Trust Your Ears and Instincts

There are many guidelines to follow when tracking or mixing music, but sometimes you have to ignore them completely.

On a recent session with a very talented singer that I hadn't worked with yet, I set my pre, EQ, and compressor at my normal starting points. The session got started so quickly that I didn't have much of a chance to dial in any settings, as we literally jumped straight into the first take. Everything sounded pretty good, but when I looked over to the compressor, so I saw something that made me jump a bit.

The 1176 needle was hitting the far left, past 20dB of gain reduction at 4:1 ratio. It sounded great to my ears, and had to fight the urge to bring down the input.  In my experience in tracking vocals, it's always better to err on the side of caution, and leave the heavy compression for later if needed. You can always add compression, but it's difficult to remove excessive compression after the fact.

With that said, I did use a high pass filter pre-compressor, and I rode the input knob of the 1176 a bit between songs, to compensate for difference in tone and energy.

When all was finished, after two days of doing scratch vocals on eight songs, and keeper vocals on two, I listened back to the vocals, solo'ed up, and found the tone, vibe, and dynamics that I was hoping I'd acheive, so I was pretty happy with the result.

The biggest thing I took away from that session was trust your ears and instincts, and break the rules every once in a while. Being creative is the most fun part of working in music, and if you follow protocol all the time, creativity takes a backseat.

Maybe You Don't Need The Right Tools

Working in various studios over the last few years, I've realized that you work with what you're given, and regardless of the quality of equipment, it's the person using the equipment that matters.

High fidelity still lives.  It just depends on who's setting the standard and who's spinnin' the knobs.

- Gary Lux

Gary is a friend of mine, and an engineer that I greatly admire and respect his work.  For more info on him, check out GaryLuxMusic.com.

I bring up the quote, because it emphasizes the significance of the person using the gear.  With the availability of affordable recording equipment, it's no wonder everyone has a home studio.  The problem arises when the person using the gear doesn't have the foundation of how audio equipment works, and basic signal flow knowledge. Give a talented engineer a 57, a cheap preamp, and he/she will create something great.

Take for example this group, The 88 recorded a single, "Love Is The Thing", using only an iPhone mic and an app called FourTrack! They even have a making-of video here: http://the88.net/love.htm

With all that said, a couple months ago, I had a rather nice vintage Telefunken ELA M 250 in the studio (valued at approx. $30,000), and I couldn't resist having an impromtu session with a few friends of mine that were in town playing at Whisky A Go Go (Song Preservation Society). I set the mic in omni, hit record, and didn't touch anything else. Three guys stood around the mic, one of them with an acoustic guitar, and what came out was far better than I expected.  I can say I've never wanted a microphone more in my life!

The point is, while great mics do sound great, the best engineers can do great things with very little. I always like to remind myself that The Beatles made amazing albums on four track tape, and some of my favorite drum sounds were achieved with one to three mics.

The Right Tool For The Job

I'd like to reference one of my other interests in life, cars.  In a recent post to the Top Gear website, Richard Hammond describes his experience with one of the best driver's cars out there, the e30 M3.  Read about it here: http://www.topgear.com/uk/photos/hammond-bmw-m3

This brings up an interesting point… there is always the right tool for the job, and using that tool, being familiar with that tool, is what separates an artisan from an amateur.

Most studios out there have a plugin list that is longer than all of their physical gear combined.  There is no such thing as having too many toys, but when you don't get to know any of them, they're useless.

The key is always finding the right tools for the job, and that is something I've learned (and continue to learn) to do working with music.  Finding the exact tone, sound, or effect that the client is looking for is a very difficult thing to get really good at.  Using the tools at your disposal to achieve quick results is something some of the best tracking and mix engineers are able to do, and something I work hard to accomplish in every session.

Vocal Chains

I've kept a lot of notes over the years, and something I thought might be of interest is the vocal chain of some of the more recent artists I've had the opportunity to work with.

Lil' Wayne - Sony C800G -> Avalon 737sp

T-Pain - Sony C800G -> Neve 1073 -> TubeTech CL1B

Cee-Lo Green - Telefunken ELA M 251 -> Hardy M1 or Neve 1073 -> 1176

Kid Cudi / David Guetta - Shure Beta58 -> Avalon 737sp

Trey Songz - Sony C800G -> Neve 1081 -> 1176

Diddy (VoiceOver) - Sony C800G -> Focusrite ISA 430

Cheryl Cole - Sony C800G -> Neve 1081 -> 1176 -> LA2A

Scotty McCreery - Telefunken ELA M 250 -> Martech MSS-10 -> Focusrite Red 3

Backup Your Backup

Something too many people take for granted is the safety of their content.  Anything and everything on any of your hard drives could disappear right now.  The question is, would you be ok with that?

Backing up is a relatively simple process, but can become complex if you don't have a method in place.  Simply copying files to another drive isn't enough.  Neither is using a single hard drive as a clone backup, or a Time Machine drive.  In order to be completely confident your data is safe, you need to follow what is simply known as the "3-2-1 Rule", something I picked up from Leo Laporte.  The basic premise is as follows:

Three backups, on two different storage mediums, one of them off-site

Simple enough, but I bet very few people have more than one backup of their data at any one point.

Using external hard drives with products such as ChronoSync, Synchronize Pro X, or even Time Machine, you can easily create your first local backup.  The second can be burned to DVD's or BluRay Discs, for longer term storage.

The off-site backup is where you'll run into quite a few options.  A service like DropBox provides an excellent form of off-site backup that is constantly changing.  It keeps your files locally as well as in the cloud.  Highly useful if you have multiple computers and like to keep certain files synchronized across all of them.  Services like Carbonite and Mozy offer an online backup utility that automatically backs up your computer to the cloud in the background, so you know your data is safe.

There are many options out there, and many ways to do it.  Even if you don't use a full backup system that includes the 3-2-1 method, at least have some kind of backup.  The saying goes, if you only have one copy, it may as well not exist.