FabFilter has just released minor updates on all of their plug-ins solving few issues that surfaced since the last update from December 2014. You can find the list of issues that have been resolved by reading the article from Audio Fanzine here.
Recording Tips and Techniques
Preparing Backing Tracks For Your Touring Band
This video tutorial from Matt of One Time Mountain was posted by The Reaper Blog talks about the process of setting up a template and routing backing tracks in REAPER for a live concert. You can watch the video here.
Acoustic Pop Song With 3-Part Harmony Recorded on 36-Dollar Studio
Is it possible to record a professional sounding song with acoustic guitar and 3-part harmony on a home studio costing only $36? It is if you know how!
I recorded the chorus section of my song “Everything That Matters” (from the album “Everything That Matters“) using free recording software – Audacity, and a single USB mic that currently sells at B&H Photo-Video-Audio for only $36 (the Samson Q1U).
I double-tracked the acoustic guitar part (actually recording it twice onto separate tracks) and panned them left and right for a nice stereo sound. Then I sang the melody and two harmony parts, double-tracking each of those as well. That made for a total of 8 tracks.
I used noise reduction on all tracks to remove the low-level hiss associated with most USB mics. And the only other editing required was to use some EQ to remove p-pops in the vocals.
Then I just adjusted the relative volume os each track (mixing) and panned the harmony vocals left and right, leaving the melody vocals un-panned (so the lead singer can sound like he’s right in front of you), and saved the project. Then I exported the mix as a stereo wav file.
How does it sound?
I think it sounds pretty awesome. But you go ahead and decide for yourself whether you would have believed (before I told you:)) that this came from a $36 home studio? Below is an excerpt from our new course, Harmony Recording Awesomeness.
http://homebrewaudio.wistia.com/medias/0psju9y5w6?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=544
You can learn to do this and a LOT more cool vocal harmony recording techniques in our new course Harmony Recording Awesomeness. CLICK HERE to learn more about the course.
You Can Sound Like Honda's Harmony Singing Sheep
During Super Bowl 50 there was a Honda commercial featuring sheep singing awesome a cappella harmony, breaking out in song to Queen’s “Somebody to Love.”
If you – I don’t know – were inspired to record your own voice singing harmony and sounding like those sheep, we’ve got great news! We just released a new course showing you how to do just that.
Ken has done a few demos of what you could sound like, including some a cappella Queen (though it was Fat Bottomed Girls and not Somebody To Love). Check that out here: Sing Your Own A Cappella Harmony. You can, of course use the same techniques to record yourself singing with other people. But if you’re like Ken, you haven’t always had other singers around, there’s no reason not to just do it all yourself:).
Find out more about the new course, Harmony Recording Awesomeness by CLICKING HERE.
*Here is the song being sung by the humans (Queen):
Room Acoustics Made Easy To Understand
We are all about making the sometimes incomprehensible world of audio recording easier to understand. All too often, a simple concept is made needlessly confusing by the language used. And then there are topics which really ARE difficult to grok. Room acoustics is one of those topics that can baffle (pun intended:-P) even the smartest person. However, the home recording enthusiast doesn’t need to know EVERYTHING about acoustics – just a few important principles.
In a 2-part article over at AudioTuts, Rob Mayzes makes the need-to-know acoustics concepts easy to understand. Then he gives you several ideas – most totally free and a few paid – for creating your own vocal-booth-like isolation for you bedroom studio.
See his article here: http://music.tutsplus.com/tutorials/diy-vocal-booth-part-1-the-key-to-a-good-vocalvoice-recording–cms-25362 Enjoy!