Digital recording tips for beginners like us

Firstly don't be intimidated, if you think you have a good ear for sounds, it's definetely worth trying to record your own music on your own terms.

But I think i need help tho.

The web is a fantastic source of info. Sites i found invaluable whilst making Fetch the Parrot Blanket are the sound on sound site (has a monthly hard copy Mag which is good too).They have articles about every single facet of recording, mixing and producing: type in 'compression' or 'drum mikes' in their search engine and a whole list of informative articles will appear. Tweak Headz. is also a mine of useful info.

But don't be put off by the wealth of knowledge out there or all the jargon and tech speak-there is always more than one correct way of doing something, so my advice would be to get stuck in and learn as you go.

Important things to check out before you start buying equipment:

If you are thinking about buying a portastudio of some kind, or a soundcard for your computer, you will need to think about how many tracks can be recorded at once. (work out how many will you will need and add a couple more!)
Something else to think about is the quality of the audio when recorded(most portastudios record in either 16bits or 24bits -24bits is better quality).
Other things to consider are:
How many inputs are XLR inputs and how many are line (XLR inputs produce a stronger signal)
How are you going to mix the recording and what options for EQ,compression and general effects will there be?
How will the data be stored and if necessary transfered?

So what about gear?

It is really worth trying to get hold of the best quality gear that you can afford, so do your research thoroughly before you spend.Having said that, we used mainly budget equipment for the making of our second album.Some equipment we bought as a group, some we already owned and some was borrowed.

The main recorder was a 24 track digital portastudio (Tascam 2488), which is easy to use and very intuitive. I would definetely recommend it. It was a group purchase, which felt a bit risky for us at the time, but definetely chepaer than a week in a studio!

How did you record Fetch the parrot blanket?

The body of all the album was recorded in a rather bare room at the fantastic RampART social centre and creative space in london. We brought our portastudio,speakers,amps,headphone amp and cables and set up in a tiny room which opened out onto a slightly bigger space. We were lucky in that that we could make a 'control room' and 'live room'.

Dawn instinctively felt that the best sound for the drums would be in the corner of the room, so we went with that and took some time trying to get the drums sounding good. We hung some blankets in the room to dappen it slightly as it was very bare, but we thought a ringy reverby sound would be OK for drums. We didn't really know how it would sound as we had never recorded in that space before and had only used the portastudio once.

Miking the kit.

For the drums we used 4 mics, 2 for overheads, 1 for the kick and 1 on the snare. The snare mic was a SM57 which are classic so called 'industry standard' snare mics (also can be used for everything else!) They cost about £70. The kick mic we used was a dedicated kick drum mic -AKG D112. We used 2 Rode mikes as overheads (NT3s), but lots of people seem to swear by AKG C1000s (which I would like to try on the next album!) We recorded some takes and then after some fiddling around with positioning mics, the drums began to sound quite rocking. However later at the mixing stage I could hear that the snare and kick drums sounded a bit lacking and they needed a lot of 'fixing'. This is a common problem and next time round we will just take more time over these drums.

Strings and things.

We recorded the drums with the bass whilst zoe sung guide vocals.We used a Pod to simulate a bass amp, which meant that there was no spill onto the drum mics, but we were not that familiar with it and didn't get the best sounds out of it -some of the bass parts were ditched and rerecorded later.

Next the guitar parts were laid down. We used 2 mics on the guitar amps (SM57 and rode NT2). (These were later blended together at the mix stage.)
Zoe preferes the sound of her acoustic cello for recording and we miked that using the NT2. Time spent in studios in the past gave us a good idea where to position mics etc.

Bentstring Studio.

Additional parts were laid down in my makeshift bedroom studio. For nearly all the vocals on the album we were lucky to be able to borrow a Rode NT2, which is a good condenser mic but don't be put off if you can't afford a condensor mike (although there are budget ones around now for very very cheap) I think recording vox in a bedroom is totally fine -my bedroom is very damp sounding, but the radiator gave a bit of a ring which we had to flatten by covering it with blankets. We also took our the mirrors and drew the curtains.

Mixing.

The other band purchase, was a dedicated music computer, which I felt we needed as my personal computer is way too old and slow to handle lots of audio and effects. I transfered the audio data from the portastudio via usb onto the computer.The album was then mixed using Cubase SX.
Mixing your own band is difficult as you need to be impartial. There is bound to be differences of opinion. Often new parts may take a while to grow on band member who are use to hearing things in a set way. Sometimes its also useful to bear in mind gut reactions to new ideas!

The basics of mixing are not difficult to understand, but its easy to loose perspective as you wade deep into the heart of the beast. Think carefully about panning (where to place the sounds) and EQ (how sounds work together) Effects are great for adding emphais to the meaning of a sound. Then individual tracks need to be balanced (volume wise) against each other. That's it in a nutshell!

My approach was to try and serve the song and think about what the song needed at any particular point -but everyone has their own way in. There is not really a right or wrong approach. You will develop your own style and way of working.I found it helpful to listen to the mixes at different volume levels and in different parts of my room as well as outside my bedroom door. Later it was important to hear the mixes on different speakers to get a sense of perspective.

As I went on, the main thing that noticably improved the mixes was getting the compression set right on the drum overheads and putting enough reverb on the snare. It was also useful using a spectrum analysis to see how much of one frequency a track had. Annoying frequencies can be notched out with EQ.Another last minute delibratation was about placing guitars in mono or stereo, and in the end I went with nearly all the guitars in mono. Other engineers prefer guitars in stereo.

Other things to consider are the quality of the effects and on this album only software effects were used.(we couldn't afford any more hard wear!)The plugins made by Waves sounded better to me than the ones shipped with Cubase....

You might dread the time when band mates have to hear all your hard work, but it's good to get everyone involved -in gertrude, different people had crucial ideas for how things should sound and also had ideas for laying additional parts, which we had the luxury of trying out as we went along.

Hope you have found this useful.
Bon Voyage!