Now I'm going to preface this right now in case the title doesn't do the trick. I'm not a professional. I'm currently in school working towards my goal of becoming an audio professional, but as it stands right now, I am not a professional. That being said, I'm no dummy. On top of having a job working as a live sound engineer for a while, I have been recording largely by myself for over 5 years, about as long as I've been writing music really.
I feel like I've learned quite a bit during my hours spent pouring over songs, trying my best to make the sound in my head come out of my computer speakers by unskillfully and blindly manipulating audio with whatever program I had at the time. So here it is, my recording tips for the bedroom rockstars, the people with almost no money, no gear, and only the base requirements for a real recording.
The first tip I have to share is one of those ones that feels like it should be obvious, but if you're simply starting recording on your own, it can be overlooked. The tip is thus: No matter what software you have, no matter what magic plugins or effects you have access to, no matter what mic you're using, you CANNOT get any sort of decent recording, if the actual thing you're recording doesn't sound good. I'll admit, there's a million and one great editing programs out there now, and even most of the free ones have decent equalization and compression effects, but no amount of gloss can make a polished recording from something that sounded terrible to begin with. When you're starting out, this can be a tough hurdle to leap, you don't have great guitars, great amps, great drums, or whatever, but if that's what you have, you also need to understand what can and can't be done.
For example, in almost all of my earliest recordings, I was using a Crate GX100H guitar amp to record all of my guitar. It's a good amp, and actually appeared on a couple studio recordings with one of my father's previous bands. So I was lucky in that I had a good amp right from the get go. The pitfall though, was that the amp didn't have a built in speaker, and the only thing I was able to buy in my price range at that time was an amp cabinet for a bass amp.
Recording those songs went pretty well, and the overall sound quality was decent considering my only microphone at the time was actually the microphone that had come with the video game Rock Band. What I noticed instantly when it came to editing though, the guitar had far too much bass in the signal, as a result of the bass cabinet driving the sound. I assumed of course that equalization, turning the bass signal down and boosting mids and treble, would fix the problem. Well, it would have, if the speaker had been putting out an abundance of those frequencies. What happened when I made this adjustment was that I had a quiet, wimpy, and non-harmonious sound, because almost all of the pertinent signal was residing in the bass frequency.
So that was the first lesson, it has to start good to end good. And also, you can't make something from nothing. If there's a lacking element in an incoming signal, digitally filling it in will never cut it.
Next up: Always, always, ALWAYS, use a metronome. It's the drummer's bane, a little click in their ears telling them when their beats should be sounding. Many argue that a metronome kills feel, and I will admit, a metronome makes it hard to do odd things with your time signatures or purposefully slow down to a grind to make emphasis to something, but it really is necessary if you're recording by yourself, or on a part by part basis. If the drummer's loose with his playing, and the guitarist is putting his part over the drums at a later time, he'll end up having to guess exactly what's happening in terms of time. When people are actually jamming in a room together, loose time is easy, because eye contact and body language convey what's happening. A waveform does not. A metronome will make it so that assembling parts will be as easy in Pro Tools as it is in Garageband, because the exact moments where edits and splits should be made will be obvious, not just audibly, but also visually on the screen. Metronomes may hamper feel, but they're a better headache cure than Advil.
Speaking of headaches, whether you're producer, musician, engineer, or all, in a recording situation, remember to always be patient, understanding, and just generally kind (especially to yourself). We never realize how much we suck as musicians until we try to record a perfect take. Sometimes it's going to take 10, 20, maybe even 50 takes to get exactly what you're looking for, and I'm not going to lie, it's a grueling experience, it's frustrating, and you'll want to quit playing your instrument and take up stamp collecting, but it'll be worth it in the end. And remember, everyone struggles, not even the Beatles could nail a track in the first take. Or even the 10th sometimes.
Next: Work within your restraints. This goes from microphones and recording, to writing. If you're recording your 4 piece band, and you decide you need 4 guitar parts in a specific part of the song, remember that anyone who hears the recording will want to hear those 4 parts live, and if you can't pull it off, you're ultimately lying to your audience. There are too many bands that only sound good on recording, don't be one of them. Also, if you're strapped for time or equipment, do what makes sense. There's a recording on my Soundcloud page that I made with my late friend Avery Hall, that's simply him and I jamming on a song we were writing. We didn't have a lot of time to spend on the project, so the recording setup was literally one microphone in the center of the room. This is by no means a great sounding effort, but it did exactly what we needed it to at that time, and honestly, the recording has a lot of character.
Now I want to talk about every novice's favorite thing: Effects. Yipee! You can make the vocals sound like they were recorded in the largest church of all time, or that the guitar was underwater, etc. This is all great, and it can add tons of feel and depth to your sound. My advice. Don't use them.
Or at least, use as sparingly as possible, and when you can, use real life effects rather than their digital equivalents. The underwater guitar thing is cool, but the general audience likely wants to hear a four minute song where the guitar sound warbly and over produced.
This brings me to what's probably one of my most sacred recording ideals. Be truthful. If you're recording alone, this isn't so much an issue, but if you're producing a band, don't embellish it. Don't make a 3 piece band sound like a minor symphony of guitars playing in a grand hall. It's true now with advanced recording software, that we can make anything sound good, but that isn't the point of music. I'm sure if Black Sabbath could have their first two albums re-recorded in completely crisp, digital HD, I'm sure they'd say no, because the inequalities and the minor hiccups were part of the sound. If the musicians themselves aren't perfect, there's no reason that the recording should be either.
So, that's it, the tip of the iceburg. There's a lot more I could divulge, but that's not the point of this post. This post is to give you the basics, some general rules to follow when tackling your first few projects. It took me a few years to accrue this knowledge through my own experiments, but it's the sort of thing we should all have from the outset.
Home recording is one of the greatest things to happen to musicians over the course of the past 100 years, and it's come a long way in the past decade, but despite this, don't expect your noodling to yield a studio quality recording.
Remember: It's not great sound that makes a great record, it's great songs. People still love a great record that sounds terrible. But nobody likes a terrible record, no matter how good it sounds.
Here's a link to my personal Soundcloud page, and the song referenced in the post:
Recording with Avery Hall
My Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/whitewaterdrummer
Today's video is a demo version of Pretty Pictures by Blinker the Star. Jordan Zadorozny recorded this entirely by himself with his home recording setup in 1997. Just a taste of what home recording can achieve. The studio/single version is also linked for comparison.
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