Make it sound like a Studio

Special Interest Groups Recording Techniques
1

I have been using Audacity for quite some time now and can normally get a great sounding recording for my band. I record and electric guitar, drums, bass, and if its required andother guitar and back ups. I want it to sound better though. I want it to sound more like a studio put it out, not just from my garage, because we are hopeing to make an EP soon. So if anybody thinks they have perfected the best way to record any of those please let me know. Even if you dont know how to do all the instruments or vocals, just put down what you do know.

The biggest thing I’m looking for is how to record the drums really good because those are always hit and miss with our recordings.

We record to a mixer that connet to my laptop.

Thanks Alot!
Tyler

2

When the grownups do it, they have separate, soundproofed rooms and lots of microphones and an eight foot long mix console.

The reason they do that is to be able to customize each part of the performance for maximum benefit – in close to real time. You can do something similar, it would just take longer.

Capture one “sample” song, say three minutes and there’s nothing important about it, just that the song timing is perfect.

Send everybody home but the drummer. Move all the microphones and furniture moving quilts, blankets, and other sound proofing around so the drums sound perfect. Play the first song back into the drummer’s headphones while he plays and record a perfect, clean drum track(s). This can be rough to do because drums are hard to meter. They’re always louder and more overloady than you think.

Send the drummer home and call the other performers, redesigning the room and microphones as appropriate for each one. You’re going to find that guitars and other amplified instruments may sound a lot better with an electronic feed rather than trying to mic a 750W bass amplifier with a Shure SM-58. That’s almost guaranteed to beat the butterscotch out of either the microphone or the electronics right behind it. Fuzz Guitar whether or not it started out that way.

If you back the microphone up to avoid overload, you’re going to start recording the echos from the room. Much better have an electronic feed.

Vocals more or less have to happen together because you don’t have the eight-foot long mixing desk, but that too can be vocals-only with the rest of the show playing back into the earphones. Rearrange soundproofing as needed.

This is a composite of vocal recording info.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=10707#p43378


Doing production this way is very weird if you’re not used to it and it may take plunking on a “dead” guitar while you sing to give you the rhythm of the song. Obviously serious headphones are needed and for multiple people. You can get headphone splitters and borrow an amplifier with separate headphone controls.

Furniture Moving Quilts are a big deal. Suspend them about a foot or so away from the room walls so sound has to go through twice. You’d be shocked how much better a recording becomes with no wall echo and slap in the mix.

And leave time. You have two problems to overcome; getting used to each performance being an individual track and knowing when to stop. “My guitar riff sucked. I want to do it again.”

…and again…and again…

You were warned…

Koz

3

More. The drummer needs to record a click lead-in so everybody starts in perfect time. He/She hits the rim of the snare in perfect song beat before the first musical note.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, music. You can cut it off later. What’s why it’s called editing.

Since you’re obviously going to be the next Rolling Stones, you’ll also need voice slates at the top of each group of recordings. "June twenty first, Noon, “Muddy Roads To My Soul, Premix.” Tick, Tick,…etc.

The compulsives will want to slate each take. These are the people for whom final post production editing gets done before lunch. Everybody else will be editing past midnight.

“Which take was it when you threw the pick across the floor?”
[Consulting yellow pad] “Thursday, 3PM, take 5.”

Last…Audacity doesn’t save sound files. Export As WAV every time you get something good.

Koz

4

Oh, and thanks for not posting: “We recorded our band and it sounds like garbage. What Audacity filter can we use to make it sound perfect…?”

Koz

5

Thank you very much for these pointers and whatnot. We normally record track by track so fine tuneing everything shouldnt be too hard.

6

I can’t stress enough deadening the walls with something so it doesn’t sound like you’re recording in a bathroom – or a garage.

That and Hollywood editors are really good at cutting and mixing, etc, but above all, they’re supreme bookkeepers.

Koz

7

Actually let me ask this. Can I record the drums were everything (kick drum, snare, hi-hats) are all on seprate tracks to i can further mix them? or is that too far with audacuty? beacause I’ve been wanting to do that for a long time.

-Tyler

8

Out of the box, you can do that in stereo – two channel. Audacity will manage up to 16 mono tracks of anything, but it’s getting the tracks into the computer that’s the killer. You just graduated to a USB mixer because the computer internal sound is all stereo. I don’t know of a USB device that’s appropriate.

Many of them present, for example, four channel as two stereos and Audacity will only manage one stereo.

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=9477&start=0

Koz

9

Hi Guys I can’t seem to mix tracks & match my lead playing with my rtyhm playing in audacity can some one help me my email is guitartom87@sbcglobal.net

10

You will need to give more detail about your set-up and the problem guitarman.

11

That and posting at the bottom of somebody else’s post has problems. It’s hard to find and some search processes don’t work.

We also like to keep conversations on the forum so the maximum number of people can benefit.

Koz