Recording A Great Album: The Golden Rules 1-6 of 37

Pre-Production

Try some of these tips to Record a great Album

1. Record your songs during live gigs and pre-production rehearsals. Even a simple single track recording may reveal weak parts of songs.
2. Have all the musical and vocal parts worked out. Know who going to do what and when there going to do it e.i. SOLOS , BREAKS, BRIDGES. No reason to go to the studio and then start wasting time on figuring things out, remember (Time is Money). Even if your not paying for studio time, it's still hard to find the time to get everyone together and frustrating when bands mates and engineers are not on the same level.
3. Using a computer or Sequencer? Prepare all sequence material before the session. knowing the programs and using templates are a great way to do this.
4. Rehearse more songs than you plan to record. You never know which songs will sound strong on the final product. (If you plan to have a four-song EP, prepare six songs just in case. 
5. If you plan to use a click track, make sure your drummer is comfortable playing to it. (To get tight, practice to a click track at a very slow tempo.)
6. Take care of your body before and during your recordings sessions. Eat well, get engouh sleep, and keep your ears rested and clear.

Two Important Tips for Mastering Your Music

Tip One
One question that is often asked when it comes to mastering, “should I master my own music?"

The answer is NO.

I know a lot of people either do their own mastering or want to just because they go out and get some fancy mastering program. But the truth, is not even some of the best engineers in the world master the music they have recorded.

The reason why is because you will spend so much time sitting their listening to the music while you mix it, that your ears will eventually start hearing what they want to hear. This makes it extremely hard to make those very small much needed adjustments.

 If you give it to someone else to master ( lets hope it’s a professional ) they will be hearing it for the first time and this means they will have a totally different prospective on what they are hearing. Frequency can be funky, especially if your just moving them a couple Khz to distinguish separation between two instruments. So why not let a fresh set of ears make these distinguishes.

Tip Two
If you don’t yet know what plug-ins you need to use such as: limiter/compression, eq etc. I suggest you don’t do it. Take it to a professional and stand in while he works; learn, read a book, take a class, but if you don't know what you're doing then you're better off not doing anything.

If you insist on taking on this project, the first thing you need to do is take a long break from the music. Doesn’t mater how good you are at mastering, take a day or two to let your mind and your ears reset.

The second thing you need to do is make sure you use your monitor speakers. Headphones can be used and can be good to reference what your monitors are doing, but for the most part you need to complete the mastering project with your monitors.

One last thing, before you try to master anything, it’s important to make sure you are completely familiar with the software/hardware you are using. This tip does not just go for mastering, but for every part of making music. What is the since of having an expensive music program if you only know how to use half of it's functions.

The Importance of Using AUX Channels for Your Vocal Tracks

A common mistake made by many amateur Recording Engineers is putting effects directly on to the vocal tracks. When I first started recording and did not have a lot of experience, I mixed vocals in a way that I'm sure a lot of other beginners mixed vocals, putting effects directly on the vocal tracks. I still managed to come out with some pretty decent sounding vocals but after working with others, reading and schooling I dropped this bad habit along with a lot of others.


Using AUX channels is not always necessary when mixing instruments, but mixing vocals with AUX channels is crucial. What makes it so crucial? When you start adding effects to the vocals, you still want to have a track with the vocals that is completely dry that you can work with. This just helps you have a lot more control over the natural sound of the vocals, and if there is anything in the mix that you want to sound as real as possible, that would be your vocals. For instance, if you have a reverb effect on the aux plug-in that you feel has the perfect parameters for what you are looking for, but the natural sound is a little too distant, you can bring up the volume of the vocal track without affecting the parameters of your reverb.

Another great advantage to AUX channels every engineer should know and if you don't, read it, write it down, remember it: If you have more than one vocal track you can run each track to the same AUX channel, this will ensure each vocal will be affected by the same amount giving the allusion that each set of vocals was recorded in the same place. When I first started recording, I listened to a lot of local music recorded in garages and basements. This is where I notice the problem, mainly hip-hop and rap had this problem. A lot of neighborhood artist would get together and produce a track. But with four or five different artist and someone mixing it that was far from professional, all of the artist would sound like they had recorded in different rooms and in some cases they did; and having a different amount of effects placed on each track did not make things any better.

The same effects placed on each vocal will help give the allusion that the vocals were recorded in the same place at the same time even if they were not. Even if you have five vocal tracks recorded in five different rooms, running them through one or more main AUX channel is your best bet to making them sound like they all came from the same room. You can still set up different effects for each track, such as EQ or delay, but you want at least have one or main effect that ever channel is affected by.

Is Mastering Your Music Project Really That Important?

This question comes up a lot, mostly by rookies because it cost extra money and it’s a process that can be quite complicating for the inexperience. 

Should I master my music after mixing? The answer is simple, YES. 

This is just one part of the recording process, but possibly one of the most important. What you hear coming from your DAW into your monitor speakers or headphones will not be the same once it’s played in MP3 or CD format. Also let’s say you burn your music to CD, listen to it and you like what you hear, since all music devices are different they will play them differently. 

Essentially, what mastering does for your music is it gives it all round correct accuracy and clarity when played at any level on any device. 

Now, as a rookie, should you attempt this process by yourself? You can, but doing it successfully is up to you and how serious you take it. If you go at this process with no idea of what you’re doing, then you may as well just leave it as is. 

But, if you’re willing to take some time and learn by (tutorials, videos, books, websites and hands on experience with a professional) you may get the knowledge you need to tackle this process and be successful at it. 

If you do decide to take it seriously and try to master by yourself, you will need to invest in an outboard software mastering program such as IZOTOPE. This is an industry standard program that I found to be the best as far as user friendless, it was also what we were required to use while I attended school for engineering.

Tip:  These are your three different major mastering procedures you should look-up and study.

1. Multi-Band Compression

2. Parallel Compression

3. General Compression and Brick Wall.

Audio Recording: Resting Your Ears is a Must

In my opinion and by most accounts no one should do the whole record, mix, master processes all in the same day. But if it is something that has to be done then lengthy breaks are required for your ears to achieve optimal performance level.

Not only will you yourself, experience exhaustion, but both your ears and your brain will get tired as well. When your brain and ears get tired they do not process the sound the same way. Your ears actually have moving hairs inside of them that move back and fourth when they encounter sound. When you listen to something at a loud volume for-to-long, the hairs get tired and instead of standing up right to catch the sound and transmit it to the brain properly, they lay down and cause your ears not to hear certain frequencies . This is why it is a must to give your ears a break if you want to hear everything correctly.


 

Four Ways to Get Rid of a Muddy Mix: Audio Recording Advice

A lot of recording engineers mix and mix their songs, only to keep coming up with a final mix that sounds muddy and muffled. So what should you do? Their are plenty of reason why this happens and here are four ways to try to fix that mess.



 

1. Stop leakage. This is the first place to start when trying to prevent muddy and muffled mixes. Before recording try your best to get all of the leakage you can out of the microphones. If you have to change mics or the directions and angles of the mics don't be lazy, just do it. If you're having problems with muddy mixes then you might want to try all kinds of different microphone situations.

2. Boost your highs. Try boosting some of the highs but don't boost a huge bandwidth, try boosting them in peaks and add just a little reverb . Highs can help brightening up some of the instruments, but be careful too much can make extra noise and can take away from the natural sound of the mix.

3. Try cutting the lows. Cutting the lows while boosting the highs can help get rid of that muddy sound. Just make sure you cut them in the right place. You want to make sure you can still hear the bass of the instruments; you are just trying to cut out the muddiness. Two or Three db around 300hz is a good start.

4. Take it easy on the effects. Don't assume that just because reverb and other effects make the song sound cool that it is the best thing for the mix. If you're using a lot of reverb, eq, echo etc. then try to back them off a little because to much can make your mix sound muddy and artificial.