T H E S P I E L.
If you would like to learn about improving your technique and tone, playing and writing grooves, theory, time feel, locking with drummers, recording/production, learning songs quickly, finding your sound, making great clips for Facebook and Instagram, or about how to use shiny expensive boxes to make things that go wub wub BLARRGH. I would love to help you.
A B O U T M E
I am a bass player, live show MD, producer and songwriter. My working credits include Rita Ora, JP Cooper, Heather Small, Alfie Boe, B*witched, Jess And The Bandits, and my own electronic band Sleeping Dragon (Hand picked to support Mike League's Forq.) I am also a content creator and have created videos for Alpher Instruments, Gamechanger Audio and Newtone Strings among others. I am based in Liverpool, love dark beer and slow roasting anything, and I am a complete gear head, especially with old fenders and crazy pedals.
If anything on here has interested you, please drop me a message, I'd love to chat about how I can help you.
Hi guys. After a long time away from it, I'm looking to get back into recording.
My previous studio was a purpose-designed and pretty well-equipped project studio. In my current situation that kind of facility isn't feasible logistically and way outside my proposed budget financially. I'm going to keep it simple this time: I'm just planning to use my MacBook Pro with a suitable interface plus a few bits & bobs.
What I could use is some advice as to what folks recommend I should be looking at.
I have Audacity installed on the Mac, which looks like it'll be all I'll need for recording, and I have guitars, basses and amps aplenty.
My shopping list looks like this:
Basic audio interface with USB thunderbolt compatibility (I don't need a lot of channels or effects so a basic 2- or 4-input jobbie should be plenty).
Decent but inexpensive studio mic for recording electric guitars through the Fender Blues Junior IV. (Acoustic and bass amps have D.I. outs and I have an L.R. Baggs D.I. box so that side of things is taken care of.) I don't sing so I don't need megabucks. As long as it can record the BJ faithfully (with the option of recording the acoustic guitars once in a while) I'll be happy. I'm told Rode are good value for money, but I've been out of the loop for around 10 years I'm happy to consider other options. If funds allow, it would be nice to have a compressor for recording the acoustics (I used to have a small collection of the Joemeek optical compressors, which were f*cking brilliant) but not a given at this stage as Audacity has one built-in (which I haven't used yet but which I assume will be fairly basic).
Half decent rhythm generator or drum machine. I used to have an SR16 and a DR770, so anything in that general ballpark should do the job I need.
This is all for my own enjoyment; I have no plans to inflict anything I do on anybody else. That said, at one time I was accustomed to working with high quality gear so I do have certain expectations...
I have a soft budget in my head of around £500. I'm expecting to need to buy new where necessary but will also be keeping an eye on pre-owned as long as it's in good working order.
Any advice as to what I should be looking at, particularly the I/F and the mic, will be gratefully received.
I humbly submit myself to the collective wisdom of the Basschat Collective.
So as the headline says, what relatively cheap but decent microphones will I need to mike up an acoustic drum set, when I only have 4 tracks at my disposal to record on, for a bass and drums duo where I play the bass?
I am thinking a kick drum mic, a snare/hi-hat mic, a crash/tam mic and then an overhead/room mic, but other suggestion that will likely give better results are welcome, and I am completely at loss when it comes to choosing the actual microphones for it.
I am planing to buy a Tascam DR-680 MkII for recording the drums and bass live, which can record on 8 tracks total, but only got 4 XLR inputs and 2 Jack inputs, intending to use the 4 XLR inputs for drum microphones, and then 1 of the Jack inputs for a DI recording of the bass and the other for miking up the bass cab, running it through a microphone preamp, and then transfer these 4 recorded drum tracks + 2 recorded bass tracks to my DAW later for mixing and adding vocals and eventual additional programmed and physical secondary instrumentation.
I am open to the suggestion of using 5 tracks for the drums if it will give a considerably better result, and then just using a single DI'ed bass track though.
The reason why I chose to use a small recorder is for ease of transportability to our rehearsal place, since I don't own a laptop or a car and I don't need the recordings to be super hi-fi.
I'm selling my Zoom R16 which has only been used for one evening at my home. It's a compact digital recorder which can be used as a USB control surface for your favourite DAW or to record 8 tracks simultaneously. I bought it for that latter feature as our band had done a few storming gigs and I wanted to try and get a live recording down. Of course, the band imploded before I could do this and it has sat in its box ever since.
It comes with all manuals, leads, PSU etc that came with it along with a 2GB SD card and Cubase LE which I have not downloaded so can be yours.
These are £317 at Amazon & £329 at Thomann (with delivery on top). Save yourself a bundle at £200 including postage to you or same with socially-distant collection from Croydon.
https://www.zoom-na.com/products/production-recording/multi-track-recorders/zoom-r16-recorder-interface-controller
For the bass cover of the week I chose this time to go into a pop song by the young superstar Dua Lipa to see how the Tribe behaves also in this musical context. For this cover I only used the single coil in the 60s position (the one near the neck) and the tone at 70% ... good listening!