diy home recording diary, part two

every tuesday for the next four weeks we'll visit with ryan, the creative force behind , and take a peek into the diary of his album recording process.

in week one he discussed introduction, inspiration, and instrumentation. this time it's laying down tracks and getting dirty with effects.

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6 songs - 4 weeks - 8 tracks

Post two: Tracking

In my last recording diary post, I listed out the equipment and influences that inspired me to create something on my own. Now lets get into . Tracking out songs on your own can either be incredibly fun, or incredibly frustrating, and as a rule of thumb, remember that if your mood starts to sour... if you jumped into everything with just a cup of coffee but didnt get that breakfast burrito, STOP. Take a break, and come back to it. It's also a lot better on your ears if you take the headphones off every 15 or 20 anyways, and that's important, because they are all you have for mastering.

The first song on my EP is "." The name for this track comes from a post I was reading on one of my favorite blogs, , about a . (I'm a big fan of non-sequitur song titles, so I'm quick to bust out my cell phone and enter something in out on the street if it makes me smile or scratch my head :))

The beginning of this track was approached the same way as all the others -- written out with rhythm guitar first, and put to tape with a metronome. Drums were the second track added, but I want to make a point of stating that neither first take was the one that made it.

After the rhythm guitar was in place, I ran the main stereo outs of the (attached to the ) directly into tracks two and three on the Tascam 388 tape multitrack. I know a lot musicians who, when seeing a tape deck, just want to drive the VU (volume unit) needles to peak, because of the natural distortion and saturation that tape can yield. I don't record that way because it makes mastering a pain. Keeping all your signal levels in the +0 to +3 VU range when tracking will make things a ton easier when you utilize a DAW to master. I'll get into to that in a later post though.

So with one guitar track panned slightly right in the monitor, and the metronome track dead middle for stereo and turned up loud, I set a moderate amount of stereo panning for tracks two and three (the DM Pro's outputs) and begin running through the song on drums. are a godsend when it comes to neighborly relations, however, there can be misfires for certain triggers, or dropouts depending on the drum, and a stereo seperation in the monitor is essential for hearing them to know when you need to do a retake.

I'll usually run through about five or six takes before finding the right groove for all the parts. I record all takes though, in case there was a part that was THE one, then simply run a footswitch from the Tascam across the room to the kit, so I can punch in and out, thus preserving the parts that were already done correctly. Recording with an electronic drum set is never going to sound as expressive (especially with soft and loud transients) as a real kit mic'd up in a studio -- but one of the saving graces of those predictable transients is you can almost always punch into a measure with a level that is right on par with where it was before. So, a listener's ears will not notice that something is a patchwork or two or three takes, rather then one take.

The EQ on the Tascam is well known for its shortcomings. I would say I have to agree with everyone on that, although it does not detract from my love for the thing. It's a on each channel, and I would not reccomend using it to boost anything ever. The EQ is flat (meaning inactive) when all the knobs are turned to the 12 o'clock position. I use it twice, and sparingly: first with guitar, for a slight cut in the 600Hz frequency because I don't like too much mid; secondly to drop the kick on almost every pre-loaded DM Pro kit (around 90Hhz) to keep that VU needle I mentioned earlier from peaking.

I have two pedals that I utilize in order to create a driven or distorted lead guitar, which is usually the third instrument tracked. Sometimes it's bass. It depends on the track. I've learned not to spend too much time messing around with the . The pedals are a , which manages to resemble a Cadillac to more than a mild degree, and an old that I bought in high school to make my 10 watt practice amp sound as much like Kurt Cobain's as possible (I'm sorry, Mom and Dad). My rule of thumb for this project was to find the right clean tone for the Danelectro, add a mild amount of reverb to that, then utilize the pedals (processing before the POD) in order to create a lead tone for the second guitar.

Now. I believe I mentioned some "bells and whistles" in my first post, so I am going to save the bass discussion for later, and instead talk about a new purchase I made for this project that was completley new to me. This frivolous, but so much fun(!) .

I went to Guitar Center looking for something to add leads, since I have known since the project's inception that I can't sing for it. I knew that digital modeling synthesizers have come down in price quite a bit (as has everything these days in pro audio). I asked the mohawked guitar center rep about this Korg and came away pleasantly surprised, now owning essentially four awesome studio instruments I could use and did not already have, all for $400.



The for the uninitiated is a flash memory step sequencer that combines dozens of different drum machine sounds with an onboard synthesizer, dual (stereo) onboard effects, and a set of vacuum tubes with a control for saturation. Pretty freakin sweet. So to me, the Electribe is a tube pre amp (it has audio through, and you can run anything with a line out through it to get the tube warmth, as well as an automatic BPM count); a collection of knock-off drum machine sounds with midi triggers; a pretty rad synthesizer that can be controlled through onboard pads, or an external midi keyboard (I say pretty rad because it's not full polyphony); and a stereo effects unit (again, you can run any signal into the thing).

The Korg provides two tracks of synths for "It's Gun O'Clock," and an intro drum machine beat that is corny and fun before giving way to the real drum pattern of the song. In a "eureka!" moment of true DIY unprofessionality, I also accidentally triggered the thing once by tripping over it to come in on a quarter measure once, and it gave this backbeat effect to the drumming that was already on tape. I liked it. So I recreated it in the after dumping the tracks into the computer. The buttons on it are really cheap, and I don't think it would survive a drop from hip height, but I really enjoy all the sounds you can coax out of the thing, and again, it's definitely worth $400.



That much said, I had all of the elements of the songs recorded to tape. Next week bass DI, and a bit on why computers are the most terrible things in the world.