Island Studios - Upptökuhljóðver - Recording studio - Hljóðver - Fréttir

When it comes to producing quality music in your home studio, most of our attention goes to the recording and mixing process. And for good reason. How you actually capture sound is (obviously) the most critical step to having a great final mix. And of course how you blend (or mix) those tracks together using tools like EQ, compression, and reverb is what truly brings those great recordings to life as a cohesive song. But the part of the process that tends to get overlooked or forgotten entirely, is editing.

Do My Tracks Need Editing?

You may be thinking, “If my tracks were recorded great then why should I need to edit anything?”. That’s a fair question. But let me explain why I think the editing phase is the crucial unsung hero of getting a great final mix and then you can decide for yourself whether or not it might help your songs.

Almost three quarters of the way through the year already and the big question that should be burning in our minds as home studio owners is this: how much money have I spent on gear this year? Once you have that ballpark figure in your head, then ask the dangerous follow up question: how much value (i.e. productivity in the studio) have I received from that money spent so far this year? Hopefully we’ve been making enough music to warrant the purchases we’ve made in 2010.

Hold Yourself Accountable

In a world of constant exposure to newer and “better” gear available at the swipe of a credit card we need to hold ourselves accountable for our purchases. We should have a reason for each piece of gear we buy. It should be thought out and help us in our quest for musical productivity and creativity. But most of the time we just purchase things because we know they are awesome and it would “fun to have”. You need a plan.

The other day a reader posted a comment regarding my lack of acoustic treatment in my studio and he wanted to know how I got my mixes to sound “good” despite the bare walls. Hisquestion leads to an important part of recording well in your home studio that I want to briefly explain today. No matter how much acoustic treatment you have (or don’t have), in order to get great recordings and mixes at home you need to “learn” your studio.

Not Quite The Truth

If you aren’t yet satisfied with your recordings in the home studio then pay attention. The biggest thing that can hinder your progress is not being able to hear your tracks properly. Your studio room and monitors are probably giving you a misrepresentation of how your audio is actually sounding. Talk about frustrating. That is why you hear the “big boys” of recording telling you to invest in quality acoustic treatment, great monitors and converters, or even to ditch the home studio and just record in a pro studio.

If you’re like me, you want to get better at recording and producing music. Most of us truly desire to increase in skill and ability and thereby produce music of high quality. So what do we do to accomplish that end? We buy more “professional” gear, join online recording debates, and watch a lot of tutorial videos on YouTube. The videos hopefully are helping (heck, I hope MY videos are helping you), but the first two are usually a waste of time. I have a better way for you…finish your projects.

Unfinished Business

If you never complete a recording or mixing project it becomes very hard to improve your skill as an engineer. Let me explain. Because of the freedom of time and money afforded us by powerful computer recording we aren’t ever under any real deadlines. Therefore our tendency is to work on projects, never pronounce them complete, and then fiddle with something else. We’ll then come back to the original project and tweak some more. Sessions become a continuous work in progress.

When it comes to mixing audio, there are many variables for how the final product will turn out. How good are the recorded tracks? How accurate are your studio monitors? Is your room acoustically treated? How much experience do you have mixing? Etc. But one simple and effective tip I can suggest is simply to mix at a lower volume.

Everything Sounds Good Loud

To be honest we tend to like our mixes when we crank the volume. The drums are hitting hard, the bass seems huge, and the vocals and guitars just soar right out of the speakers. But the moment we turn the mix down in our cars or on our iPods it all falls apart. Things sound weak, flat, and boring. Why? What happens when we mix at higher volumes is we have an inaccurate picture of our mix. Certain frequencies can sound more apparent at higher volumes, and this tricks your ear. If you think the kick drum is coming through just fine then you may not EQ and compress it to actually cut through the mix at a normal listening level and thus it disappears for most listeners.

If you are into the world of Pro Tools then you’re aware that Avid has dropped some serious hardware  updates to their product line over the past 2 months. It started with brand new HD interfaces, then moved on to arevamped line of Mbox hardware, and most recently last week we had the unveiling of a new version of Pro Tools HD…the “native” version.

Why Pro Tools|HD Native?

Pro Tools comes in two general flavors: you have Pro Tools|HD, the high end powerhouse version that combines Pro Tools software with PCI cards loaded with DSP chips to handle all the processing, giving you rock solid (and guaranteed) track counts, super low latency, and a ton of power to handle plugins and complex sessions. Then you have the more “home/project studio oriented” Pro Tools|LE and M-Powered versions, which are simply a USB or Firewire interface bundled with almost the identical software as the HD version. Your limited in areas like track count, buses, and some other potential “deal breakers” for some (lack of ADC and I/O limitations).

Today I wanted to share with you all an example of someone who is doing exactly what all of us are trying to do: make a great album from home. One of my friends from college, Brandon Walker, contacted me a while back saying he was recording a new EP in his home studio and wanted me to mix it. When I first got the raw tracks to mix, I was super impressed with the recording quality and it made for some great mixes (and made my job much easier). So first, take a listen to one of his finished tracks so you get an idea of the quality of this project and then I’ll briefly show you what he used and how the process went for him.

What He Used

Brandon’s studio weapons of choice were Reason and Sonar. 

When was the last time you mixed your songs in mono? Recently I wrote about why it’s a good idea to mix at lower volumes and along with that idea comes the concept of mixing in mono. Before 1958, albums were recorded, mixed, and distributed in mono. People’s radios and record players were built with one main speaker, suitable for mono. That in mind, recording engineers didn’t factor in panning and stereo placement into their mixing decisions at all. Seems crazy to us, but it’s true. However, today I want to briefly look at mixing in mono as a viable part of your mixing process and point out three ways listening to your mixes in mono will benefit you.

Mixing For The Worst Case

Not everyone will be playing your mix in stereo. I honestly have to give Kevin Ward props for reminding me of this concept. You just never know what kind of speaker situations exist, so worst case scenario your great “stereo” mix will be rocking through one crappy mono speaker.You might as well check to see if your mix sounds good in the worst case scenario. If it does, then chances are it’ll sound even better played back in stereo.

When it comes to getting a great recording in your studio, so much of the final mix stems from the basics: proper mic placement on a good source in a decent space. But part of that is proper recording levels. Obviously we don’t want our levels to be too quiet so we don’t have enough gain to work with in the mix. Likewise we don’t want to be hitting the “red” every time either. So how hot are ARE we supposed to record? Well, if you are recording digital (i.e. with your computer) then the answer is “probably not as hot as you think.”

Noise Floor

It used to be that engineers tried to get as much signal on a track to mask the inherent noise of things like tape hiss. The goal was set your levels to be as hot as you can get without clipping. This went a long way to keeping the audio as “clean” sounding as possible. In today’s popular digital audio workstations (DAW) we aren’t recording to tape or using a ton of noisy analog gear.We have a much quieter noise floor with a lot less to “mask.” In fact one of people’s biggest complaints with digital recording is just how transparent and accurate it is. It’s quiet…a little TOO quiet!

A few weeks back I wrote about myportable recording rig. I use a lot of affordable pieces of gear to get the job done when I take the studio with me, but I don’t lose on quality at all. In fact I love the sound I’ve been getting with this rig on the last few projects I’ve done. Today I wanted to breifly encourage you home studio guys out there by playing you a track recorded on a modest setup. I think this song has turned out great and gives me great confidence in this “budget” gear craze that I’m in!

Behringer And Beyond

I used a lot of Behringer gear on this record. Starting with the drums. We recorded 8 channels of drums into the Behringer ADA8000 preamp/converter. I wrote about this puppy before and it is rock solid. Simple to use and sounds great. All the guitars/amps were miked up with the Behringer B2-Pro condenser. Love this thing. I ran the B2 into the Behringer MIC200 tube preamp for a little flavor. I then fed that preamp into the ADA8000 for conversion into Pro Tools. Vocals were recorded with the exact same signal chain. Behringer all the way in.

One pro audio company I totally respect is PreSonus. These guys make quality studio gear at reasonable prices and have created a company culture that is motivated by and saturated with making music.

Last year’s launching of their first DAW, Studio One, was a big deal. More than a year later (version 1.6), it seems that the buzz is growing with this new kid on the block. I thought it might be helpful to take a brief look at some of the intruiging features for some of you who are in the market for a good DAW.

So What’s The Big Deal

Studio One was built from the ground up with fresh code. It runs at both 32 and 64 bit. The biggest thing they are pushing is the snappiness of the software along with intuitive drag-and-drop functionality for practically everything in the program. Want a new instrument track? Simply find the instrument in the browser on the right and drag it into the edit window. It instantly creates a new instrument track, drops that VI plugin on said track, arms it and you are ready to go. Effects, sends, loops, can all be dragged and dropped. From what I’ve seen of it, this works really well.

Before you spend a dime of your money on studio gear (hardware or software) you need assess what your needs are. Sounds kind of obvious, right? But most of us do this backwards. We purchase what we see advertised as “good” or what people on forums say we should buy. Marketing and home studio gear junkies shouldn’t influence where your money goes. Instead you should ask yourself a set of simple questions to quickly assess what YOU actually want to accomplish in your studio, and move accordingly.

How Many Tracks At Once?

Probably the biggest purchase you’ll make (other than a decent computer) is your audio interface. This is the hub of your studio as it allows you to get all of your audio in and out of your software. There are a ton of interfaces out there each promising to give you top notch audio and ease of use. But ultimately the first thing you need to determine is how many tracks do you need to record at once.