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Archives for February 2016

My First Home Music Recording – How I Split Myself in Three

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3-of-Me[This is one of the first posts I published – if not THE first – for Home Brew Audio. I thought it would be cool to take a look back. This is especially interesting since our latest course is Harmony Recording Awesomeness, which shows you how to actually split yourself (well, your voice, anyway) in three. Check out our other tutorial courses here.]
It took over 20 years to get here – to a place where I have done so much audio recording (some of it really bad at first:)) that I can teach others how to do it without having to go through all the technical translation and trial/error. You can use my learning curve.
But why did it take so long and how did I get started?  Well, I was a geeky teenager with only one thing I thought I was good at…music!  I was mainly a singer, which eventually landed me the girl…but geeky high school boys who sing?  Well, not all that sexy.  ANYWAY…..
I sang all the time, much to the chagrin of…well…anyone who was around me really.  Not because I sucked (at least I didn’t think I did;)), but because for some reason, someone apparently deemed bursting into song in public places some sort of social no-no.  Whatever.  It didn’t really stop me.  In fact, when I was in 8th grade, singing solo was not enough for me any more!  ”Without Love,” by the Doobie Brothers, just sounded so naked without the other voices.  And none of my friends…I mean NONE…even knew what I was talking about when I mentioned harmony.  The best I could manage was for THEM to sing the melody (read: LEAD VOCAL), so the one of us who knew how could sing at least ONE harmony could do so.  But this was completely unsatisfactory.  If creating real live harmony meant giving up the lead vocal AND only ending up with 2 parts (almost all wicked cool harmony has at least 3 parts), I had to find a better way.
I began to fantasize about ways to sing harmony with myself!  Maybe there was a surgery…or some sort of mystical ventriloquist trick I could learn to sing harmony lines with myself.  That alien on Battle Star Galactica could do it!  Ehhh, but she had 3 mouths.  No fair!  Sigh.  Then one day I was digging (very innocently, of course) through my parent’s garage looking for nothing in particular.  What I found was something very interesting…A TAPE RECORDER.  I started playing with it and soon realized that I could at least solve ONE of my current harmony woes…I could sing the lead vocal part AND one harmony!  Still only 2 parts, and it would be somewhat “less-than-live”, exactly 50% less I guess;).  But who cares, I could sing along with my own voice and thought it was cool.  But it was not AWESOME.  I now wanted AWESOME.
Seals and Crofts were cool.  Simon and Garfunkel were cool.  But “Carry On Wayward Son,” by Kansas was AWESOME.  “Dance With Me,” by Orleans was also awesome.  What was different about THOSE songs?  3-part (at least) harmony!  I needed it… I was haunted by it.  I started hearing 3 and 4-part harmony everywhere…The Eagles, Yes, The Beatles, The Mamas and the Papas, Asia, Van Halen, CSN, The Who.  The weird thing was…I seemed to be the only person who could hear it!  I’d learn all 3 parts and try to teach them to my friends who actually could sing.  I failed.  They just didn’t get it.  AAARRRGGGHHH!
Then one day I noticed that my brother had a small radio that ALSO had a tape player in it.  And there was a little flat round thing that said “mic” under it.  Huh?  It didn’t LOOK like a mic.  But when I pushed the “record” and “play” buttons down at the same time, it recorded what I was saying.  Cool!  Oops.  I seem to have just recorded over my brother’s ELO tape!  Maybe he won’t notice.  Maybe he’ll decide he doesn’t like ”Evil Woman” any more.  Maybe he won’t notice that it was MY voice inserted in the middle of the chorus.  Or maybe I could just arrange for the tape to disappear.  After all, it was HIS fault.  Who buys a cassette album and doesn’t poke out the tabs on the top that prevent you recording over it?  No matter, I had made the ultimate discovery…how to sing 3 and 4 part harmony WITH MYSELF.  Muhuhwhahahaha!
I set my tape recorder up and recorded myself playing acoustic guitar and singing “This Boy,” by the Beatles.  Then I put a BLANK tape into my brother’s boom box, put it next to my purloined ancient tape recorder, pressed the “record/play” buttons, then played the tape I just recorded (me playing and singing “This Boy”).  When the choruses came, I sang one harmony along with the boom box, then listened to the result.  A bit of hiss, but otherwise it was me playing guitar and singing harmony with myself!  Then I played THAT tape and sang a second harmony with it as I recorded with the my tape recorder.  The result was MAGIC!!!  I actually had to stop several times and start over because I was laughing so hard as I sang a 3rd harmony WITH MYSELF.  I was hooked.
Of course I carried the tape with me everywhere I went and forced all my friends to listen.  Most of them actually did.  The “hiss” noise was really awful too.  You used to get quite a lot of hiss just recording ONE TIME on those cassettes.  Just imagine that multiplied by 3!  But I didn’t care.  I had made my first “multi-track recording,” plus caused some sort of psychological damage, I think.  Hearing 3 of myself at the same time coming out of a machine was just….different.  Actually, that explains a lot, now that I think of it.  Oh well.  Water under the bridge now.  What’s done is done;).
So, do you want to sing harmony with yourself?  With no hiss?  Thanks to the computer age, you can!  And you probably won’t need to buy any equipment.  Learn how with our tutorials here.
More embarrassing (and hopefully amusing) stories to come!  Until then…
Cheers!
Ken

Double Tracking Guitars on REAPER

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Here’s a video tutorial from The Reaper Blog about recording doubled guitars on Reaper.  Check out the video here. It’s the best way I know of to get a huge guitar sound – even better than recording a single guitar with a stereo mic (or pair of mics).
to summarize the process, simply record your guitar on one track. Then record the SAME part again, on a second track. Once that is done, just pan one of the tracks to the left and the other track to the right. The resulting sound will be a really cool stereo acoustic guitar sound. Try it. You’ll love it:).
 
 

Condenser vs Dynamic Microphone: What Is The Difference?

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Girl-Dynamic-vs-CondenserCondenser vs dynamic microphone? You’ve probably wondered what the difference was between them? Maybe you didn’t know there WAS a difference:).
You are not alone. Microphone technology is not that easy to understand.
To add to the confusion, the different types of mics usually have scary-sounding names like “large-diaphragm condenser,” and are often differentiated from each other by more strange and intimidating terms like “transformerless” or “field-effect transistor.” To heck with that! I just want to know what mic to use and how it will sound.
Welcome to the world of jargon. Computer geeks have their jargon and so do audio geeks. At the end of the day I think we’re stuck with some of these terms. But I’ll try to clue you in to the things you should know, and the general rules-of-thumb for use. That should give you a starting point at least, without having to earn a degree in electrical engineering (although if you have one of those, it can be VERY handy in understanding microphones).
There are two main styles of mic, the condenser, and the dynamic. Don’t worry about WHY they are called these things for now. Just remember that they are. All mics need to convert sound into electricity so it can be plugged into amplifiers and speakers and stuff. The main difference is how the mics do that conversion.

First – What Is Sound?

You’ll find it helpful to understand just what sound really is. That will make it easier to understand the difference between the types of microphones.
Sound/audio is the result of air molecules suddenly bouncing back and forth. When you hear something, it’s because that thing caused some movement in the air, which caused waves to start making the air molecules vibrate back and forth. Think about what happens when you drop a rock in a pond. The rock’s energy hits the water and causes an up-and-down motion that moves through the water. It’s basically the same thing with air.
When those “air waves” hit the microphone, the insides of the mic respond in a certain way. In dynamic mics, it causes a physical movement, sort of like what happens when waves move under a boat. The waves cause the boat to physically move up and down on the water.
In a condenser mic, there isn’t physical movement. The pressure of the waves hit the “diaphragm” and respond to the back and forth pressure of the waves.

Dynamic mics

shure sm58 dynamic mic
Shure SM58 dynamic mic

These mics use a moving coil and a magnet to turn sound into the needed electrical signal. Like I mentioned above, sound waves cause a physical movement in the mic. In fact, dynamic mics are really just loud-speakers in reverse. You know that film that make up the cone of your woofers? The one you can see bouncing back and forth when music comes out of it? There’s a small, flat one of those attached to a spring (coil) inside a dynamic mic.
In the middle of the spring is a magnet. When you scream into the end of a dynamic mic on stage, it makes the spring bounce up and down. That bouncing results in changes in the magnetic field, which makes the spring feel all funny inside (something about how magnets can “induce” some sort of sickness in coils of metal nearby.
RE20-Microphone-Picture
Electro-Voice RE20 dynamic mic

Some folks call it “induction,” but I think it’s just magic). Once the spring starts feeling odd, it sends out an electrical signal, kinda like “spring-puke.” And voila, an electrical signal that can be sent to an amplifier. Dynamic mics are rugged and can stand up to lots of loudness and abuse, which is why they are preferred for live performances. Also, they can be used in the studio for drums and electric guitar amps.
One example of a common dynamic mic is the Shure SM58 (see picture above). Another example of a dynamic mic is a higher-end type often used in the broadcast arena called the Electro-Voice RE20. that’s what I currently use in my studio both for voice over and for singing.

Condenser mics

NT2-A large diaphragm condenser

These mics need an electrical charge in order to work. That charge usually comes from “phantom power” (yeah, I know…remember what I said about the terms) that is available from mixers or amplifiers. Once it’s powered up, a condenser mic uses a bunch of EE (electrical engineering) formulas to turn the changing distance between two “plates” (“sound” makes one of the plates move back-and-forth) into the needed electrical signal. Condensers are more sensitive and quieter (and usually more expensive) than dynamic mics. They are typically used in the studio as opposed to the stage.
Because of the differences in how the mics are made, dynamic mics do not need phantom power.

Large Diaphragm Condensers (LDC)

The big ones – where you speak into the side instead of the end (called large diaphragm condensers, oddly enough:-P) – are great for vocals and sometimes acoustic guitar (obviously other things too, but those are the biggies). The large diaphragm condenser I use most often – usually for vocals – is the Rode NT2-A (see pic on the left above).

Small Diaphragm Condensers (SDC)

shure sm81
Shure SM81 small diaphragm condenser

The small ones – (sometimes called cigars or pencil-mics) – are best on acoustic guitars, other acoustic string instruments. They’re also great for miking the speaker in a talking-head video. The small diaphragm condenser that I have is the Shure SM81, pictured on the right.
See my article How To Get Good Audio On Your Videos for how to do this. There’s a video on that article page as well.
I hope my glib, and rather juvenile explanation was at least a little bit useful. If nothing else, I hope you got a chuckle out of it.
If you’d like to learn how to get started recording good quality audio on a home studio costing $5.00 or less, click here for quick, easy but powerful video tutorials.  Home recording is easier and less expensive than you can imagine.
Toodles!
Ken