9 May
2009
9 May
'09
5:27 p.m.
On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 8:06 AM, James Stone <jamesmstone(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Sat, May 9, 2009 at 2:11 AM, Mark Knecht
<markknecht(a)gmail.com> wrote:
That's really great. Thanks for taking the time with this.
Well, OK, I'm starting to get a picture in my mind. And not a very
good one, but at least it's a picture and place to start, so let's
start... :-)
In general there are two ways I approach getting a new piece of music
on disk - record it live and then work on the pieces or start from
scratch and build it up track by track. Assuming that I correctly
understand that you are part of a band and you're new to this I'd
suggest the former and building from there. However that probably
comes a bit later.
I'm now going to snip ALL the interesting but possibly distracting
stuff in the middle and focus on the ONE thing I'd suggest you do.
<SNIP>
I had a
quick mess around with a bus with TAP reverb, and only 1
reverb.. It gave the track a more "live" sound to my ears - more
real maybe, but lacking some of the dynamics of a studio
recording.. any idea where I am going wrong?
A
Absolutely impossible for me to tell from a simple email. Possibly you
are expecting too much at this point in the process? Maybe it's real.
We can talk through it, for weeks. I like this stuff. It hardly gets
discussed around here. I am all for more. OK, breaking it down, how does the room compare
to your studio
experience?
More bunker-ish, less studio-like! Room has reflective concrete walls,
I am using the PA mixer to mix the mics, Although turned down very
low, there is also the PA output coming back into the room!! (is there
a way around this without buying my own mixing board?? - I guessed
that disconnecting the speakers from the PA might not be very
advisable for the health of the amplifier??)
How do the mics compare?
I have a condenser mic (Samson C01) which I could not use because of
the feedback from the PA. Everything was recorded with 1 or 2 Shure
sm58s
One thing I was considering, if you are amenable, is to post both
songs in their raw (ardour) form - the first (professional-ish) one
was done in protools, but I have imported individual audio tracks into
ardour and have got pretty much the same sequence as far as I can
tell. The second has all the tracking problems I mentioned - bass
guitar for example, which was recorded by micing the amp in the
low-budget version has some boom where it hits the resonant frequency
of one of the nearby toms! Drums (although recorded with 2 mics only
has one track as the mixer/PA had no pan function!) I would really
appreciate it if you could listen to the raw form and then say how you
would approach them (could repost the mixed versions if you have the
time?) I would find this really educational, but I realise it is
asking quite a lot, so I am happy either way.
James
For me anyway I don't think this would be productive, at least not
yet. If your problems are primarily tracking, (or at least initially
tracking) which they sound like they are right now, then why mess with
a whole mix? Far too complicated.
What I would do is, for the purpose of discussion, focus on getting
one single good track on disk. Sorry, but I don't remember what you
said you play. (Or if you even play! I'm old an hardly remember dinner
last night.) None the less, let's say you played one of the guitars on
the studio production. I'd suggest we concentrate on duplicating that
sound as best we can. We don't need the PA at all, assuming you are
playing through some sort of amp. If you simply listened to the studio
mix and played your guitar along with it, recording it into Ardour,
then we'd get an initial indication of how the room, guitar, guitar
amp, mics, preamps, A/D and Ardour are working for you and what you're
able to do so far. We could then work on ideas for improving it.
As I reread your email, I'm now confused as to whether you are using a
mic preamp of some type or are using the PA itself as the mic preamp
and driving Ardour from that. If that's the case I think you're going
to have a very hard time getting the results you are looking for and
might want to consider even an inexpensive stereo USB preamp. If you
need to go that way then make sure you check out Linux compatibility
carefully as so little stuff really works under Alsa. But, to be
clear, if you are using your PA then post a single track of the guitar
playing the same part as something in the studio mix and we'll go from
there.
And no, you don't absolutely need to buy a hardware mixer to make good
mixes. Ardour has more than enough capability in that area. But you
can't make a good mix if you can't get good sound on the individual
tracks.
If you're interested in doing this then drop a note back. I understand
it might take a bit of time to get to it.
Cheers,
Mark
P.S. - I'll give you one hint... From my experience you won't get the
best results recording guitar or bass with a drum set in the same
room. ;-)