This past weekend was the very first Simply Recording Academy. Graham Cochrane and I got together with a bunch of home studio guys like you and tracked and mixed a band here in Nashville over two days.
It was epic.
I’ll be writing about it more, but my brain is still processing everything.
There were a lot of great moments over the weekend, but one that really stands out was on the second day. We spend the entire first day tracking a band (a really, REALLY good band called Manic Bloom — check them out, buy their music). We spent the second day mixing the song.
The moment that struck me was when we were probably over halfway through the mixing process, and Graham and I had only used the stock EQ and compressor plugins that come with Pro Tools. That’s it. We literally didn’t touch another plugin for most of the mix session.
Are you ever mixing a song, and the vocal just won’t cut through? You try to EQ out some lows or boost some highs. Nothing. You try to compress the daylights out of it. Still not cutting through enough. Try using distortion.
I’m not talking about distorted vocals. I’m talking about using distortion to help the vocals cut through. Check out this video, then leave a comment!
Today I’ve got a quick video for you where I share four or five little plug-in tricks. These are all things I use all the time, and I thought it would be a shame for you not to know about them. Enjoy!
It’s that time again. I’ve got three new questions, all Pro Tools related. (If you have a question, please submit it via the Ask Joe form.) Let’s dive in.
Martin R. wrote:
I have just recently installed Pro Tools 7.3 LE on to my Mac and I have an Iomega hard drive that I was going to use for recording however when I try to change the audio settings from ‘T’ to ‘R’ I get an error message which reads “IOMEGA cannot be designated as an Audio Record volume because it is not a valid audio volume.” Could you tell me what this means and if there is any way to use this hard drive for recording.
Many Thanks
Martin
This past weekend was the very first Simply Recording Academy. Graham Cochrane and I got together with a bunch of home studio guys like you and tracked and mixed a band here in Nashville over two days.
