In most modern recordings the lead vocals are likely to be very the centre of attention, as they carry the melody and the lyrics. For this reason, if you are using a guide track, make sure it includes a decent vocal take for the rest of the musicians to follow and perform alongside. I prefer to leave the final vocal overdub to very near the end of a session, because then the singer has a more complete and balanced mix to listen to, and will usually give you a better performance for it. Having said that, don’t ever throw the guide vocal track away – you never know, it might be the best take you get!

Continue Reading…

To record ‘the perfect’ electric guitar sound you need to know what you want to hear, what you can actually hear and how to bridge the chasm in the middle.

A lot of the tone and character that goes into a great guitar sound comes straight from the amp, so get into the studio and play around with the amp to see what different tones it can give you. Work with your guitarist, and keep adjusting the amp until you find a sound you like and get as close to ‘perfect’ as possible before you think about rigging mics. Beyond the usual high, mid and low tone controls, the amp you use may have reverb control – which is probably a spring reverb. Although spring reverb might sound low-tech it’s an effect instantly associated with lead guitar sounds thanks to the likes of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Kurt Cobain, so before you throw a reverb plugin over everything, see what you can get from the amp as it might just work! Getting the sound right at the amp make choosing and positioning a microphone easier, as you will already have an idea of how you want it to sound, and will save you time and effort in the mix.

Continue Reading…

sE Electronics have taken the tough steel grill and non-slip finished chassis from the existing  X1 condenser mic, and fitted it with a ribbon to produce the sE X1R. It may seem strange to completely redesign the mechanics and electronics of a microphone and then house it in an old body, but there is a good reason for that. Usually ribbon microphones are delicate, easily damaged by being dropped and the actual diaphragms are notorious for collapsing or tearing at high volume, but the X1R is not your usual ribbon microphone – this one’s robust.

Continue Reading…

Acoustic guitars are fairly simple to record as just a supporting instrument in a band, but can be very difficult to get just right as a solo instrument. If you just want a ‘nice’ guitar sound to beef up an existing mix, then a guitar with a naturally pleasant tone a decent condenser mic will probably get you there. However, if you are going for a particular sound, style or tone for a solo or lead part then it can get tricky. Each different guitar has its own distinct tone, and on top of that the subtle differences between microphones, and effect of changing their position are even more noticeable than on most other instruments. This is down to how the guitar actually transmits sound into the air, which isn’t very linear or consistent, and so the effect of moving a microphone a few inches in one direction is so audible, which is why they can be difficult to mic up.

Continue Reading…

Recording bass guitar is done by either mic’ing up the bass amp cabinet, or by taking a split of the signal directly after the guitar using a DI box. It’s also becoming increasingly popular to use a mixture of both, as it gives you more options and control over the bass tone in the mix. We will look at this in more detail when it comes to the mixing stage.

One good thing about using a microphone is that the bass amp provides a lot of colour and defines the actual tone of the bass. It’s arguable that the amp is actually vital to recording bass, because you only ever hear bass played live through one. The amplifier will probably have some eq and maybe compression built into it, and the speaker and the cabinet will add their own characteristic sound too. Without a mic, you are likely to have to work harder to get a nice full sounding bass. However, if you’re trying to isolate the bass from a kick drum or any other spill or room noise, then using a DI box can be a good solution as it will give you a very clean and dry sound.

Continue Reading…

The drum kit is probably one of the first instruments to overdub once you have a guide track down, but unfortunately it’s also one of the trickiest instruments to get sounding exactly how you want it to. It contains so many individual drums, chimes, cymbals and bells which are all different tones and timbres but all so physically close together that you are constantly trying to contain spill. Getting a solid stereo image of such a large collection of different elements can be hard, and getting the right sound from each component is even harder.

Continue Reading…

Putting a mic on the hi-hat is something that seems to be a knee-jerk reflex a lot of the time when recording drums, but actually the hi-hat might work just as well without one if you get the right drum overhead position, which is useful if you are short on channels. You might have seen the top snare mic angled to double as a hi-hat mic to save channels, but this is more of a live-sound trick because in a stereo mix the snare is almost always dead centre and will pull the hi-hat to the middle with it. There isn’t really a huge downside to putting a hi-hat mic up, as you can always choose to not use it if the mix works without it. The big advantage of having a dedicated hi-hat mic is that it gives you much more control over four areas; tone, volume, closeness and localisation.

Continue Reading…

The three major components that you should concentrate on and prioritize when recording a drum kit are; the kick drum sound, the snare drum sound and the choice and placement of overhead mics. In some situations, you may not want anything more complex than that, for example when recording a simple three piece kit or a jazz band then the overheads will provide enough definition on the toms without making them sound too close. Even pop or rock tracks might not need close mic’d toms if you are going for an open drum sound, or if it’s mostly acoustic anyway then slightly ambient toms probably work better.

You might be surprised at how decent the toms sound on just overheads, and it’s something that you should make the time to double check. If you don’t make the effort to get the toms sounding ok before putting close mics up, then you will have to battle against the tone that the overheads pick up, which will probably be up in the mix for the whole track. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you can just fix them in the mix, because it will take a lot more time and hard work then, especially considering how little they are actually hit in the average song.

Continue Reading…

The Shure SM58 has been the go-to mic in home and professional studios alike for decades, because it’s cheap, versatile and reliable.

Alongside the SM range, Shure also make PG and Beta series microphones. The PG series are essentially cheaper versions of each SM model, and the Beta series are basically a premium version. But if the reliable old SM58 was so great, should we really upgrade to the Beta 58A?

At first glance, the new Beta mic looks very similar to the original but it costs nearly half as much again. So what’s the difference and is it worth the extra cost?

Continue Reading…

The SSL LMC-1 is a free VST plugin which recreates the ‘listen mic’ compression that was built into SSL ‘E’ series desks. The compressor was originally put in the talkback channel from the studio to the control room. You needed to be able to hear someone on the other side of the room as someone standing next to the mic, so the compressor needed a very high compression ratio. It didn’t need to fulfill any other function, so a fixed attack and release was perfectly adequate.

For a while, that was its only function until an engineer named Hugh Padgham was using the listen mic channel to talk to Phil Colins in the studio, who then started to drum. Hugh liked what he heard, and a new drum sound was created! You can read the full story as part of this article.

Continue Reading…