Well, the Hardgeworden Zacht lead singer didn't think the recordings were swell or something and wanted to change the entire song. So much for my work on it. Fuck it. They want to do it themselves? Fine, do it. Don't come and ask me how to do anything. I feel sorry for the rest of the band. They are cool guys and very enthousiastic about the recording session and all is fucked because of some dude who wanted to behave like some kind of rockstar. Good luck, you're gonna need it.

Hardgeworden Zacht - Rood en Blauw - part 1

Sorry, it's dutch. It's a dutch pop band which I've recorded last friday. We've learned a lot the last couple of months and used these things to the benefit of the recording process.

As usual, first we recorded the drums. The was done in 9 channels. 9 channels? Yes, 9 channels.
Channel 1 : Bassdrum
Channel 2 : Snare top
Channel 3 : Snare bottom
Channel 4 : High tom
Channel 5 : Mid tom
Channel 6 : Floor tom
Channel 7 : Overhead 1
Channel 8 : Overhead 2
Channel 9 : Room mic.
Why this many channels? Well, mostly because of the experimenting. In our own recordings we truly missed the snare bottom sound. When this track was recorded, the difference was huge! We had a snare drum in our drumtrack!!

Secondly we've recorded, as always, the bass. I asked the bass player what kind of sound he wanted. He wanted the pure bass sound without anything else. I glanced at him and wondered why the hell he had a bass amp and didn't plug his bass into the mixing panel which they use during recordings. So after that I plugged his bass into my DI and recorded the bass parts. Nothing new, so far..

Then we've came to the wonders which are called guitars. Firstly we recorded the lead guitar (Huzzie!!) by miking his amp using our MXL990 condenser mic. The back of his amp was open and therefor we decided to mike the back as well for the deeper tones of his guitar parts. Press record, play, done.
Then we've recorded the rythem guitar. Same as the lead guitar. That's it.
After that we also recorded an acoustic guitar. We used the MXL990 and a DI. This way we had the pure sound of the acoustic guitar and the lower sound because of the DI.

Vocals weren't recorded yet, because of the absence of their singer. Well, maybe next week.

The whole bunch at once

We've experimented a little. Why not? How do you record when you try to do it all live in a limited space? Well, we did it in our practice area. It's a room about 4x5 metre. What did we do? Well, we recorded the drums over 4 tracks, bassdrum, snare and two overheads. The overheads were placed at the height of the toms and crossed right above the bassdrum. This worked out great. But that's later. The guitars were miked with our audiotechnika mike and we've bought a MXL 990 which we also used for a guitar amp. Vocals were done with a phonic and a superlux mike which both aren't that great, but it'll have to work because we don't have anything else. The bass was once again really easy, we plugged it right into the mixing panel.

Press record and play. We've recorded around 70 minutes of material and had a lot of fun doing it. We always act a little wacky during recording sessions.
After this we needed to mix it all. Gating isn't really an option here in my opinion except for the bassdrum. We mixed the tracks the same way as always except we didn't gate the snare, guitars and vocals. This to keep the feel of a live recording.

I haven't really mastered it yet. A little quick with an EQ, a filter, denoiser and stereo spread, but nothing much. When that has happened in a respectable manner, you'll probably be hearing some of our stuff.

Just like World of Warcraft

Does that make me sound like a nerd? Well, so be it. I'm talking about levelling. How do you know that your levelling is right? Easy question, easy answer. You just know. If it sounds good to you, it probably sounds good to someone else as well.
Make sure that the bass isn't too loud, it should be a guiding instrument. Just like you'll only miss it when it's not there any more. Drums should be seen in a similar way, except some parts should be well audible, such as a kick and snaredrum, but not too loud, say.. Slightly louder than the bass.
Guitars carry a song as well as vocals do, so you need these up front. Make them louder than the rest and the vocals even louder. If you have more guitarsparts, how can you find a good balance between these tracks?
First of all you need to determine if a guitarpart is just there to ride the wave or is it there to stand out? If it stands out, make it a little louder, if it doesn't a little softer.

This is very basic mixing right here and doesn't work in a lot of cases. Why did I put it up like this? Well, if you're still learning I noticed this is a good point of view and from here on you can finish the mix to your own taste. As for all the other parts, the most important thing is to listen to the song. What does it need and what kind of mood do you want to create? Listen and practice, these are the best tips I can give anyone who's still learning such as myself.
I probably did a lot of things wrong in the last couple of posts, but that doesn't matter. This is a blog about our current views on home recording and our own experiences. Sure some things need some work, but creativity is a long lasting process. So get out and record and enjoy. That's what's most important.

Thank god for autotune

Now we're up to the next step, vocals. Vocals can be processed in many ways and this is mine. First of all, I have a few vocal plug-ins, Antares and Voxengo and I use them both. First of all I use the Voxengo Voxformer for general vox compression and to add a little more body to the vocals. From the Antares vocalpack, I use the Avox Throat to level the vocals and the Avox Punch to give it a little extra feeling. After this I use the multiband compressor for all the de-essing that needs to be done.
Now I use a little reverb to make the vocals a little warmer. It seems some sound engineers choose to not do that and just use the clear vocals, but I think that sucks and therefor I won't do it, ever. Just add a little big reverb, if you know what I mean. If not, I mean a reverb which gives you the idea you're in a large hall all by yourself. But just a tiny little bit of it. Unless you mean it that way ofcourse.

And this is the fun part. It's nearly impossible to sing without imperfections. Little imperfections that is, if the vocals are way off, you just need to re-record them. For this we've got a thing called Antares Autotune. This can gently correct a pitch when it is off. For instance if you have to keep a certain note for a while, it's very possible you get a little glitch somewhere in that period. If you find it correct it in midi and well... RTFM, I would say. I could spell it all out for you, but this is more fun to find out on your own.

That's it for the plug-in part. Now you're off to levelling it all. Next time I'll talk how I levelled and what I think is important in for a good mix.

Headbangingly heavy

And we're up to the next step already! Guitars and what not. To mix these first of all I used the compresser preset for electric guitar and added a little reverb to it. Or a lot, depending on the sound you want ofcourse. After that a lot of sound engineers use gating to get rid of the noise when there is no playing. I don't like that. So therefor my way requires a little bit more work, but I think my way sounds better.
First of all I muted the parts where the guitar wasn't welcome. Secondly, if this cuts off a sound, I let it fade out. This way there aren't any sudden stops in the sound and lets it all glide off gently.

EQ-ing guitars is a whole other story. For this I used the spectrum analyzer built-in with Cubase SX3 and used the hamming method. Why? I don't know. I was told this was the general way to do this, so I did it. Some things you do not question.
Now I can see which frequencies needed to be cut and which needed to be boosted. For example, a diagram shows that 108 Hz is highly available. Then I use a high pass filter on the 108 Hz and I usually use a low pass filter around the 12 kHz for all noise. Then I boost the midsection and high-midsection untill I get a sound which satisfies me.

Because we've got 2 guitarplayers and therefor 2 guitarparts, I panned one to the left and one to the right. Not hard though. Around 65 both ways is enough. Sometimes it's fun to use a little stereospread on one and a large one on the other. This makes it pretty freaky, but then again funny. It's cool to experiment. Go ahead do it.

After this you could process some modulation like chorus or flanger, but that's up to you. Next up : Vocals.. Oh boy.

Now gimme a bass

Why does it always seem my own instrument needs little work? Probably because the bass is a fairly simple instrument. But that's beside the point. How to mix the bass? Well, I used, yet again, the multiband compressor within Cubase and used the preset for a bassguitar. That's it for plugin's, unless you want some modulation, than you can edit that. As you can read in our recording posts, we've recorded the bass into two channels, DI-ed and miked. One is panned to the left and the other is panned to the right. This way you get a swell stereo effect which no plugin can create for you. Further more you need to EQ it a little so you don't get interference with the bassdrum. Remember? Boost, high Q, 100 Hz? Boost, low Q, 2 kHz? Same story except the boost becomes a cut. That's it!

Whoa strong story eh? Don't worry. Guitars and vocals are a lot of fun to mix, especially vocals. [insert evil laugh here]