Birds…they can be so silly.
As can home studio owners.
Let’s see if nature can teach us an important lesson today, shall we?
I was hanging out with some friends one morning last week. As we were talking we kept hearing this “thump” sound.
“So, tell me about the new baby…” [thump]
“She’s keeping us up all night…” [thump]
Eventually figured out it was a cardinal flying into the window on the other side of the room. It would fly into the window, fly away, fly into the window, fly away…over and over again.
And this got me thinkin’ about me…and you…and how we work in the studio.
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Do you know the reason we rave over those “vintage” recordings?
Imperfection.
40 years ago, they didn’t use tubes, transformers, and tape by choice. Nope, it was all that was available to them at the time.
The “sound” of so many of our favorite recordings from that era came from running the audio through gear that couldn’t faithfully and accurately reproduce the signal. Each piece of gear added something to the sound — warmth, low end, smoothness, punchy-ness, even noise.
In short, it was near impossible to get a clean, accurate recording. The gear added to the sound.
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Ever heard of too much of a good thing?
Yeah, if you get too crazy with your editing tools, you can completely suck the life out of your recordings.
And you know what happens when you suck the life out of something, right?
It turns into a robot…a killer robot.
To avoid lifeless, robotic-sounding tracks, check out the latest in podcasting greatness from Graham Cochrane and myself. 
In today’s episode of the Simply Recording Podcast, we pose the question: How far is too far when it comes to editing?
Join the discussion here:
SimplyRecordingPodcast.com/editing
Joe Gilder
P.S. Did you know I’ve got an in-depth tutorial video all about editing?
Yup, I sure do. AND…it comes with practice tracks. Real life, non-robot practice tracks. Cool, huh?
‘Tis all right here:
www.UnderstandingEditing.com
You know the feeling…
You pop in your latest mix to play it for a friend.
And as SOON as the mix starts playing, you want to crawl into a hole and disappear. “I swear this sounded better in my studio,” you tell yourself.
You start making excuses, trying to figure out why this mix you were so proud of 60 seconds ago is now embarrassing the crap out of you.
We’ve all been there.
Heck, I still go there occasionally.
And sadly there’s no magic pill to prevent it from happening, but there IS one technique that works, although it’s kinda boring.
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There’s a word out there that I don’t really care for.
I think it’s overused, or at least over-emphasized. (And I’m guilty of using it, too.)
The word?
“Workflow”
I wrote the other day why I don’t think control surfaces are all that important to us home studio folks.
Boy, you should have seen the emails I got back. Some folks agree with me wholeheartedly. Others acted like I was trying to slaughter a sacred cow or something.
Here’s the deal.
Which is more important to you — how good a song sounds or how quickly you were able to finish it?
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Call me a dork, but I watched an interesting documentary recently.
It’s called “Being Elmo,” and it documents the story of Kevin Clash, the man behind the cute little fur ball, and how he came to BE Elmo.
One thing that really stuck out to me was how driven Kevin was, even as a kid.
He longed for excellence.
He wanted to be the best.
To be a successful puppeteer, you need puppets, right? I never knew this, but a lot puppeteers actually design and build their own puppets.
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Get this.
When I used to sell recording equipment, I can’t tell you how many times a “studio owner” would call me asking about one of the big, $10,000+ control surfaces for Pro Tools.
They would straight up tell me that they just wanted it for the look, that they might not even actually USE it.
(In case you don’t know, a control surface is something that looks like a mixer, has faders and buttons, and is used to control your recording software. It allows you to — among other things — move the faders in your software with your hands rather than a mouse.)
I regularly get questions from people wanting to know which control surface they should buy.
My response? DON’T GET ONE.
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Pop quiz — Which is more important?
Mic placement or EQ?
Recording or mixing?
Boxers or briefs? (Wait a second…)
Got an interesting email from one of my new customers:
Joe, I just recently came across an article from SOS magazine that said, “If the right microphones have been positioned carefully, equalisation is rarely needed…”
He went on to express his concern with this extreme focus on microphone placement. He was worried that perhaps he was doing something wrong during recording if he still needed EQ during mixing.
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