Recording on a Dime

Jun 14, 2005 5:11 PM

           
 

As an engineer, you need to have a solid vocabulary of mics and outboard gear and be able to set up quickly without having to audition a bunch of equipment. If someone shows up with an instrument I've never recorded, the first thing I do is ask how other people have miked the instrument. Assuming the musician was happy with the previous recording, he or she hopefully will know how the previous engineer got the sound. Heed the musician's advice, but also use your ears — what worked in a previous situation might not work the next time around.

Recording on a tight timeline means that you, the engineer, might not always get to take a break between setup and tracking. But that doesn't mean you should expect the same sacrifice from the musicians — going straight from setting up to playing can be a difficult transition, and you definitely want the musicians in top form.

Whenever possible, I schedule the session so that, once setup is done and everyone is happy with the sound, the band can take a break before starting to record. That gives the musicians time to clear their heads and get in the mood to play (while I'm busy documenting setups, double-checking connections, and calling home to say, “Don't wait up”).

I know from unpleasant experience that once a band starts overdubbing, the whole project can soon grind to a halt. Some musicians

can overdub quickly and efficiently, but they are the exception, not the rule. I've had projects in which I thought that everything was done, and then the singer decided he needed to fix a verse. Nine songs and six hours later, I was left with half the mix time we had originally scheduled. That is one reason I try to structure the recording so that everything, or as much as possible, is cut live. Still, it's nearly impossible to capture everything live, so the next step is to overdub as efficiently as possible.

When overdubbing in a hurry, stick with one instrument and go through all the songs. That might seem like common sense, but sometimes bands want to finish each song one at a time, and that's tremendously inefficient. Rather, set up for, say, the guitar overdubs and roll each song, and then do all the vocals, and so on.

FIG. 6: Streamline electric-guitar overdubs by having an array of amps standing by. Shown are (left to right) a 1961 brownface Fender Super Reverb, a blackface Fender Deluxe Reverb with a Royer R-121 in front and an Electro-Voice RE20 behind, a 50W Marshall JMP Mark II head on a Marshall 4x12 slant cab, and a Cage 18/00 head on a Sonicord 1x15 cab. The room mic is a Neumann KM 84.

When it comes to overdubbing electric guitars, I have a few tricks to help keep things rolling. Guitar sounds tend to vary from song to song, so I try to cover the sonic spectrum by setting up three or four different amps at once (see Fig. 6). I then set up two or three mics — typically the Royer R-121 in front, a Shure SM57 or Electro-Voice RE20 for the back of the amp (if it's an open-backed cabinet), and usually a room mic such as a Neumann KM 84. I assign the front and rear mics to one bus (again, check the polarity of the rear mic) and record the close signal on one track and the room mic on another. If I'm short on tracks, I'll blend the room mic in with the close mics; however, I prefer to pan the room mic away from the close mics to get a wider sound without having to use artificial reverb. In addition, having the room on its own track gives me control over the amount of room reverb in the mix.