51m0n

As long as you keep your gain structure good - ie like Rimskidog suggests, although I am guilty of peaks that hit -12dB on the drums quite alot (irons hands) - then you are good. If you haven't got excellent kit, and plenty of experience then you dont want to be driving anything analogue too hard, better safe than sorry. Caveate is you need to be recording at 24bits, not 16. Yes it does make a difference! Workflow is completely dependant on what you have available to you though. If you have access to a good (no make that great ) sounding live room (big barns can be superb IME - hay bale walls make great iso booths too! ) then you can do wonders with getting everything together for a blast through. You of course need enough inputs to track everything, the minimum is one. Really you can record a band with one mic in a phenominal sounding space, and it will sound fab, then overdub the vox and anything else (even the drums again). You'd better have great sounding instruments perfectly set up and maintained and played superbly though. Other end of the stick is loads of overdubs, multiple mics on the kit, full on mix down yada yada. Depends what you are after, what you need it for, and what kit you have available etc. I've had perfectly reasonable resutls tracking drums with a Zoom H4n, just needed to be really careful to get the kit sounding fantastic in the room (its worth wandering around the room listening to the reverb to try and find a sweet spot for the kit - move it a few times if you arent sure, all assuming you ahve the time to do so) and then was very very careful with the placement of the kick and snare mic. Trade off was that the floor tom was always going to be a bit weak, but then the drummer never played it . Did it sound better than a really good studio, well no, unless the guy in the studio didnt know his beans. Did it sound as good? Well close enough to fool almost anyone to be honest, especially after it had been mixed down. When tracking really really think about and listen to mic position. If you dont have many mics, then its crucial to get the very best sound at the source that you can. Very few people doing home recording realise what a huge difference in timbre moving a mic just a few inches in relation to the source can have. If you are micing at distance from the source move around listening to it through your favoured ear (we all have one, I listen better with my left ear) and when you find the spot put the mic there, then make sure the angle is best, turning a mic through 45 degrees completely changes its frequency response, and when close micing can be the difference between overloading the diaphragm and not. Lots to try and experiment with, so make the time to do so. The better your tracked sounds work the easier it is to mix! Try and think of your recording process as the following set of tasks:- [b]Pre production[/b] - getting the parts for the recording worked out, thats writing every part, arranging them, rehearsing them, and practicing recording them. Yup, practice recording the tracks, rough as you like, in reheasal, but aiming for performance always. The on ething you dont want to be worrying about when recording is how the bridge goes, what tempo, "[b]OH MY GOD THE RED LIGHT IS ON, WHICH END DO I BLOW THROUGH!?!?!?!"[/b], or writing the thrird BV harmony for the outro. Get it all worked out so all you are doing is making a recording of it. Can not emphasise how much better it will go for you if you really get this stage right, particularly if you want a live and spontaneous feel to the traqck. As soon as someone is fixing bits that are wrong they are not making music in a spontaneous fashion, and as has been noted above, when you record something if it isnt absolutely bang on you have to live with it forever, and everyone else will hear it. So get everyone used to tracking. Its a real discipline, and is the absolute essence of recording. [b]Tracking[/b] - the act of recording parts. Break this down into:- [b]Getting the sound[/b] - kit set up, mic positions, amp settings, test runs, gain structure - all of it should be kept seperate from.... [b]Getting the performance[/b] - the musical bit, ideally 3 takes for a part if you want a 'live' sound, anymore and people reign in the performance to minimise the chance of an error (hey we're bored we want to 'take a break| take a dump| go for a beer| eat lunch| have sex| be anywhere but here') in order to get out of there. If you are after absolutel perfection then comping parts, multiple takes, multiple overdubs, using any and every trick at your disposal is perfectly fine, and if you are truly skillful no one but you will know how much you cheated - caveate, you need to ensure that the spill is always there or you will find overdubs change the feel of the track substantially and this can become obvious, and then we know you cheated. So overdub individually, and watch that you minimise spill in your initial altogether tracking. Obviously you cant fix anything in the orginal all playing together part so you have to get it right, live with it, or overdub everything. Remember the vocal is the 'money shot', it must be perfect - ie it must be the perfect take, when comped, not it must be perfectly in tune - if you are a punk band then that is an oxymoron anyway, but it must evoke the perfect emotional response. You can do massive amounts to a vocal in the mix, you can not make it raise the hairs on the back of someones neck - that has to be in there from the moment its tracked IME. Allow as long for bvs as you did for the lead vocal. They are as important, especially in modern poppier stuff. A really top engineer will often ride the gain into any outboard compressors throughout a take, will set up different settings based upon the song section. For now just track it as clean as you can! There are two schools of thought wrt processing whilst getting a take. On the one hand you can take big mix decisions at the time of making a take, this forces you in a direcion sonically takes away guess work at mix down and can really speed the process of getting a recording finished along. On the other hand a poorly set up gate, eq, compressor or some other effect can paint you into a corner or worse ruin your otherwise perfect take, If you arent sure what you are doing, then get takes as great sounding as possible using nothing but mic position and gain structure, that way you lose nothing, and do all the processing at mix down. [b]Getting the mix[/b] - this is probably the hardest bit to get right. You have to learn what sounds are texture, what are up front, how to blend it all into one cohesive whole, in a virtual space. The more tracks the harder it is, dont be afraid to make things almost inaudible, learn how to eq, and use a compressor, learn about reverb vs delay for ambience. Learn a bit about what effects do what, and how to set them up. Above all experiment - there are no hard and fast rules, just what sounds good, for the song in question, and what doesn't. It gets subjective very quickly, and your taste is called into question very soon after you start. The issue is that there are so many variables to play with, so many ways to skin this particular cat, and you need to find one that brings the best out of the song. Every single song is different, every single one needs different levels different balancing acts, a different approach almost. I recommend you read [url="http://www.amazon.co.uk/ZEN-Art-Mixing-Mixerman/dp/1423491505/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321007273&sr=1-1"]Zen and the Art of Mixing[/url] for an insight in how to mix stuff down, its not technical, its about how to approach mixing for the song. There are other technical tomes out there, but very few better descriptions of how to approach making a mix work IMO. Get reference material to a/b against and compare all the way through the mix. This is not cheating, its keeping your perspective accurate, mix to a goal, always, or you will almost never ever nail the mix. After you have been mixing for ten years, you need refer to a previous mix less, but dont think thepros arent referring to other mixes all the time, they are! IME mixing with the band present is a recipe for disaster. Everyone thinks that having their instrument heard is the most important thing. It isnt, the song is the most important thing, and all of them are just a little part of that. You are best off getting the reference material right and bouncing mixes off one representative (singers are good at this, their perspective is closest to the publics usually) and after they are happy deal with the hurt that is the guitarist and bassist (drummers are usually happy, they are more often than not loud enough, keyboard players are happy if you can tell they are on the record at all). At some point (pick your battles carefully) you have to tell someone they are wrong. They wont like you for it, they will argue. Be prepared to show them what happens if they get their way. Thats when you find out who the team players really are! [b]Mastering[/b] - the art of compiling an album/ep from the mixed tracks. This is tricky stuff, if you arent sure then there are very reasonably priced mastering studios out there with good/great gear and engineers. By all means have a go itb with plugins, I do it all the time and get pretty darned reasonable results IMO, but you will nearly always be beaten by the guy with the 25 years of experience and £25000 monitors and all the rest of the kit in a specially constructed mastering room. There would be something very wrong if that weeren't the case! Above all enjoy it, make something you can be proud of and do it again next week Oh and sorry for the essay, I was trying to be succinct, but I think I failed ......

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1320839790' post='1432037'] Cheers..but at work so will have to pick my moments. [/quote] LOL!

[quote name='JTUK' timestamp='1320838886' post='1432016'] I missed it so will hope to catch a repeat on Sky Arts...but I did just catch the play-out of Bridge over troubled water at the end. Piano by that much missed genius, Richard Tee. [/quote] Its up on iPlayer right now:- http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0171r6x/Imagine_Winter_2011_Simon_and_Garfunkel_The_Harmony_Game/

[quote name='Mykesbass' timestamp='1320837840' post='1431995'] That's pretty much what I was thinking as a layman - nice to hear that someone with your reputation agrees Simon! [/quote] Well I love getting the inside gen on how records were made, there are some great insights into the Abba stuff out there (have a search on youtube for Michael Tretow) and Bruce Swedien has been amazingly forthcoming about his work recording Michael Jackson on Gearslutz. Too often though docs about recordings just miss the actual process of the tracking, someone sits behind a desk and raises faders and says, "And here's the bit where JomBob played his guitar" but you never learn about the thought process behind that part, and the way/place/thinking behind the actual tracking of that part, I'm not really too bothered about the mic/pre blah blah blah, but the acoustic space choices, the reasoning behind them, that fascinated me. It is the core of each individual track, which must be blended to make the final recording. You cant polish a turd (although you can chuck so much glitter on it that some people wont even noticce the smell), and that basically means the tracking on great records is so good that listeing to the people who made those records and their thinking can be incredibly illuminating, and just give you more ideas for your own work. On top of that its a fascinating insight into who they thought they were at the time (from the flashbacks) and who they think they were now (or whenever it was made), which is really interesting....

Absolutely golden. Loved it, love all the references to use of room acoustics and unconventional places to find interesting acoustic phenomena to use as the sound of the album. Especially the use of them actually singin in the echo chamber rather than piping a send from a aspeaker to it - the resultant bvs are completely ethereal. Fascinating insight into the use of double tracking and the essence of the sound requiring them to perform together into a single mic to get the blend then double tracking them each once alone (note the 'perfectly in synch' comment - pretty spot on for sure!). Fovourite quote from it:- [i]"There's more than just the song going on"[/i] Absolutely! Amazing and informative, one of the best doc on a recordiong I've seen I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj4_K1Bp-kg Just how funky is that - immense!

Beginning of Bachs Cello Suite No 1 usually does the trick.... Or something Clutterbuck-esque, because I'm worth it....

Oh mate, congratulations!

You're pretty stuffed. Its almost certainly a room node at about 47Hz as everyone said. Getting your rig off the floor wont do much, possibly moving it left to right or further or nearer the rear wall may be a good plan. If the front of your rig is about 65" off the back wall the reflection off it it will null with your rig at about 47Hz. That could help to tame the issue... Other than that you need a notch filter (there is one built in to the Digitech BP8 which was about the coolest thing I've seen ion a bass multifx ever).

I'd expect them to have several DIs, something very very clean, something with some colour (a REDDI for instance), most of which should be so far outside of your average decent pro bassists viable price range as to seem a little gratuitous Calling Rimskidog for his professional opinion of a serious studio having no DIs whatsoever....

True, beyond set and forget mode you are out for the count. Not that that isnt possible, its just really not using the system to its fullest potential (or even close). Thats why engineers do 'fiddle' all the way through the set. Good ones are helping all the time by tweaking levels slightly to help the mix for each differnet track. With modern systems it goes way beyond a little tweak here and there in some cases too. Not to mention the monitor sound and the effort that goes into keeping that optimal for the musicians. Whether a set and forget mentality is better than the offerings of the venue's own engineers (assuming they have any) I couldnt possibly say

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320664160' post='1429484'] The use of inexperienced (clueless) sound engineers can be blamed squarely on the venue manager/owner. .....//.... The only way around this is to pay your own engineer to do what you tell them to do. MM [/quote] Couldn't agree more with all of that! The only other option is learn how it all works, get a decent PA and do your own sound - seriously not trivial though....

My personal favourite in a little venue when you can get to do it is cab on a heavy duty stand up at table height about 6 inches off the back wall. You get lots of lovely acoustic coupling with the backwall, and the sound of your cab is straight into your lug holes. You can get the cab just behind the drummer (not directly behind but behind where he is sat) he gets to hear you more directly (albeit at an angle) off your cab and that can make a real difference. Of course if you have um-big stage and um-big monitors (another techincal term) its all irrelevant. Decoupling with a boomy floor is always "a good thing" though IME.

Pantherairsoft's Roscoe fretless 6 string. He kindly let me have a long play on it at the SE Bass Bash, best fretless bass I've ever played (possibly just teh best bass I've ever played). Absolutely gorgeous tone, unbelievably easy to play, just a shame I didnt have one of those Men In Black flasher things to erase all memory of it from his mind (just look into the light a minute Shep.......FSCSHHHHHZZZZ.... "Hey thats a nice bass you've got there Si", "Why yes it is Shep, thank you very much ")...

Oh no, get well Chuck!

[quote name='BigAlonBass' timestamp='1320620111' post='1429169'] Buy earplugs, NOW! and stop worrying. [/quote] +1,000,000

[quote name='ironside1966' timestamp='1320599567' post='1428813'] I am not having a go mate; any one who makes a living from sound must be doing something right. My remark was more a reaction to 51m0n “ This is virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they don’t spend the time thinking about it hard enough (seriously). I guarantee you its easier to mix my way (ha, its not mine personally, I make no claim to it at all, I've merely listened to some great engineers imparting what they have learnt, and tried a lot of different scenarios and used my ears), I know I've been down every possible path for getting bass and kick (and tuba and db) to sit together in a mix that I can think of.” Working live and studio is two different beasts, so when people make comments like this I have to ask what live actual expreance is this based on. Working live is often making the best of the equipment available at the time. Tthere are a thousand ways to do something and a good sound live sound is more down to the skill of the engineer, venues acoustics, good performance and quality of sound source quality of PA then microphone choice. 51m0n, I am not having a pop at you ether, it is just in a few post you have came across sounding like you know best and your method is the only way or the best way. the People who I have met and respect who engineer for a living tend to be more laid back and accept and use different methods depending on the circumstances. [/quote] I've done a fair amount of live, and more in the studio. Its not my dayjob, although I would have loved it to have been at one time in my life, but I have been shown some really informative stuff by some guys who know their beans as well as anyone in the business, and whose experience goes right back, to when it really was a case of get the mic position wrong and you've blown the recording or the transmission (due to massive lack of outboard for one thing). I consider myself very lucky to have even met a couple of them, and have the utmost respect for their experience and knowledge. You're absolutely right live is more often than not a case of there's the kit there's the deadline, get in, get it done, get out alive. I've experienced that end of it. It is possible to get perfectly good results with almost any mic, if you have the time, the outboard (esp eq) and so on. These days its probably easier than ever. Anyone making a living out of live sound has my complete respect (no honestly its a hellish job at times) and I totally understand the reasoning behind choices like this. I'm sorry I've put my point across too strongly in this thread. The reaction to that will be that no one will even try it. There are no rules, do what you can do to get the job done, I'm only trying to share what I've been shown, experimented with and come to trust as not bs. Take it or leave it.

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320578021' post='1428421'] Simon, why are you being so arrogant and condescending? I haven`t attacked you,merely said I and many other professional engineers don`t find any problem using certain mics in live situations. This isn`t opinion, this is fact. Why then would you even suggest that anyone who mics a bass cab with one of those mics didn`t know what they were doing? Why would you say this is "[i]virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they dont spend the time thinking about it hard enough[/i]" when you are talking about engineers at the top of their game, and working in front of tens of thousands of people daily? How astoundingly arrogant of you to insist that EVERYBODY else is wrong, and only you are right. Consider yourself off my xmas list. [/quote] Sorry mate, bit strong, fair point well made. Happy Christmas! Put it another way, I have lost count of the number of large PAs that sounded like rank plop - best sound I heard in the last ten years was Travis at the Brighton Center, that was unreal, Zappa plays Zappa was ok there, others have been awful as a rule. Now I am trying to compare PA's with major bands in the same venue since that is what counts if you like, as a reasonable comparison. Not trying to be arrogant or condescending, I'm trying to explain my reasoning. I know loads and loads of engineers use kick drum mics live for bass and kick. I happen to think it doesnt help a mix to be using mics that closely follows the same frequency response on the kick and the bass, live or in the studio. I can say why that is. I understand a lot of people do it, I'll just reiterate, I have heard a lot of big time PAs and there is no definition on the bass, and no seperation between bass and kick. It is a real grouch of mine I admit! It is nevertheless pretty much the first rule (if there are any) of mixing to give yourself the best chance from the source onwards to get that seperation right. I completely agree it can work, if the music calls for it, but a huge amount of music doesnt and the thing is how often do you guys on a festival actually spend an hour or two going through bass amp mic options? Not so much I'm sure. There are a bundle of other factors weighing in against that kind of experimentation, far easier to take the easy option of slapping one of the same old mics on there and go with that. I completely understand why its done, I am saying it is still not necessarily the best solution. In a situation where there is the time to do that experimentation (which I have done several times) the fact is it is often surprising to find that a different approach to the bass and kick can work better in the overall mix. Its all I'm trying to say. If you have tried what I'm saying and found that I am wrong in the circumstances you have tried it in thats cool, and I would honestly love to know where and when, genres of music and so on. I really would.But if you are saying everyone does that so its fine then all I'm asking is when did they last try something else? I apologise again, sincerely, if I over egged the pudding, I wasnt trying to, and I think the tone of my response didnt come over as I intended it. My fault.

Cool, maybe we'll all be able to pick out more than a rumble from the bass in the FOH in future then If everyone out there is asking for it on the festival scene it must be right, obviously, no need to question that at all. Funny though a lot of major engineers would use an RE20 in the studio, any number would reach for a Neumann (47, 67 whatever) a little way off the cab, I've seen plenty of use for Senn MD421s in this application, any number of mics fit the bill where you have the time to audition mics to get the best sound for the rig/song/mix. Its a kick drum mic a lot less often in that application than on a festival, nothing to do with the ubiquitous nature of kick drum mics, their well deserved rep for indestructibility, and all about the sonic perfection they guarantee.... ...oh hold on let me think about that again. They will perform the function of picking up the cab, they will do a load of eqing to the signal that may or may not be right for it. Whether you and everyone you work with have only used them for the last 20 years or not, that doesnt change the fact that they are not really the best tool for picking up the actual sound of the bass from that cab. You may or may not like what they do and find it can be made to work in the mix, personally I prefer to eq at the desk, not in the mic, live, just because you dont have time to swap the mics out when the bassist surprises you with a change of instrument for whatever reason and his signal turns to mud.. I confess, I havent done a huge live outdoor gig for years, I got really bored of being passed the DAT tapes (like a said years) by the management and being told to drop the mics and turn up the tape during the songs. I really lost interest in live all day events when that started happening....

Band/bass - not so good - although got a recording out. Recording - pretty busy, few projects done or doing. Mixing - pretty epic, taken up a huge amount of 'spare' time. Loving it! Oh and I got married - which was awesome

[quote name='Monckyman' timestamp='1320485486' post='1427368'] I personally don`t agree with Simons view on bass mics, having used D112 or beta52 or RE20s for the past 20 years at all levels of gigs,but he has a point that if you are after valve or FX only, an SM57 will do the job well, and you can buy your own for £50 along with a clamp to fix it in the right place on your rig. You must instruct the engineer and then follow it up with very strong objections if he/she ignores you. MM [/quote] Well the ElectroVoice RE20 is a mic designed for broadcast voice applications, its certainly not first and foremost a bass mic. Although it is superb in that application. I prefer the PR40 even to an RE20 though. Its virtually flat from 50Hz to 2Khz (above which its a tad wobblier, but nothing like a D112) D112s and beta52 have heavily eq'ed (basically mid scooped with a peak around 4KHz) frequency plots. They are that way because modern kick drum sounds require exactly that kind of eq, not because bass does (in some cases it can work, mix dependant though). The other point is have a look at the kick drum, if it has the same kind of mic (generically a designed for that purpose mic rather than the same specific brand) the sound guy doesnt understand frequency mixing and is going to struggle to get good seperation between kick and bass compared to a sound guy who makes sure he uses different mics on the two instruments competing for the same sonic territory. This is virtually sound engineering key stage 1 stuff, get this wrong and you are struggling from then on in. If you have had reasonable results with those mics in front of your cab then I'm pleased for you, if you see lots of people do it its because they dont spend the time thinking about it hard enough (seriously). I guarantee you its easier to mix my way (ha ha, its not mine personally, I make no claim to it at all, I've merely listened to some great engineers imparting what they have learnt, and tried a lot of different scenarios and used my ears), I know I've been down every possible path for getting bass and kick (and tuba and db) to sit together in a mix that I can think of. This particular one doesnt work so well in the context of the mix, there is one caveat to that of course, and that is the case where the mix choice is to use the 57 (or similar) on the kick (going for an old school little punchy funk kick drum sound this can work very well indeed) where the bass is very dubby and you low pass it below the presence peak in the mic....

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320435446' post='1426958'] It's actually easy if you have the right gear, and an open space to do the job. You measure ground plane, the mic literally an inch off the ground, for a half-space result below the baffle step frequency. Then you put the cab on its back and suspend the mic above it to get a half-space result above the baffle step. Splice the two together and you're done. If you want to do off-axis you do that with the cab on its back only, as below the baffle step axial and off-axis are the same. The gear used to be silly expensive, but today the software is free, and the hardware is less than a hundred dollars here. You can do the entire job, including off-axis plots, in about fifteen minutes. [/quote] You havent seen how small his back yard was

Yeah, you hear all these modern 'vintage funk' bands banging on about loose tight feel and all that, nothing, nothing beats uber tight for me, this is absolutely groovey as hell, and they are all on the one so hard its like a pile driver of funk. Love it to death!

[quote name='Bill Fitzmaurice' timestamp='1320423304' post='1426758'] Anything's possible, as every scenario is different. That's why definitive cab measurements are made outdoors (assuming you don't have an anechoic chamber handy) with the mic at least two meters, preferably more, from the cab. [/quote] Yeah true, I've had long chats with Alex about the lengths he has to go to when measuring his cabs to get some idea of their frequency response - not a trivial undertaking at all!

[quote name='Pete Academy' timestamp='1320418452' post='1426672'] I see this quite a lot. When someone starts to learn an instrument, they develop an early boost of confidence that compels them to play crude riffs loud and proud in music shops. Coupled with teenage hormones and angst, this results in an inability to accept criticism. The problem here is that Youtube is the world's biggest music shop. [/quote] So what's my excuse Pete???