Home Recording Tips

We’ve compiled some recording hints for those of you recording your own stuff at home. It doesn’t matter whether you record on to an old 4-Track tape machine, a computer based system or wax cylinder.. the same rules usually apply!

Getting the simple things right is the key to a smooth session and a good recording.

1. Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. If you know your material and your arrangements you’ll save time and money and make time in the studio more productive and enjoyable for everyone.

2. Re-string your guitars, re-skin your drums. If you can set them up yourelf then do it. If not then pay a guitar shop to do it. Top studios regulalry hire in gear if the artists equipment isn’t up to standard. A crap guitar is still going to sound crap even if its recorded through the best gear!

3. Make sure you have a guitar tuner with you while you record. It’s absolutely critical to tune before every take. Nothing worse than doing a great take then realising your out of tune! When you layer up parts in a multitrack recording any tuning issues will become apparent and will generally make your recording sound less good!Putting down your initial tracks to a click track or a metronome is always a good idea. Its much easier to add tracks to a multitrack when what your’re playing to is in time! Subtle tempo shifts can be good but big timing issues are one of the major differences between a piece of music that sounds ‘right’ and one that sounds a bit unprofessional.

4. If you’re recording with a mic try and get your mic as close to the sound source as possible. Unless you’re trying to get an ambient/roomy sound, a close mic sound will generally be a bit more useful when you’re trying to mix your song. If you’re recording on to a computer you’ll probably have some plug-in effects you can use on your sounds. In this case you’re definitely better off with a close mic’d sound as you’ll be able to do more with it.

5. A good studio trick when recording guitar is to mic your cab up in another room. Put the head in the control room (or wherever your recording gear is) with you so you can adjust the settings easily. This is handy for overdubbing guitar parts as you can then hear exactly whats going on in the mix

6. Another classic problem with home and small studio recording is the old “It sounded different when I played it at home.” Its tricky to get consistant sounding recordings and mixes, that’s why people pay big bucks for studio design. To get round the problem try setting up 2 sets of speakers so that you can listen on both as you’re recording and mixing. Headphones will also give you another perspective. If you listen to music in your car then take a rough mix to the car and listen to it there… people do this a lot even in top studios! Once you’ve done a few recordings or mixes in the same place you’ll get to know how your listening environmnent sounds. For example, your studio might might create ‘standing waves’ in the low frequencies which make certain bass notes or the bottom end of your track seem really loud, so in your mix you’ve turned the bass right down. Then, when you play your recording somewhere else, the bass seems really quiet or is missing something. Once you know this you can try and work round it or try and set up some accoustic damping.. Not always possible if you’re studio is your bedroom!

7. Distortion can be friend and foe! Nice distortion is possibly a question of taste but generally a bit of analogue distortion or harmonic distortion is quite nice. It sounds good on guitars, vocals, almost anything in fact. When it doesn’t sound so good is when your recording levels are wrong and you’ve ‘clipped’ or distorted the input stage of your recording device. Setting your input gain level is really important. When you’re setting up your levels try playing and recording the loudest section that you’re about to record. Then have a listen back, check your meters and listen to how it sounds. If you’re input level is too high you’ll hear crackles, pops and general badness. If you record on to a digital system you’ll see the meters go red in the loud bits. Turn the input level on your recording device and try again until your recording sounds good. Bear in mind that you don’t want to turn your input levels down too much as then you’ll record your signal at too low a level. This will make it difficult to use. Essentially you will have also recorded ‘noise’ the background noise of the recorder which will be audible when you turn up the track in the mix or try and effects, compression or E.Q.

Mastering Music!

read a lot on music, so I've come across my share of interviews with pros in the field of recording. When asked about the specifics of a particular mixing/mastering technique, I've noticed that many guys will respond something like this: "Man, if it sounds right, it is right."

Then they talk about how one time they had to boost the snare by 16dB at 5.38kHz and it really made it pop. The album made platinum and the mixer was presented with the “Best Snare Sound Award” from the Canadian Council of Superior Recordings.That’s a great story and all, but in my opinion “If it sounds right, it is right” is the worst piece of advice you could ever give someone learning about mixing/mastering. Why? Because most newbies to recording have neither the experience nor the training to be able to hear the way a mixing/mastering engineer has learned to hear.

What sounds right to a newbie could sound right for all the wrong reasons. Amateur recordists should actually dedicate a fair amount of time trying to learn what it is exactly that the pros are hearing.Once I was...eh-hmm…"mastering" a track and trying to give it some sparkly top end clarity like a radio cut. Over the course of the session, I thought I was making all the right moves. In my mind I was a mastering badass. The next morning I almost wet myself when I heard how absolutely horrible I made the track sound. Instead of making it sound radio-ready, I made it sound like a straight pin was used as a stylus on a record player.My point? Newbies don't know what "right" sounds like. Heck, it took me a good year before I was able to hear how each of the parameters on a compressor changed the sound of the effect. Do you remember your first experiments with EQ? At that early point in our development as mixers, how were we supposed to know what a tasteful amount of EQ sounded like? I know I‘ve made my share of bad mix moves over time. But through these mistakes—and hopefully through critique as well—we slowly start to understand how a pro hears.

Anyhoo…now that I’ve been around the block a few years, I know what the pros really mean when they say "If it sounds right, it is right." So, let me translate for you, because I think it’s instructive. Here’s the translation:

“In my 25 years experience working in the recording industry on hundreds of major-label projects, where I've become extremely familiar with the best gear money can buy, I have learned through countless opportunities of trial and error that occasionally it's okay to violate a general recording guideline in order to achieve the sound I think will benefit the song as a whole. And even though I will sometimes push a principal beyond what is typically acceptable, I make sure that my decision will not jeopardize the sonic integrity and fidelity of neither the individual part nor its relation to the whole."

This is what they mean. Not as easy to toss off as a zen-like maxim, I know. But, until you're in their same situation, which won't be for a while, you may think twice when the violation of a generally-accepted recording axiom sounds "right."

My advice: if you're new to mixing/mastering or recording in general, just stick to the general guidelines you read about in trusted books and blogs. You might not create stellar mixes but they're also not going to suck really bad because you decided that boosting all the tracks 12dB at 2kHz sounded “awesome.”