Here’s a drum recording trick I never thought about until Thursday. Toms can resonate pretty heavily even if they’re tuned well. So much that it can interfere with other drums and cause muddiness in the overall sound. You want those drums to sound powerful and heavy but it’s terrible if your 16″ floor tom is resonating...
Recording drums is tricky. You’re just throwing a bunch of mics together, all aimed at separate drums that are somehow supposed to record a punchy and tight drum sound. Terrifying isn’t it? All those microphones phasing each other out and making your snare drum thin, your cymbals wishy-washy and your toms boomy. What’s an engineer...
A clean guitar sound is something people actually struggle with. To me it was always the opposite. I had the hardest time getting the distortion sound I wanted, as I’ve mentioned before. I think the key to a great clean guitar sound is threefold. Clean guitar Clean amp Clean fingers Clean Guitar Some guitars are...
I was a panelist at the Independent Film Arizona monthly meeting recently. The subject was sound so a friend of mine tagged me to speak about sound and offer some advice to filmmakers who want to produce better sound for their films. Now, I don’t know a lot about on-location film audio but as a part...
Got a question from a reader a while back asking me about recording vocals. Specifically, how to get a vocal sound consistent if you record for several days. First I didn’t think it was a big deal. But then I started thinking… Does he mean doing takes of the same song on different days? Because...
Today I’m gonna give you a very interesting tip I heard last summer at the Potluck Conference. It has to do with a cool way to do a double. Now, I haven’t tried this myself but I like wacky advice, especially when it’s coming from seasoned professionals. So I leave it up to you to...
I’ll never forget one thing my professor told me at audio school. If it’s not there, you can’t EQ it in. Ain’t that the truth. No matter how much low-end you boost in your EQs, if it’s not there to be boosted, you won’t add any low-end. As magical as EQ can be in every...
In this Audio Issues interview we hear from Pete Weiss. Pete Weiss is a New England-based producer/engineer/mixer/musician. Through his innovative, organic work with artists site. During the interview we discuss, among other things: How he got into recording and production. How vocal production sometimes just comes down to the mood and atmosphere. Simple electric guitar...
A reader writes in with a question: I’m playing in an amateur Blues-band, consisting of an normal 5 piece band and a 7 piece hornsection. On one of our rehearsal-evenings we also did some recording all together. Each individual instrument had their own mics and the drums also had separate mics. But of course since all...
There aren’t a ton of ways to get great recordings. You just have to focus on the basics, and on the first few elements of the music production chain. So, great recordings don’t start with mastering, or mixing. If you’re not getting the sound you want, do not look for a solution on the mixing...