What have I been doing since I last posted? Oh, I think that would be procrastinating. Yep, that's it. Because the CD has been coming along quickly and I have posted nothing. So here we go....
After the scratch track was completed, the band members were all supposed to come back to the studio, listen to the scratch track through headphones and then play our individual part, one person at a time. So first up is Frank the drummer. The drum tracks will be the first layer in our final CD.
Frank has the drums all set already from playing the scratch tracks and so now we mike the drums put each mike into a different channel on the mixer/recorder. Frank puts the headphones on and plays along with the song, while the recorder does its job. Sounds to simply, but whoa, nothing is that simple.
Frank plays his heart out. His time is perfect and he adds little touches to each song. He is just great. So he plays each song and he heads back home which is an hour away. He probably spent an entire day working on these individual tracks for the drums. We are very excited.
Our engineer is going to listen to the tracks and do a little clean up before we go forward with the next layer of our CD. He is going to listen to each individual tracks and see if there is any ugly white noise or overbleed from another drum. Theoretically each mike should only pick up the drum that it is pointed at. But no, we didn't use the right type of drum mikes.
And so the mikes picked up the drum in front of them and then everything around them as well. Microphones come in a variety of types, you got your vocal mikes, instrument mikes, condenser mikes, etc, etc, and we used the wrong type of mikes on the drums. So we picked up a Drum Mike package from Shure. The PGDMK6 Drum Mike Kit from Shure did the trick.
We had Frank return to the studio and the drum mikes were placed strategically, so each tom, snare and cymbal had a clean track recording. The kick drum was miked and a blanket was tossed over it, so it wouldn't bleed over into the other mikes.
Frank re-played the entire CD and, wow, what a difference good mikes can make in your recording effort. So use the right tool for the right job. When recording drums for a CD try the Shure Mike Kit. It worked well for Silverwing.
Showing posts with label Rockin Country Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rockin Country Music. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
Sunday, August 19, 2012
Home Recording: The Scratch Tracks
Our first step in recording our original music will be to create what we refer to as scratch tracks. The CD is going to be recorded one instrument at a time, but the scratch track will be all of us performing the songs together. That scratch track will be used by each member of the band. We will listen to the scratch track through the headphones while we play and recording one instrument at a time.
So we met a few weeks ago to create the scratch tracks. We set up our equipment as if we were going to play at a gig. Everyone had a vocal microphone that was plugged into the recorder. Each instrument amplifier had a microphone in front of it and they were plugged into the recorder. Then the drums were miked also. Those microphones were input to a mixer and the two line outs from that mixer were plugged into the recorder. We needed to do it that way, because our recorder doesn't have enough inputs for the drums to go directly into it for recording with all the vocals and instruments.
We are using a Tascam Digital Portable Studio DP-24 for creating this recording. We have had two failed attempts at recording this music in the last few years and decided that instead of depending upon others to produce the CD the way we wanted it, we would just do it ourselves. We pulled together some money and my husband researched home studios and selected this model. We are sure that it will do a great job.
Recording the scratch tracks was not very difficult at all. We have played these songs in public many times. Our original music gets very good crowd response and sometimes we get requests for our original music and that is quite the compliment.
We ran through a few warm up songs, just to get the cobwebs out. The bands favorite warmup song has to be "The Fireman" the George Strait hit or the Dwight Yoakum version of the Elvis hit "Little Sister." Those songs are upbeat and fun, they just get you in the right mood for playing music.
After the warmup songs, our engineer turned on the DP-24 and we played one of our originals. The main point right now is not to be absolutely note for note perfect, but to have the tempo be perfect. The DP-24 has a click track option, which is like a metronome playing in your ear, but we decided we didn't want to do it that way, so it is up to the drummer to maintain the tempo and not speed up or slow down. This is critical because as we each lay down our individual tracks we will be listening to this scratch track through the headphones. If it speeds up or slows down, so will our final product. So this is alot of pressure on the drummer.
We did a few of the scratch tracks on the first take. That is very satisfying. Several of them required more than one take, but it went very quickly. We created scratch tracks for nine original songs in less than an eight hour day. Very productive
Our next step will be to record the individual drum tracks. That will be the first track that will be layed down on the final CD product. Very excited. I will report back on our progess soon.
So we met a few weeks ago to create the scratch tracks. We set up our equipment as if we were going to play at a gig. Everyone had a vocal microphone that was plugged into the recorder. Each instrument amplifier had a microphone in front of it and they were plugged into the recorder. Then the drums were miked also. Those microphones were input to a mixer and the two line outs from that mixer were plugged into the recorder. We needed to do it that way, because our recorder doesn't have enough inputs for the drums to go directly into it for recording with all the vocals and instruments.
We are using a Tascam Digital Portable Studio DP-24 for creating this recording. We have had two failed attempts at recording this music in the last few years and decided that instead of depending upon others to produce the CD the way we wanted it, we would just do it ourselves. We pulled together some money and my husband researched home studios and selected this model. We are sure that it will do a great job.
Recording the scratch tracks was not very difficult at all. We have played these songs in public many times. Our original music gets very good crowd response and sometimes we get requests for our original music and that is quite the compliment.
We ran through a few warm up songs, just to get the cobwebs out. The bands favorite warmup song has to be "The Fireman" the George Strait hit or the Dwight Yoakum version of the Elvis hit "Little Sister." Those songs are upbeat and fun, they just get you in the right mood for playing music.
After the warmup songs, our engineer turned on the DP-24 and we played one of our originals. The main point right now is not to be absolutely note for note perfect, but to have the tempo be perfect. The DP-24 has a click track option, which is like a metronome playing in your ear, but we decided we didn't want to do it that way, so it is up to the drummer to maintain the tempo and not speed up or slow down. This is critical because as we each lay down our individual tracks we will be listening to this scratch track through the headphones. If it speeds up or slows down, so will our final product. So this is alot of pressure on the drummer.
We did a few of the scratch tracks on the first take. That is very satisfying. Several of them required more than one take, but it went very quickly. We created scratch tracks for nine original songs in less than an eight hour day. Very productive
Our next step will be to record the individual drum tracks. That will be the first track that will be layed down on the final CD product. Very excited. I will report back on our progess soon.
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