News, sessions, and oddities from the Indaba community. Written and curated by Streeter Seidell.
About Streeter
Streeter Seidell is a comedy writer and (mediocre) drummer living in Brooklyn, NY. During the day he edits the front page of CollegeHumor.com but when the sun goes down he takes his place at the helm of the Indablog. He maintains a personal blog at StreeterSeidell.com and wants to make sure you know he once wrote something for the New York Times and that it was, in the words of his mother, "Amazing! You're so talented!"
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Friday November 09, 2007 at 02:00 PM |
Somtimes a great song is ruined because it feels empty. As anyone who has recorded music knows, it's just as important to fill in your sound as it is to get your lead tracks right. Here are a few simple ways to round out your sound for a nice, full track.
Multiply your sounds - you can do this a few ways and it is particularly helpful for filling out vocals and guitars. Let's take an example of an acoustic guitar.
- Recording multiple parts: To get a more full and interesting sound, rather than record the guitar part once, try recording it 2, 3, even 4 times and pan them in different directions. You can even vary the chord voicings so that you are playing some with open chords and some with bar chords, etc. The subtle differences in the performances will add some nice color and depth.
- Using one file: Another way to achieve a similar effect is to take just one performance and manipulate it in different ways. You could do this by....
- Recording the same instrument and performance using different techniques such as mic placement and input type. For instance, you could record the guitar direct out of the amp and also mic the amp - blending the two in the mix. Alernatively, you could use two mics to record the same thing but use different mic placement. In our guitar example, try placing one mic very close to the guitar, directed around the 14th fret and another far away in the room. Or, try one pointed right at the strumming hand to capture the percussive sound of the strumming. These may not sound good on their own, but together they can really create a full and dynamic sound. In any of these options you want to choose the right mics, and varying brand and specs will aso help capture different sounds. Or...
- You could do the same thing by taking one recording and manipulating it, post tracking. For example, you could take an electric guitar file, duplicate it, and apply some chorus to one and some reverb to the other. Some people will even go offset the tracks from one another. To do this, you want to zoom in really far and ever, EVER so slightly nudge one file so that there is a tiny, minute, difference between the two. I stress how little you want to do this because you want there to be a subconsciously audible difference, but you don't want the nudged file to be out of time with the other tracks. It's almost like a manual delay effect.
Another thing you can do is fill out the sound with some subtle lingering full chords in the background. You could do this with sustained chords on an organ, open chords on a guitar, or any instrument that can sustain chords over the changes.
Key to all of this, especially the last idea, is to be wary of how your filling effects creep into the mix. In other words, you don't want those that organ sound to dominate the song. You might not even want people to realize there is an organ there. Be conscious of that and when you sit down to do your mix don't say "Oh, but I can't really hear the organ." That's the point. It just adds color and fullness.
Of course, you could just crank the reverb and save some time, but where's the fun in that?
Have a recording tip? Send it to me at Streeter@IndabaMusic.com
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Saturday November 10, 2007 at 09:34 AM
I think this is extremely on point. I've recorded nearly 30 songs in the past year, and suprisingly a lot of the sound engineers I've come across do not have a solid grasp on this concept.
Saturday November 10, 2007 at 09:45 AM
This is a very good hint.
I just would like to comment that getting a fuller sound is one of these things which are worth doing, but not overdoing. Too many multiple layers may lead to a blurred sound in which each part is not neatly heard.
Gabriel
Saturday November 10, 2007 at 10:19 AM
Back in the height of the heavy metal daze it was a big deal to get a nice click sound from the bass drum. Metal headz wanted to hear the drumbeater pounding on the skin of the kick drum. With the proper mic placement and the drumhead being just tight enough, the engineer could usually get away with boosting the high end on the equalizer. This was tricky as you would start to loose the low end that you wanted from that drum.
I was working with this one band that just needed MORE click in the bass drum. I had EQ’ed this drum to where all the high end was boosted and all the lows were completely pulled out! The band was not happy as they still could not get “enough” click and I was not happy as the drum was starting to sound really bad.
What did I do?
I took a big brick (cinderblock) and placed it inside of his kick drum about a half-inch away from the front drumhead!
His beater would swing-up slamming the skin and the beater into the cinderblock producing this heavy click while still getting some bass out of the drum. I still had to EQ the track but it sounded great!
I don’t know how helpful this tip is in today’s music but I think my stronger point is that it is okay to do things differently than others – to be untraditional. As long as you are happy with the end results, in our case good sound, that is what matters.
I mean nobody knew about the brick but us – up until now!
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