Archive for the ‘Recording Tips’ Category
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22
Apr
2009
Getting Ready for your recording session
Old Band
Getting Ready for your recording session
We understand these are difficult economic times and you are trying to stretch your recording dollars. Proper planning and being organized are two ways to help you succeed in getting as much out of your efforts as possible.
In preparation for your session, discuss what your needs will be in detail with the studio manager. Ask for suggestions on how to make efficient use of your recording time. If you know that the schedule is going to be tight, let the studio manager know. When the studio knows that you need to work fast, they can make arrangements to do so. However, you want to make sure you are well prepared so not to be the cause of the inevitable clog-up.
It is important to be well rested and well rehearsed. Don’t use studio time to rehearse and practice, time is expensive. If needed, have your charts written out, copied and ready to go. Give copies to the musicians beforehand, if possible. You don’t want musicians waiting around for copies to be made on your dime.
Organizing Your Time:
In order to maximize your time in the studio, come up with a rough plan on what you want to do in the session. Think about the order of the tracks, what instruments you’ll need on each track, if you’ll need additional musicians and singers, and when to break for meals.
Remember everyone needs a break even the engineers to get the best results.
Quality Control:
When the vibe is right, and you’re doing your best work it shows in the quality of the recording. Think of your recording as a beautiful art project and not just a piece of work that you’re slamming together.
Try to fix things on the track as you go rather then fixing it later, keeping the same emotion and tone quality in the performance. It might not seem obvious at the time, but this will also save you time and effort when you are editing and mixing it later.
Hiring good talent, whether it is musicians or vocalists, will save you time and money. If you don’t know any of the local talent, ask the studio manager to recommend someone for you.
Make sure the studio manager, your producer and engineer understand what you are trying to do and achieve, and consult with and involve them in your planning process.
13
Mar
2009
Mastering Your CD
Should you master your CD professionally or not?
The question still remains “What is Mastering?”
Beyond the quick answer in the opening sentence and short of a technical course study, a mastering engineer receives the final approved mixes from the artist/producer/engineer of a project. The task is to polish or finish the mixes so it will sound the best possible for the intended listeners.
Bob Ludwig of Gateway Mastering is by every account the top of the craft and has been for decades. It is worth your time browsing his credentials.
HOT, HOT, HOT
Everybody wants their disc to sound great, but it seems that nowadays a lot of people equate “best” with “loudest.” That puts a lot of pressure on mastering engineers to compress their masters heavily so that they can achieve as hot a level as possible. According to Ludwig, however, this is anything but a healthy development.
“It’s a losing battle for musicality,” Ludwig laments. “To me, it’s a fact that highly compressed music is tiring to the ear and doesn’t make you want to listen to something over and over again.
Ludwig adds, “Use your ears. Try to get it as perfect in the mix as possible. Having said that, if someone feels that they need extra compression, use caution. Most recording compressors are great for mixing but don’t really make good mastering compressors. Once you put compression into the mix, there is no way to take it off. If you aren’t sure, a much better plan is not to do much compression and let the mastering engineer take care of it.”
Ludwig stresses the importance of a mastering engineer having a musical perspective. “For me, it’s essential for an engineer to be a musician as well,” says Ludwig. “All of our engineers at Gateway Mastering and DVD play an instrument and have at least a four-year degree from a school that specializes in making music as well as recording and producing, such as the University of Massachusetts at Lowell or the Berklee College of Music in Boston.”
In addition to the right training and background, having the right workspace and the right gear is key, according to Ludwig. “The next most important thing is to have a fantastic monitoring system — as all your judgments will be based on this — having a great, acoustically perfect-as-possible room to put them in. For me, it means the room needs to be rather large in order to have as few bass eigentones as possible.” (Eigentones are acoustical resonances or standing waves in an enclosed space. They are caused by parallel surfaces, and they typically can muddy the sound or create bass frequencies in the room that are not in the recording.)
Ludwig sums it up this way: “Do no harm. For most of the recordings worked on, great mix engineers and producers have spent lots of time trying to get it right in the first place. I honor what they send me and try only to add any additional musicality my ears hear that can be enhanced in the mixes.” Words to live by.
Great music is mastered professionally in my opinion.
Bob Plotnik
Grace Recording Studio
15
Jan
2009
Should I Record in 44.1kHz or 96kHz?
The question I am most asked concerning the studio is, what’s the difference between recording in 24/44.1kHz and 24/96kHz? The high resolution of 24/96kHz captures more information in the highs, mids and low frequency ranges.
This enables you to hear sounds that aren’t recorded in 24/44.1kHz. But you also need to have the top of the line converters to be able to hear and record this difference. We have found that Radar converters give us the best sound for our ears. When you output back to 16/44.1kHz you still have more information in the final product since it was recorded in 24/96kHz.Allowing you to hear more of the tonal qualities and the different frequencies in the music. Giving you a higher quality CD.
