[Vai Freak] Glacius

Mood: Blur
Listening To: Joe Satriani - Ten Words










When it comes to music, there are two main aspects in terms of musical presentation.  Firstly, would be performing live in front of either a small or big audience.  Secondly, it would be entering the studios.  For today, I will be touching upon personal experiences in recording – Both in the studios, and home recording.

Before I do so, I would like to clarify that both recording and performances can be two different worlds.  You may have a very good tone and band coordination on stage, but your recorded materials may put off some of your fans.  Whereas, your recorded materials may sound good, but lack of practice among you and your band mates may result to a rather embarrassing presentation.  Either ways, none of the above mentioned should demotivate you in presenting your musical creativity.

Firstly, a good album requires a good producer.  Therefore, it is critically important that you search for people that you are comfortable with when it comes to being your sound engineer and when he or she mixes your album.  After all, with technology being constantly upgraded as time passes, your tone and sound can be controlled to any level virtually.  Also, it is important to run a brief background through an existing portfolio of the people you are working with.  You can’t get a sound engineer who spends most of his time mixing Hip Hop or R&B materials to produce audible results for a Death Metal song.

What I am trying to say is that, just because a sound engineer is good in mixing certain types of genres, it doesn’t mean that he’s good in other fields.  For example, it’s hard for a fully-fledged Rock band to play traditional Spanish Flamenco guitar music because they do not have the skills and probably the tone for it.  Unless if they have practiced such materials before, then it is clearly possible.

The people you work with, and the recording studio you go to, will be your second home and your second family.  A closer relationship with the place and the people will allow you to work better and produce better results.  Equipment required for the recording varies upon the musicians and the staffs of the studio.  Depending on how you plan to record your songs lies up to you and the people you are going to work with.  Like placing your order for a certain dish you favour in the restaurant, you should at least have a draft of the song you plan to do, and let your new “friends” listen to, so they can advice you the do’s and don’ts.  But if you’re professionally experienced, meaning to say that you have a specific tone for yourself, then you should inform the sound engineers to follow your tastes.

After you plan your tracks, and when the sound engineers have a basic idea of how your song is going to sound through ideas of the draft recording, comes the hardest part – Recording it.  Recording isn’t as simple as you think, nor is it as tough as you think.  Always do remember that recording is about discipline, like how your father tells you to make your bed after you wake up every morning.  Recording has about the same level of discipline.  In order to record properly, always attend recording sessions with a fresh heart, mind and prepared ideas.  Never enter a studio when you have not planned how your verses, pre-choruses, choruses, bridges and the structure of the song.  Planning it in the studio and experimenting with several ideas on how they should be sung, harmonized and so on, should be done on the post-recording session.  After all, time is precious.  Besides planning the song, always remember to at least have a basic foundation in playing along with the metronome.  If you do not have a metronome – go get one.  Recording can take you can eternity if you don’t prepare yourself to be in proper timing and there is no other methods in this world but to follow the metronome.  Try to treat the metronome as your best friend.  Either that, you can try getting a MIDI-programmer (such as Propellerhead Reason 3.0), programme your song, and play along with it.  Since these programmes are precisely accurate, it provides better training.

Once you start recording, you will realize that you need to be precise in whatever you do.  The most important thing now is to lay down your prepared ideas with timing efficiency, and always be calm.  Recording can be both fun and frustrating at the same time especially when you have problems hitting the right notes.  Always remember to learn from your mistakes, and analyse whatever you do before, during and after recording sessions.  Also, always keep calm, mentally.  I cannot spare too much detail in how to record songs as it is up to practicing along with the metronome.  The keyword that will make your recording sessions short is to practise, whether you like it or not.

I will now explain what would be the easiest to record, and hardest to record.  In terms of studio recording, the hardest would be the vocals.  Second hardest would be drums.  The rest would be kind of easy.  Do understand that the human vocals are prone to go out of tune because through certain vocal studies, it is controlled by the human’s mind unconsciously.  After a few rounds of unsuccessful recordings, the vocalist will get tired and sometimes, the vocals will get stressed out.  Thus, resulting for the vocalist to easily go out of tune during the following recording sessions on the same day.  For drummers, on the other hand, needs to have the most practice with the metronome because the snare, bass drum, and the toms, starts on a single.  Everything is like a click.

When I mentioned that you should be prepared with a fresh mind, I would mean that if you are inexperienced, you should record your songs, or allow your band mates to record on several days instead of rushing through everything together in just a single session through a few hours.

Recording is one thing.  Mixing is another.  Mixing is a stage that sound engineers would go through after the recording sessions to level volumes of all the recorded instruments so all is clear, and audible. To record certain songs, you must understand some concepts about recording.  As I mentioned above, performers may sound good through albums, but they might not sound good live.  This is because that the songs they presented through their albums sounds good through proper mixing.  But when they play live, the sound isn’t as “thick” as you might have liked it on the album.  Here’s when I share my experiences regarding recording rock music at home.  Taking Blink 182 for example, there’s only one guitarist.  But for a single guitarist in the band, he has a very thick and heavy sound on the album.  This is because that he had recorded more than 2 tracks of the same rhythm for the sound engineer to mix properly.  There are three sections in every song.  The left speaker, the right speaker and the centre.  If you have noticed some recorded materials, especially orchestra based recordings (I would suggest original soundtracks like the Final Fantasy series (from 7 – 10), Chronicles of Narnia and Metallica’s 2001 S&M Concert DVD), you should get a basic idea regarding these whole left-right speaker concept.  Not all the instruments are focused on the middle speaker.  Sometimes the leading instrument for the verse may take on the centre speaker, whereas a violin, which takes upon the role of the pre-chorus, may be 35% to 38% on left speaker.  By doing so, it allows more mixing opportunities and a better stereo result.

The keyword here about recording rock music is “stereo”.  In order to make things sound very big, large, and thick, you need to think stereo.  Most importantly, I feel that all recorded materials should be recorded in mono, so that the recording is not biased upon a certain speaker.  Regardless whether if it is the lead guitarist which is record, or the rhythm guitarist, it should be recorded in mono.  All recorded mono tracks gives an easier time for the sound engineer (or yourself) to mix the product.

Now, let me focus upon how you should record.  There is always a limit to everything in this world, and the same goes for recording.  When you record, you should see that the master peak bar is present to show the level of your recorded tracks, or the level of your overall song.  Of course, it is very safe for a song to be under 0dB because that it the peak level that would distort speakers – thus destroying speakers of all sorts.  For any sort of instruments being recorded, it is safe to record them at any level equal or less than 6dB.  Once you record all instruments onto a session, it is easier to mix when all of them does not exceed 6dB.  Just think of it as an acceptable point if you plan to mix songs right.

Now, imagine that you are in a room.  If a certain note is being played, but you’re standing in the middle of where the sound is being projected, what would you hear?  And if someone places two seperate speakers on your left and right, what would you hear?  If you do not understand this, let us try a more painful example.  Imagine someone shoots you with a gun from the middle, then imagine 2 gunners shooting you from each side at the same time, at the same rate.  Which one would be more painful?  This phenomena works the same way in recording sessions, and it is the most crucial point for rock music.  It works for everything; snare drums, vocals, lead guitars, rhythm guitars, and whatever supporting instruments you have in mind, as long as it’s analogue and not digital.  The crucial point here is to layer the recorded materials upon different speakers.

Out of the examples, I am going to take a typical distorted electric guitar as an example.  Recording a mono-track distorted rhythm guitar, and leaving it on the centre speaker with a lot of distortion may really make it noisy to some listeners.  And no matter how hard you crank up the distortion even to its highest level, you won’t be able to achieve that certain “thick” sound.  But if you happen to crank up the distortion, record two layers of the same riffs precisely, you would notice that both of the tracks would make the guitars sound a little bit louder than the single track.  That is not the end of it just yet.  If you pan the guitars to the left and to the right speakers, you will get that “thick” sound you require for songs like these.  This would even work for certain instruments.  Taking the typical 5-piece rock band, the results would be:

Vocals – having greater support (especially during choruses or the climax of the song)
Snare drum – usually a second round of recording to capture the human playing of the snare drum to make it sound thicker by layering it with several layers through the recordings.
Distorted guitars – As explained above, it will sound more louder and heavier.
Bass – Do not even bother trying.

There’s a difference between copying a recorded track and recording a separate track although the same chords, pickings or rhythm is the same.  The easiest way to experience this for yourself would be that if you get a MIDI-programmer and programme a simple riff of any sort, bounce (or import) two of the same tracks into your digital audio workstation (DAW – a.k.a. recording programme), and pan one track to the left, and the other to the right.  It would sound the same, even if you toggle the EQ any of the tracks.  This is because the MIDI-programmed notes are too precise.

To achieve this certain thick sound, it is better to do it through a human sense.  What is needed is just a small pinch of that minor human error of a few milliseconds of inaccuracy to make multi-layer and to make the recorded material sound “thick”.  Just replay the same recorded structure as many times as you want, so the sound engineer (or you) can pan all the tracks to the desired speakers depending on how many layers you have recorded to result in a thicker and more stereo sound.

Always remember that if you are recording strummed chords with distortion, your playing must be precise.  The more layers you record, the more dangerous it can get if you happen to run out of tempo for either one.  It may not be audible to some listeners, but those who have the “educated ear” can easily notice it.  If you happen to have 6 layers of distorted guitars, and each of them having minor mistakes at different areas, the result can be very messy.  Once again, it is very important to be accurate in terms of timing.

If you are new to recording, I suggest that you practice recording at home by yourself and see what you can come up with several recorded layers.  You will be surprised with the differences between rhythms or solos being recorded on a single track, dual-layers, triple layers, quadruple layers, so on and so forth.  Of course, it would be insane to record up to twelve layers of guitars to achieve that extreme “thick” distortion, but it’s not possible. There is a living proof you are able to refer to – Joe Satriani’s Redshift Riders from his 2006 album, Super Colossal.

I can only say that you are able to find out how hard recording can get only when you start recording yourself.  Everything must be precise, starting from what you record, to the certain specific tone that fits the song.

This is just the recording section.  Mixing, on the other hand, would be a whole different side.  Remember that during the recording stage, the goal is to only record what lies in you – your musical creativity.  How good it will sound is how well the mixing is done.  Besides stressing yourself out during recording sessions, learn how to enjoy it.  Recording sessions are like the canvases you can simply paint on, erase and add more flavours to and getting unexpected results from.










And no, I didn't write this out of boredom.  I had this lying around in my HDD since the previous Six String Samurais recording session.  Wrote this because Emily asked me to write an article about my sharing my experiences and advising others about recording.. So, since sharing is caring, it takes a greater man to share his wealth and knowledge is power, I decided to post this up..

Of course, it would be compared nothing to Wormy's experience as a sound engineer, so if you happened to stumble upon this website and you are no Multiply user, drop by his site.