mastering

How To Record Acoustic Music At Home – Step-by-Step

January 7, 2011 by Ken 8 Comments

Recording acoustic guitar, along with some voices and other instruments, is one of the most common home recording activities out there. Today I thought I’d describe the techniques I use when recording this type of music. If you’d like to get an idea of how my recordings sound (pretty-much all acoustic/folk/singer-songwriter type music), you can hear a bunch of samples here: Ken Theriot’s Music.
I recently finished recording a full CD of seasonal music, Ken and Lisa Theriot’s The Gifts of Midwinter, and I’ll be using one of the songs from that album as a sort of case-study for this article. Before we start, take a listen to the song here:

This song is close to “as basic as it gets.” It’s acoustic guitar, one voice singing, and a bass guitar. Here’s how I recorded it:

Recording Equipment

Let’s start with the microphones. For the guitar parts, I used a Shure SM-81, which is a thin pencil-style condenser microphone. The mic was plugged into my computer interface box, which in my case is an E-MU 1820m. It’s about 6 years old now. You can pick up a similar audio interface like that today starting at about $75. One example is the M-Audio M-Track, which you can get for just over $100. Plus it comes with Ableton Live Lite music creation software.
Anyway, that got the sound into my computer. To record the sound, I used my favorite recording and mixing software, Reaper, which you can pick up for $40 as long as it doesn’t make you more than $20,000 a year (honor system!).
For the voice I did the same thing as with the guitars, except there was a different microphone involved, the Rode NT2-A.
For the bass guitar, I used a “direct inject” box called the Line 6 Tone Direct similar to this one.

The Step-by-Step

First, I told Reaper to open a new project/song file and set the metronome to the correct tempo and time signature. I then turned on the click-track so everything I played would be synced to the same time.
Then as I listened to the click-track in my headphones, I played the guitar part onto the first track in Reaper. Next I started a 2nd track and played the same guitar part again. Then I panned the 1st track 100% to the right and the 2nd track 100% to the left. That gives the guitar a large stereo sound.
I opened a 3rd track and recorded one more guitar part. I put a capo on my guitar, transposed the chords, and played some different finger-style guitar in this higher register. I panned this guitar part about 20% to the right.
I then opened a 4th track and sang the vocal part, leaving it panned “dead-center” (panning – 0%).

home recording software — Reaper, by Cockos

Next I opened a 5th track and recorded a bass guitar part. I plugged the bass into the Line 6 box, told Reaper to bring sound in from the Line 6 device, and simply played along. I left the bass in the center of the stereo field (panned 0%) like the vocal.
I then listened to all the tracks together, altering the volume of each track so everything could be heard properly (this is the “mixing” part).
When it sounded good, I “rendered” or “mixed down” the project, resulting in a single stereo song file.
Finally, I opened the rendered song file in my audio editing program called “Adobe Audition.” I clipped off any extra space or noise from just before and just after the song, fading the end out smoothly. I made sure the overall volume as good, not too loud, not too soft, and saved it.
Finito. Have another listen to the finished product here: [jwplayer config=”Custom Audio Player-200″ mediaid=”15049″]
Please feel free to post any questions you may have about what I did to record this song in the comments section below.
Happy recording!
Ken

PC Recording Software – The Two Kinds You Need For Home Audio Recording

December 26, 2010 by Ken Leave a Comment

PC recording software comes in many different types and capabilities. What I want to focus on here is software you can use to record music or voice overs onto your computer. That narrows it down to two categories of audio recording software: programs to use for “tracking” or getting the sound into the computer, and programs used for editing audio after it has been recorded.

Audio Tracking Software

First off I should mention that there is considerable overlap between the two kinds of software I am describing, but the main difference is that one is primarily used to record the sound (music, voice over, etc.), and the other is primarily used to change the audio in some way, usually by altering the actual audio file (destructive editing). For audio tracking (our first type of software) you will absolutely want the ability to multitrack. What I mean by this is that you need to be able to record one thing on one track (say, an acoustic guitar), a second thing (say, a singer’s voice) on a second track that will play back AT THE SAME TIME as the first track, etc. If a tracking program is capable of multitrack recording, the number of tracks you can create (remember…all playing back at the same time) is usually unlimited for all intents and purposes. That means you’ll be able to do some very cool things like record yourself singing harmony with yourself (a quartet or entire choir!), add guitar, drums, piano, etc. and be a one-person band. This is truly the killer app for computer recording.
In the old days (like in the 90s and before….so yeah, not THAT old), it was difficult and expensive to do multitrack recording. When using audio tape, the professionals used tape so wide, usually two inches, and moving so fast through a recording machine (usually 15 inches per second) that there was minimal noise and maximum audio quality. Consumers were left with two choices, pay to rent time at a commercial studio, or buy a machine yourself. Regular people could typically only afford multi-track cassette recorders whose maximum track count was usually 4 because cassette tapes were so narrow. Because of the limitations, audio quality was not terrific coming from these consumer multitrackers.
So maybe you can imagine why it is such a big deal that software allows good audio quality and unlimited track count! Anyway, audio tracking programs are frequently referred to as digital audio workstations (DAWS). You “lay down” (record) one track, then another, then another, etc. until you’ve recorded all you need. Then you pan each track to make it sound like it’s coming from the left side of the listener, the right side, or the middle. You might also want to put some effects on each track to get them to sound just right. When you’re done with all that you mix all the tracks down into a stereo file. Nowadays this is also called rendering.

Audio Editing Software

Like I said, there is significant overlap between these two types of audio program. For example, most editors can also record audio as well. But you usually can’t do multitrack recording with an editor. For the purpose of this article, I want to focus on the editor’s use once multiple tracks have been mixed down/rendered to a single file. Sometimes this is called mastering. Though in truth, audio editors have many other uses.
So after you’ve mixed all your audio tracks and files down to one final stereo sound file in your DAW, you’re ready to use your editing software. The main difference now is that you’re working on how one single file sounds, rather than how a bunch of different bits of audio sound, alone and together with the other bits of audio. That is such a big mindset difference that in the music business it is common for different people entirely to do each job. For most home recording projects though, we frequently end up doing both jobs.
You open the file in the editing program and turn it into a final product by slicing, fading, turning up, turning down, and other actions that change the audio in some way. For example, if I were doing the final edits for a song, I would make sure any extraneous noise at the beginning and end of the song are cut out, and that the song starts and ends smoothly. Sometimes there’s a count-in, or someone coughing just at the start or end. An editor can slice that right off.
Next you’ll want to pay attention to loudness. In order to get the entire song loud enough, you may need to turn parts of the song down before you can increase the average loudness of the file. You can read more about this process of compressing or limiting audio in another article on the Home Brew Audio site.
Other things you can do in the final editing stage is filter out parts of the song that may be too loud, like certain bass frequencies, or SSS sounds, etc. Then you might want to add some effects like echo or reverb.
When you’ve finished editing your song, you save it in the editing program as a single stereo file (though it could be mono or even surround these days). Now the audio is ready to use in any way you see fit.
Examples of tracking software, or DAWS are: Reaper, Pro Tools, and Cakewalk Sonar. Popular editors include Audacity, Adobe Audition and Sound Forge.
So as a review, there are two main varieties of audio software, tracking programs and editing programs. You use the first type to record all the different audio onto tracks, apply track effects and mix all the tracks together to create one single audio file. Then you open the file in your editor and snip, stretch, massage, squash and polish it until it sounds just right, and you save it as the final product. Believe it or not, that is a nutshell version of audio production in general:).

What Are The Secrets of the Audio Mastering Mystics?

September 21, 2010 by Ken 1 Comment

audio mastering magician — Mastering Mystic?

Have you ever seen the liner notes of an album proclaim that the CD was recorded at one place, mixed at another, and then mastered at yet a third place? Have you ever wondered what “mastering” is? You’re not alone. The true masters at mastering (see what I did there?…OK, moving on:)) guard their mastering tips and techniques like gold.
Recording magazines frequently run articles on mastering audio, revealing just enough information to sometimes convince folks into not trying it home. Mastering engineers have gone through years of highly specialized training and have been anointed in clandestine ceremonies where they are sworn to secrecy on pain of death. Or maybe I’m getting that confused with some other secret society? It doesn’t matter. What matters is that the message is almost always something like “mastering audio is such a subtle, complex, and downright dangerous thing to do without the right training and tools that you’d be a fool to attempt it yourself, unless you have the tattoo.” Sorry, that last part was another kind of secret society. I keep getting them mixed up for some reason.
Here is what is generally known about the ancient and mystical art of mastering. It happens to your audio after it has all been mixed down to a single stereo file (or 2-channel tape in the old days). After this point in the process, there isn’t much you can do to fix certain problems, like one thing being louder than another, because both things are together on the same track. So the basic process from this point is to prepare the mixed audio for the final CD. Let’s use a music album as an example.

multitrack recording — Mixing 4 Tracks Down

Once all 12 or so songs are mixed down, and can be listened to on a CD player, it would be nice if they all sounded like they were at the same basic volume right? It would also be good if the time between songs were short and consistent so you don’t have to wait 15 seconds between songs one and two, while only waiting 2 seconds for other songs, etc. So at the end of the day, “mastering” is about taking the last steps to ensure an audio product is polished up and ready for the consumer.
Beyond the basic logistics of volume and timing, mastering also looks at frequency response and dynamics. Basically that means they make sure there isn’t too much bass, treble (high frequency), or any other frequency dominating the audio. Believe it or not, lots of audio mixing is done in project studios these days (read: home studios). And it’s the rare bedroom that allows a human being to accurately hear audio over loudspeakers (and avoid mixing with just headphones…trust me on this). So that means most audio was mixed by someone hearing something incorrectly because the room either ate some frequencies and made others sound louder than they actually were. Likely both of those things happened. When a mastering engineer listens to the mix in an acoustically accurate room (required by mastering mysticism handbook, ch. 2, verses 6-20….joking), it will sound, well, wrong. If the mixing space hyped the bass/low frequencies, the mixer would have turned the bass parts way down in the mix to make it wound right in the room. But in the mastering facility, it will sound like the bass parts are missing. Likewise for the opposite effect when certain frequencies are swallowed in the mix room.
In an acoustically accurate space, a mastering engineer can usually correct these imbalances if they are not too bad. Remember when I said that once all the instruments are part of the same audio track you can’t turn one of them up and another of them down anymore? Well what if you NEED to? That is where mastering magic comes in. Through the power of the ancients, passed down through generations of mastering engineers, this audio can be magically “mixed after mixing.” With mastering wands and various incantations (for an idea of the cost and variety of a mastering engineer, see this article by Tweak), bass instruments can be balanced with higher instruments. Singers who were buried in the sound can be made to be heard clearly again. And in the final phase of mastering, magic “awesome” dust is injected into the sound to make it sound, well, awesome.
I had produced several music CDs at one point, and “mastered” them myself. But I decided one day to try sending an album to a mastering mystic…I mean engineer to see if their kung-fu was stronger than mine. Guess what I found out? Well let’s just put it this way–I won’t be challenging them to a rematch any time soon. The finished product sounded so good, and in so many ways I couldn’t even identify, that I became a devoted believer in the power of mastering mysticism.
Those articles I mentioned earlier were correct. Mere mortals should not try this at home if they want to sell this music CD to the public. There are some secrets that are just too dangerous, or at least too complex and powerful, to be trusted to the “outsiders.” That’s fine with me, actually. I say “just let them do what they do as long as it makes my music sound like it was sprinkled with awesome dust.