I was at a party a few nights ago at the home of a drummer friend of mine. He’s a killer drummer. He’s played with Keith Urban, Gary Allen, and others.
He was showing me his basement studio, where he does some drum tracking. He had some great Heil mics, Daking and API preamps, and a few other goodies.
I’m not a drummer, so I can’t tell you what kind of kit he had, but it sounded nice.
But there was one thing that caught my attention…and was really fascinating. I think there’s a lesson for us home studio folk here.
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As is my custom, I was listening to the Home Recording Show the other day. They mentioned a comment left on Episode 121 that I thought was awesome.
Here’s the comment, by Edward Mowinckel:
I used the steak analogy. You can burn a steak, but after you burn it, it’s burnt. You can cool it off, but it’s still burnt. If you cook it medium, you can still cook it more, or just enjoy a medium steak!
He was referring to the process of recording with levels too hot. Some people think you have to peg the meters to get a good recording. His point was that, when setting levels for recording, you don’t have to go in NEARLY as hot as you had to in the analog days.
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I watched a video interview with Eddie Kramer a few weeks ago. He was talking with the folks at Waves about some of their plugin emulations of analog gear.
He was recounting the way they recorded back in Jimi Hendrix days. They would record everything to one 4-track machine, then mix those down in stereo to two tracks on another 4-track machine, leaving two tracks for additional overdubs.
They would repeat this process over and over, adding new parts as they went.
The really interesting thing is that they were not only adding new parts, they were mixing as they added them.
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Home studios aren’t perfect.
In a perfect world, your home studio would be designed by a professional. You’d have a great-sounding control room, a couple of tracking rooms, and a nice, quiet vocal booth.
Raise your hand if your control room, tracking room, and vocal booth are all the same room. (Joe quickly…and sheepishly…raises his hand.)
That’s the reality we face. We’re weekend warriors, home studio recordists. Hobbyists. We’ve got to make the best of what we’ve got.
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Everyone always asks how to get that big huge guitar sound. Unfortunately, there’s no single answer to that.
There are a million factors at play, and lots of things I couldn’t possibly cover in a single article, but I’ll give you three tips today to help you move closer to that goal of getting that huge guitar sound.
1. Don’t start recording too quickly.
This is an easy trap to fall into, especially when you’re really excited about recording the next big hit rock record, but slow down, take a few minutes, even 15 minutes, to really dial in the right tone for the session.
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In your recordings in your home studio, are you constantly worried about noise? Be honest, it’s okay if you are.
That is something that I have struggled with my entire recording career. Homes, apartments, houses — they’re just not very quiet. A professional recording studio is acoustically treated and isolated. If you walk into a pro vocal booth, it is dead quiet.
But the question I have for you is this — is that really that important? Here’s what I think: no, not really.
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Do you use a LOT of EQ when you mix? Do your EQ curves look something like the picture to the right?
If they do, it’s okay. But what if there was a free EQ that worked much better than any plug-in ever could? Would you use it? Of course you would.
What is this free EQ? I’ll tell you.
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Today I want your opinion on something.
What makes a “great recording engineer”? If you hang around recording circles, you hear people talk about folks like Eddie Kramer and Bruce Swedien, who recorded great acts like Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, and Michael Jackson.
What made these engineers great? Was it their engineering skills? Or was it the fact that they had the opportunity to record these amazing musicians?
Wouldn’t Jimi have been famous regardless of who set up the mics and hit record?
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I was at a party a few nights ago at the home of a drummer friend of mine. He’s a killer drummer. He’s played with Keith Urban, Gary Allen, and others.
