Fun Tricks

[Justin Leedy]

This thread is for people to share their own little tricks to make good recordings into great recordings, or just to get more out of equipment, or whatever. I expect Tucker or someone like that to have fancier tricks, but other people should still post.

One of my favorite tricks, is one I use when recording acoustic guitar. First, I put a large-diaphragm condenser about six inches from the neck/body joint of the guitar, that signal gets split by a little box and one half goes through a BOSS compressor and a DOD digital delay (for ambience) straight into my Fostex 4-track machine. The other half gets plugged into my little Pignose tube combo with a ten-inch speaker turned WAY up with almost no gain. I stick a Sennheiser dynamic mic pretty close to the speaker on the amp and run it into the tape machine. Sometimes, I split the signals to left and right, so it sounds like there's two guitar players, and other times I'll just mix them in the middle, depending on whether the signals are in phase or not.

[sleepyhead]

i think it's cool to reverse a sound, put reverb on it, and then unreverse it so that the reverb comes before the sound.

[cifirrekcuT]

Justin said:

This thread is for people to share their own little tricks to make good recordings into great recordings, or just to get more out of equipment, or whatever. I expect Tucker or someone like that to have fancier tricks, but other people should still post.

One of my favorite tricks, is one I use when recording acoustic guitar. First, I put a large-diaphragm condenser about six inches from the neck/body joint of the guitar, that signal gets split by a little box and one half goes through a BOSS compressor and a DOD digital delay (for ambience) straight into my Fostex 4-track machine. The other half gets plugged into my little Pignose tube combo with a ten-inch speaker turned WAY up with almost no gain. I stick a Sennheiser dynamic mic pretty close to the speaker on the amp and run it into the tape machine. Sometimes, I split the signals to left and right, so it sounds like there's two guitar players, and other times I'll just mix them in the middle, depending on whether the signals are in phase or not.

what's the result? tell me why i should try this

[cifirrekcuT]

i think other people that don't have access to studios in which special tricks aren't necessarily necessary would have more to add here than me. I have little experience in recording outside the studio, which is where most of the fun tricks originate. I'll be getting more into experimentation next year. for now, it's just getting it right and becoming familiar with the equipment available.
One cool trick with drum recording, if you have an extra mic, put it somewhere across the room or somewhere where it'll pick up some reflections, have it running the whole time, then at some point, you can "automate" the specified drum tracks off, the room mic on, and you get a nice little break from the in-your-face sound close-micing causes. I think this is pretty common though. For an example, take a listen to Well Read, i think it is (number 9) on engine down's self-titled. minus the bear did it at one point kind of, and others, but it's still nice and not yet overdone.

edit: i guess this could work for any instrument, it's just seems more of a big deal if you do it with the drums since, if fully miced, you'd have to mute 7+ signals to get the effect.

[YETI]

you guys make this all to complicated. all you need to do is take ryans recorder and put the microphone in between the guitar and drums, and then call ryan and ask him what you press to make it record.

[Forrest]

Haha, nice. That sounds like what I would do if I had stuff liek that. My favorite trick is not recording things.

[cifirrekcuT]

I recorded some reggae last night in the studio and everything was great until the vocals. I'll have to use some fun tricks to make them not suck and still please the band with the sound. Any ideas? I have a lot of possibilities, so any ideas at all would be sweet. I plan on really fudging with the vocals, doing some manual automation on levels and/or effects. I might have to make them cheesy to have them sound anywhere near good. Maybe I'll just scrap them altogether. Or lay some down on my own! haha be rrrrrasta for an hour or so. I'd probably have to smoke some weed to do that though, and I've been off that for a number of years now. shit

[sleepyhead]

making yourself sound black might be good, like ub-40.

[cifirrekcuT]

well, i'll give it a shot.
but where do i start?

i guess i could practice making those two lines rhyme

[Forrest]

I'll give it a spin,
mon where do I begin?

I wish I was black,
so that on my 4-track,
my reggae would be
the best you c'n see.

My hat gots a rainbow,
I'm down with the smooth flow,
just pure reggae madness,
to stave of the sadness.

I smoked some o' weed,
smoked it indeed.
Back off, whitie,
I be knowin' my righties!





Dude... you guys... I have found my calling.

[Justin Leedy]

tucker said:

I recorded some reggae last night in the studio and everything was great until the vocals. I'll have to use some fun tricks to make them not suck and still please the band with the sound. Any ideas? I have a lot of possibilities, so any ideas at all would be sweet. I plan on really fudging with the vocals, doing some manual automation on levels and/or effects. I might have to make them cheesy to have them sound anywhere near good. Maybe I'll just scrap them altogether. Or lay some down on my own! haha be rrrrrasta for an hour or so. I'd probably have to smoke some weed to do that though, and I've been off that for a number of years now. shit

Compression. Compression is the answer to everything. It's like the "Good<-->Suck" switch for a vocalist.

And on that acoustic recording trick, You get different results depending on how you blend the tracks. If you put the mic up front and the amp in the background, it sounds really cool and ambient like a big echo-y sound with a bright sound underneath. If you reverse it, it has a really cool kind of Steve Howe jazz-rock tone with a little echo depth in the background to fill it out. The hard part is separating the amp from where you're playing enough to keep it from feeding back.

[cifirrekcuT]

compression is absolutely necessary for like 100% of vocals, but that doesn't necesarily make them good.

putting a quick attack/quick release compression on a snare really rounds up the sound and makes such a sweet sweet difference. i found this out by accident on my last mixing session, asked the instructor about it, and he said he does it every time. it rounds out the initial snap and makes the snare sound like you just want to eat it. so so sweet.

[Justin Leedy]

Do you know how to get that snare sound from "Rock You Like a Hurricane"? You know, where it sounds like the snare just swelling up right before every hit? That is one time that the snare drum really matters.

[sleepyhead]

andrew said:

i think it's cool to reverse a sound, put reverb on it, and then unreverse it so that the reverb comes before the sound.

that's how.

[Justin Leedy]

Yeah, but how do you actually do that?

[sleepyhead]

well digitally it's a piece of cake. on tape i guess you'd just have to flip the tape over and record the track onto another tape, add the reverb, and then flip that tape over to record onto another tape.

[Justin Leedy]

Mmmmm...piece of cake....

[cifirrekcuT]

i didn't want to post in pvd's thread, but hey, ande, if you end up here in the fall, i could probably be your audio I TA. just a thought. i've kind of recruited a bunch of guys i've been associating with so i could have a really lax class. anyway, again, just a thought

[sleepyhead]

that sounds awesome.