Part 11 - Recording basics - Making the most of what you've got

Hello again.

Last time we started talking about recording, the hierarchy, and intent. We left it with a promise to talk one of the easiest ways to get your recordings sounding better-than-average: sound-treatment of your room.

Now some people might be nodding along at this point, but not really believing. I mean, it's just the room right? It's not what's making the noise, and it's not what's capturing the noise, so how much difference could it make?

Well, fortunately I have some pertinent examples:

Untreated, unfurnished room: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/pJnGeDsly6M

Same room, treated, singing into the 'live' end: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/t2iIhiyjm6A

Same room, treated, singing into the 'dead' end: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7c4hKBWk6Ac

So we're starting with this because it will apply to all of the subsequent options and it's cheap and easy.

Sound treatment is about controlling how sound bounces around your room, and we need it because in most domestic rooms the way that sound bounces around is not pleasant. Things sound 'boxy' and have weird resonances. 

So here's some simple things you can do about it:

Soft furnishings help. Thick curtains and deep carpet will absorb higher frequencies and things like sofas and beds can help deal with problematic lower frequencies. 

If you're recording in a bedroom, open the wardrobe doors and use all the hanging clothes as a natural broadband absorber. 

Room modes, where sound wavelengths correlate to multiples of the room's dimensions and create large troughs and peaks, are typically strongest at the centre and corners of the room; so don't try and record there. Asymmetrical rooms can be a good choice for recording.

But possibly the most effective thing you can do is lob a couple of heavy winter duvets (artificial fibres) over a couple of microphone stands with the boom arms set in a T-shape. Then position these in a V-shape behind you / the performer. This will massively reduce any room reflections reaching the front of the microphone and give you a much cleaner sound.

This assumes you're using a cardiod pattern microphone. If you're using an omni-directional or figure-8 pattern mic then stick another duvet behind the microphone. 

It looks silly but is really, really effective and will instantly raise the standard of your recorded sound, making it much easier to apply overdubs, virtual instruments and artificial reverbs and effects. 

And that's what we're focusing on here, giving you a platform that you can build on to finish your song.

One final aside before we talk about a few bits of kit: we will not be talking about the art and science of recording. That's far too large a subject and not really relevant to this blog, so if you are interested in this I recommend Mike Senior's book Recording Secrets For The Small Studio. Plus a subscription to Sound On Sound magazine as well...

"...it's the little you're given and how far you can run with it."

Right, let's talk about what you'll need to make your recordings and build your compositions.

First you need to capture the sound.

The simplest option is the one I mentioned previously, your smartphone.

Modern mobile phones will shoot excellent quality video and will generally do a pretty good job on the audio side as well. They often have stereo microphones and are optimised for audio in the mid-range - where most of the interesting elements of your music will generally be.

Set up your duvets, open your wardrobe doors and hit record. Experiment with the distance between your source and your phone to get the best combination of direct sound (the sound coming directly from the source), reflected sound (the sound reflected around the room and coming back) and realistic sound (as you get closer to the source you start hearing less of the complete sound of the instrument and more of the specific area that you're homing in on). 

The next step up the recording ladder is probably the handheld recorder. These come in various degrees of size and complexity but are generally based around a pair of onboard microphones and a hard-drive. They'll generally have better microphones than your phone, will record in an uncompressed file format, and allow you more control over things like recording levels.

Think about how you'll position the device too, most of them have a thread on the bottom to attach to a camera tripod so think about adding one of them to the budget as well. Here's Josh Turner and Myles Pinder showing how a good performance and arrangement can be captured on a handheld recorder: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t21Pb1P4_8s

Some of them will also have the facility to accept external microphones and work as a basic Audio Interface.

What, you might be asking, is an Audio Interface? Well, at it's most basic, an audio interface converts an incoming analogue audio signal to a digital one that can be processed by your computer and, vice versa, takes a digital audio file generated in the computer and converts it to an analogue one that can be played back. Most computers and laptops will have an audio interface built in via the sound card, typically this will provide a simple headphone output and basic microphone input. Functional but not particularly high quality.

So the next step up is to buy a dedicated unit that will handle all of this to a higher standard and will typically include a few other features to help the home recordist. These generally connect to your computer via USB and shift all of the audio in and out processing to the external unit. They'll typically have one or two proper microphone pre-amps (to allow you to use proper external mics), a decent headphone amplifier, and will often come bundled with some recording software.

You will, however, also need a microphone or two to plug into your interface.

Choosing a microphone and an interface is far, far too big a can of worms to open here so, as well as Mike Senior's book referenced above, here are a couple of useful links from Sound On Sound.

Microphones.

Audio interfaces.

I will also add a couple of bits of advice from my own experience:

1) Always consider getting an interface with more channels than you need to allow for future expansion. Certainly something that will allow you to capture two microphones and / or a stereo signal at once.

2) Microphones are pretty mature technology now. Whilst there is some innovation going on with various modelling devices (where one mic pretends to be a different one), in general the best practice is pretty established. This is advantageous in two ways: 1) if you spend a lot of money on a microphone it will likely last you for ages (if not forever) and will probably always be a useful bit of kit, and 2) you can get good microphones for very reasonable prices. It is a win-win situation.

If you choose to go down this route remember to budget for microphone stands, pop shields and cables. You don't have to push the boat out, the basic stuff will do the job but if you're expecting to do a lot of live work with lots of rigging and de-rigging it can be worth investing in some more solidly made stuff.

But I've had my cheap stuff for ages and it's all still doing fine.

Beyond stereo

If you do start to branch out, or you want to record a more complex instrument (like a drumkit), or you want to get into spatial audio, then you're going to need a multichannel interface with multiple microphone pre-amps. This is another worm-can waiting to be opened so all I'll say here is to refer you to my comment above about estimating the number of channels you need then doubling it, and also to say that many multichannel interfaces are expandable, so you could buy an 8-channel unit now and then expand it to 16 or 24 channels in the future. 

But from a 'finishing your songs' perspective I think this is really only relevant for recording either multiple players at the same time or a drumkit.

DAWs

Once you have captured your sound you're going to need some way of processing the files, even if it's as simple as just recording another track on top of it. You could go 'old school' and buy a four-track cassette recorder but I really, really wouldn't recommend it. Please, just don't do this. 

Instead you'll need a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). This is a bit of software that allows you to record, edit, over-dub, tweak, stretch, distort, polish and generally manipulate your recorded sound.

There are plenty of options here and they largely fall into two paradigms. There are the loop and sample-based DAWs like Ableton Live, that tend to have a preference for live performance and electronic music, and then there are the linear recorder type DAWs (Cubase, ProTools, Logic, Reaper) that are essentially more like a computer-based tape-recorder. 

Quite a few of these DAWs come in multiple price points: basic free versions, low-cost middle versions with a few more features, and some really-quite-pricey full-fat versions. Others have a one-off flat fee for all you can eat, some are completely free. Most of them will do everything the others will do but in slightly different ways. Fortunately most of them also offer a trial period so you can have a play and see what works for you. If you've bought an interface then you might well find that it comes bundled with a version of one of them so that's a good place to start.

A few of them are platform-specific. If you've got a Mac then you'll probably have GarageBand already, if you like that but need more features then Logic is the next, ahem, logical step and is very reasonably priced for what you get. If you're on PC then Cakewalk by Bandlab is still available for free but is end of life. 

Here's a few more pointers on choosing a DAW, but the key thing is, make a choice and learn how to use it. Don't get bogged down in trying to see if one is better than another.

Monitoring

Once you've recorded your music you'll obviously want some way to listen back to it, that is to 'monitor' it. The cheapest and easiest way to do this effectively is with a pair of headphones. 

Headphones, like microphones, are pretty mature technology in general. This means that you can get some really quite nice ones at reasonable prices. In an ideal world you would want two pairs: closed-back for when you're recording (so that no sound leaks from the headphones to the microphone) and open-backed for mixing as they'll give you a more spacious and natural sound. 

Personally I'd start with a decent set of closed-back headphones as you can do both jobs on those and they're always useful things to have around in the future.

Headphones are not comfortable for everyone though (they cause my tinnitus to flare up after any kind of slightly extended use for example), and some things (like panning and reverb levels) can be more difficult to judge on headphones. So it can be very useful to have some speakers to listen on as well. Studio speakers are called monitors (not to be confused with the computer screen monitors) and are, guess what, another can of worms.

The other thing to remember about monitoring on speakers is that your room becomes part of the equation again. So if you're considering investing in monitor speakers, consider also investing in acoustic treatment for your room (this will be slightly different to your recording acoustic treatment sadly) or accept that you'll be doing the detail work on your headphones and using the monitors for cross checking. That's fine too.

Wrapping up

Gosh that's been a lot to cover, so let's recap:

You need a method of capturing your sound, you need a tool to manipulate the sound when you've caught it, and you need something to listen to it with.

That might be as simple as your smartphone, running Garageband, with your earpods.

It might be as complex as a multi-channel interface, many microphones, a fully-featured DAW and a set of studio monitors in an acoustically treated room.

Or anywhere in between. 

So let's go back to intent. We're trying to finish our songs and get them recorded and produced. What's the minimum you need to do that? What, realistically, might you add to that minimum to allow you to work in comfort and give you a bit of future proofing? I'd start there and see how you get on.

Oh yes, one more thing, there is a great deal of snake oil and nonsense around recording gear. You have to use X for this, only Y can do that, professionals all use Z etc. etc. etc. Ignore it. You could give a real professional a couple of Shure SM57s, a Zoom H4n and a pair of half-decent headphones and they'll give you a professional quality recording. You can give an amateur full access to Abbey Road and it won't sound as good. It's not about the gear. (But it does help to use the right tool for the job.)

Don't take my word for it, just read the opening paragraphs of this SOS Inside Track article about Charlie Handsome: https://www.soundonsound.com/techniques/inside-track-morgan-wallen-post-malone