possibility and mastering won't "save" a subpar mix any more then putting a great pickup in a plywood Les Paul knockoff will make it sound & feel like a great slab of well crafted mahogany & maple.

 

[seafoamer]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Ur band should worry about the song structure & playing. Let the engineer worry about the details of engineering. He will ask u when he needs/wants ur input.
Don't get too involved w/ trying to make engineering decisions, if u have little experience w/ recording. Instead, watch & learn.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Ur band should worry about the song structure & playing. Let the engineer worry about the details of engineering. He will ask u when he needs/wants ur input.
Don't get too involved w/ trying to make engineering decisions, if u have little experience w/ recording. Instead, watch & learn.

Agreed - if your engineer doesn't know how to get good sound to tape/disk get another engineer/studio.

 

[xerxes]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

imo, listen to your ears. if you hear something, do it. dont be like "no compression" or something like thta, if it sounds good, do it...

 

[J Moose]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Ur band should worry about the song structure & playing. Let the engineer worry about the details of engineering. He will ask u when he needs/wants ur input.
Don't get too involved w/ trying to make engineering decisions, if u have little experience w/ recording. Instead, watch & learn.

I can only agree with part of this.

It's your recording & your record.

You should be 100% involved with it on every level and that includes tones & sounds.

Don't let the AE dictate & decide what it should sound like. Really, if you're looking for "Stooges" and the engineer gives you "Steely Dan" or "Scorpians" then nobody's gonna be happy with the result with the possible exception of the AE. Bring a bunch of CD's along and actively A/B to them while your recording to make sure you're in the right ballpark. If you don't start that until mixing then it might be too late to get what you want out of it.

 

[seafoamer]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

disagreeing with me is not allowed.

 

[RGN]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

- bring lots of Jagermeister
- round up some hookers and/or strippers to keep the band company
- have your leads down before you hit the studio, overwise you'll end up having to rush and not be satisfied
- i wouldn't get involved in the mixing/mastering at all, everyone is going to think they need to be louder in the mix- that is a given

 

[Frantic_Rock]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Thanks guys. Lots of great advice here.

I think i'll disobey the foamer man, and get involved with the engineering process... :fing25: lol

I have all my leads down.
Hookers - hmmmm.... interesting idea - would be kinda distracting don't you think?


Yeah I was thinking to bring audio CDs to show what kind of reverb I want.
I'll take all of your guys' advices with a grain of salt.

This thing is already sounding good - and I can't wait for it to be done.

 

[lpmarshall]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

- i wouldn't get involved in the mixing/mastering at all, everyone is going to think they need to be louder in the mix- that is a given

Ugh, your bringing back memories of all my studio experiences. The last 3 song demo we recorded, our bass player kept hounding the engineer to turn the bass up, and the engineer was getting frustrated. I basically told the bass player to shut up after awhile, it sounded fine in the overall mix.

My advice? Be involved in the process, but not over involved. If something doesn't sound right to you, let the engineer know. Remeber, you are paying them. But give them enough breathing room, they usually have a pretty good idea of what they are doing.

 

[matt_transition]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Also, when mixing, try not to adjust the sound from soloing individual instruments like the kick, snare & guitars etc. Remember your mixing the tracks, something might sound great soloed but doesn't cut it in the mix.
Also beware of masking, the process where two or more instruments take up the same frequency spectrum and threfore one sort of cancels the other out. The process our engineer used was:

1. Volumes & Panning
2. EQ's
3. Dynamic Processing (Reverbs and Compression etc)
4. Additional Effects (Chorus, Flangers)
5. Track Automation (Riding faders, pan movement, effects levels)
6. Thorough checking through large and small speakers.
7. Mastering (Overall track compression, adding top end 'presence')

But obviously your engineer should know this.
Describe the characteristics of the sound you want, e.g snappy snare, resonant snare, biting guitars, soft guitars, dreamy cleans.
If the engineer is good he'll know exactly how to do this.

Hope this helps

 

[xerxes]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Also, when mixing, try not to adjust the sound from soloing individual instruments like the kick, snare & guitars etc. Remember your mixing the tracks, something might sound great soloed but doesn't cut it in the mix.
Also beware of masking, the process where two or more instruments take up the same frequency spectrum and threfore one sort of cancels the other out. The process our engineer used was:

1. Volumes & Panning
2. EQ's
3. Dynamic Processing (Reverbs and Compression etc)
4. Additional Effects (Chorus, Flangers)
5. Track Automation (Riding faders, pan movement, effects levels)
6. Thorough checking through large and small speakers.
7. Mastering (Overall track compression, adding top end 'presence')

But obviously your engineer should know this.
Describe the characteristics of the sound you want, e.g snappy snare, resonant snare, biting guitars, soft guitars, dreamy cleans.
If the engineer is good he'll know exactly how to do this.

Hope this helps

i like the advice here imo, it mixes how the engineer and the artist should interact, imo.....

also, masking does suck....

 

[Frantic_Rock]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Great stuff. thanks!

Yeah I heard my engineer talking about some waves cancelling each other out or something. So what he did - he just flipped one their phases on the computer.

Yeah - most of my rhythms are clean on this album. I want them to be panned slightly to the right - creamy and reverberated. Some of them need to be snappy for punctuation.

Most important thing to us probably right now - is we need a MIGHTY bass drum and snare sounds. Think Kashmere by LZ. Right now its sounding kinda wimpy in the bass. I wonder to what extent this can be added through engineering. Also we gotta bring out the toms - because they're quieter than the snare, kick or symbols.

On one of the songs - i have two drummers playing simultaneously - overlaying their tracks. One is a pounder. The other is a jazz drummer - and uses intricate rudaments with toms and syncopation - and offbeats. So it becomes a flood of drums. (Like an elephant stampede in Jungle Book)

 

[matt_transition]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Most important thing to us probably right now - is we need a MIGHTY bass drum and snare sounds. Think Kashmere by LZ. Right now its sounding kinda wimpy in the bass. I wonder to what extent this can be added through engineering. Also we gotta bring out the toms - because they're quieter than the snare, kick or symbols.

Just remember, to get a big kick drum its pretty much 50/50 micing and mixing. Adding low end EQ doesn't make it bigger, try adding between 2.5-5KhZ frequency to accent the attack of the kick. Also reverb emulates a large sound source, so what i sometimes do is patch two reverbs and pan them 70% left and 70 right and get a short hall reverb with little decay and 0 pre-delay. This will make it sound less like a reverb and make the kick sound as if its coming from a wider source than dead centre. It is quite hard to mix this to sound natural with the rest of the kit.

Don't forget Compression, Expansion and Gating especially on bringing those toms out if there's a significant amount of spill from the rest of the kit or other instruments.

 

[innerdreamrecords.co]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

A lot of that Bonham sound was in the recording. "When The Levee Breaks" was recorded with two directional mics in a stair foyer.

The important thing is to get your recording to gel. Lot's of engineers don't mix well so you might look around for someone who specializes in mixing, review a bunch of mixers work and find the appropriate one for your record.

 

[J Moose]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Most important thing to us probably right now - is we need a MIGHTY bass drum and snare sounds. Think Kashmere by LZ. Right now its sounding kinda wimpy in the bass. I wonder to what extent this can be added through engineering. Also we gotta bring out the toms - because they're quieter than the snare, kick or symbols.

I don't wanna be a killjoy but if the drums didn't sound huge & Bonham-ish at the tracking stage you might be half-way to screwed. About 80% of that kind of sound comes from the drummer himself & the initial tuning & microphone placement.

Great drummer in a good room with a solid kit...a couple three really expensive well placed microphones...hit big red button. If the drummer can't balance himself through his playing, 'ya need to get back to audio skool mic placement...one mic on everything. And that'll take you REALLY far from the "lots of room" sound that was all over Zep stuff.

It also bugs me when people ask for "Bonham" because 90% of the time what they really want is Bonham's playing. And that's not gonna happen unless 'ya start with a shovel & an occultist to take over once the body has been recovered. Personally I'd light candles & sage while attempting to sanance his spirit into your drummer. :fingersx:

If the drums sounded great to begin with you might be able to get halfway there with using just the kick, snare, and either overheads and/or room mics. But it depends on a LOT of factors...

 

[Frantic_Rock]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

Hey.
In my opinion the kick drum and the snare must be fattened up.

 

[xerxes]

Re: I'm in the studio over the next month. Please give me some advice.

imo, that drum sounds i really good. imo, u dont want the bass drum to loud to begin with......

i think u got a great soudns right, i would actually work on the guitar sound (unless thats what your going for)