Awesome and fun recording tricks and tips.

Manfred-Klose

the purpose of this thread will be to share recording tricks and tips on how to do fun stuff and things that aren't very common, i've got a few up my sleeve, i'll post them as i remember them.

i found this one by accident yesterday, and it sound pretty funky.

#Take a keyboard, one with a decent sounding acoustic piano in it or anything else that catches you attetion, velocity sesitive one would be better, run the mono output into a WAH pedal and in a stereo chorus or delay pedal, which goes to a DI and then to 2 channels into mixer/soundcard or depending on your setup if you need DI's. get tweaking and create some weird sounds if your next production might need something like this.

you can do all this in your DAW as well with plugins and midi generators, but the point is that is a fun experiment.

anyone else got some stuff to try out ?

FruitarGeek

Run a keyboard with an organ sound into a big muff - sounds wicked vintage

Manfred-Klose

will try it.

here something else.

#Take a WAV of an acoutic or clean guitar track that you recorded, reverse the audio in your DAW, then process a delay/ or reverb on the audio, check out delay tempo charts if you want to get it in time with the music(there is one on alan's website) if you are going to use a delay.
then reverse it back again, now the delay is going to work in reverse.
very spooky sounding effect.

AlanRatcliffe

Manfred Klose wrote #Take a WAV of an acoutic or clean guitar track that you recorded, reverse the audio in your DAW, then process a delay/ or reverb on the audio, check out delay tempo charts if you want to get it in time with the music(there is one on alan's website) if you are going to use a delay.
then reverse it back again, now the delay is going to work in reverse.

For bonus points, try the same with reverb. Done right, it creates a reverse envelope up to the start of the note. Use a ducking delay or reverb (or create one with a gate and side chain) and it'll keep the original sound uncluttered, just appearing before the notes or phrases. Take a listen to the vocal on Jethro Tull's Dun Ringill (Stormwatch) which uses both the reverse reverb and reverse delays (done the old fashioned way, by reversing the reels on the recorder).

Always print the reverb/delay onto a new track, gives you way more creative possibilities.

A gated reverb usually works best - you can set the gate decay to a note value. Position it opposite the dry signal in the stereo soundfield and autopan to the same position as the dry, setting the autopan time to the same note value.

Mo-Facta

Here's one you guys may find helpful for your drum recordings.

Not all of us have the luxury of having a large room to add natural ambience to our drums - something that is almost a requirement for realism and depth. But there is a way:

Convolution/Impulse reverbs.

First, you need an impulse response processor like the free SIR (Super Impulse Response processor).

Download: http://www.knufinke.de/sir/downloads/Sir_1011.zip

Then, you need some impulses. You can start with the Bricasti M7 impulses. I find them really natural:

Download: http://www.acousticas.net/World/IRs/AcousticasM7.zip

Sure, it's 100MB but they're free and some of the best reverbs around. The M7 is a R35 000 unit and one of the best outboard reverbs you can buy. There are also a lot of other places on the net to get impulses so happy hunting. I would start at www.noisevault.com, and http://www.voxengo.com/impulses/.

Ok, so now what you want to do is solo all of your drum tracks (preferably once you have a good mix of them) and insert the SIR plugin into the STEREO OUT of your project. Yes, the master 2 bus. Then you need to load an impulse by clicking the top right "Open File" button and then browsing to where ever you have saved the impulses (they are in .wav format):

As you can see, once you load an impulse, all the impulses contained in that folder will be loaded into the list on the right hand side of the plugin. Also, don't forget to turn off the dry signal! You want the reverb 100% wet.

Now, once you have picked the reverb you want (for me, usually a short studio or room reverb) you will want to adjust your drum tracks faders so that you are getting a good balance. For instance, I usually attenuate the kick drum quite a bit, along with the overheads. I don't want the kick to cause the reverb to flutter. NB. Remember where your faders were at before you moved them so you can restore the mix back to where it was when you're done.

I tend to think of the reverb as the room being heard through microphones. I try to envision what the room would sound like if there really was a drummer playing a real kit in a real room. This helps me get the balance that I want and to create a sense of realism.

Once I have the balance I'm looking for I set my L and R markers (depending on your DAW) and bounce down/export the resulting audio as a track. I usually split the L and R tracks into two mono tracks so I can pan them L and R and send them to a stereo group for later processing, if need be.

Restore your faders back to where they were and turn off SIR at the master bus and you've got a nice natural ambience for your drum tracks.

Cheers ?

Manfred-Klose

Wow thanks , i never got around to using impulses, will defenitely try it.

Malkav

Manfred Klose wrote Wow thanks , i never got around to using impulses, will defenitely try it.

Impulses rock man!

Also for those who like tweaky drum effects there's also...

http://illformed.org/plugins/glitch/

Mo-Facta

Manfred Klose wrote Wow thanks , i never got around to using impulses, will defenitely try it.

Well, you can actually do that trick with any decent reverb plugin. It doesn't have to necessarily be an impulse reverb. What's great about impulses is that they supply a slightly more real representation of an actual space, which is good for when you're simulating room mics. One other thing that's probably worthy of note is that a good room sound is actually a little known source of low end push for the bottom end of a drum mix. Often once I have my L and R ambience going to a stereo group, I'll insert a distortion plugin and sometimes a good compressor plugin to really smash the "room" into submission. The distortion does something pleasant to the midrange while the compressor will make the room sound like it's "breathing",which seems to push the low end of the kick in and out. It's not uncommon for me to EQ the room sound either. It's a sweet, sweet sound and I love it, especially for rock. Another thing is that using that trick with programmed drums serves to add another dimension of realism to something that could otherwise be perceived as robotic and sterile.

Cheers ?

AlanRatcliffe

I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use the convolution reverb on an aux buss (or even on your drum buss)? An aux buss 'verb lets you control how much ambience each drum track gets and if you change the mix of the drums at any point, the change is also reflected in the ambience.

Mo-Facta

Alan Ratcliffe wrote I'm not sure why you wouldn't just use the convolution reverb on an aux buss (or even on your drum buss)? An aux buss 'verb lets you control how much ambience each drum track gets and if you change the mix of the drums at any point, the change is also reflected in the ambience.

A fair comment. However, this trick is not just to add reverb. There are a few reasons and I'll be happy to list them:

1. Not everyone has a multi-core machine with huge amounts of processing power so this trick will inevitably enable you to save your CPU for other, more important duties and enable you to use more CPU hungry plugins.

2. It will save you the time of having to send multiple tracks to one aux track, which also eats up processing power.

3. The purpose of the trick is to simulate room microphones and not merely to add reverb. That is why I recommend impulses as they are more realistic than algorithmic varieties (although they also have their place, for sure). I added in my post to make sure you have a near-finished balance of the drums before you proceed so that you can maintain a natural approach. I also recommended splitting the resultant stereo file for this purpose. Once you have recorded a room sound with a stereo pair of mics there is no going back anyway, wouldn't you agree?

4. Adding a reverb plugin to a drum bus will cause the kick drum to flutter within the reverb because it will most likely be emphasized if you are mixing pop/rock and will be distracting to the listener (unless it is a deliberate effect). If you listen to a natural room recording of a drum set, the kick drum is usually not as loud as, say, the snare drum, which will be the most prominent component because it has the broadest bandwidth of any of the other drums and the widest dynamic range.

5. Visualization when you mix is everything. So is committing to a sound. You can tweak as much as you want, but there is something to be said about a printed track that you have committed to. It is more tangible. Using GOOD sounding impulses is also key. That is why I recommended the Bricasti impulses. You have to do very little to them to make them sound great and that is also key. The better the impulse, the less you have to labour. Not all reverbs are created equal.

6. In this case, auditioning the sound 100% wet is key because you're attempting to simulate what that drum set you just recorded (or programmed) sounds like in an actual room. This, IMO, is CRUTIAL to a realistic drum sound. Furthermore, because the reverb is now an audio file, whatever processing you apply will be less intensive than on an FX or aux track because the resulting audio (pre-processing) has already been rendered.

In closing, I just want to say that I think one of the worst things to happen to audio in the last 20 years is the fact that we have too many options as a result of the open-ended nature of DAW recording. Committing to how a track sounds as soon as your opinion forms is the best time to move on because, as Occam's Razor states:

The simplest answer is most likely the correct one.

Cheers ?