It occurs to me that a day comes for rather a lot of people when they wake up in the morning and suddenly, inexplicably, they have the urge to work at a recording studio.  I’ve known plenty of people who have taken this to the next level and hocked themselves up to the ears to purchase whatever gear the guy at the music store recommends.  Almost to a man, what they have now is no more than a big debt, while the equipment gathers dust in a spare room.  So whilst at face value the idea of running your own recording facility seems appealing, hindsight shows that it seldom leads anywhere.  And the main reason, I would suppose, is that these folks buy all the tasty gear only to find out that what actually makes good recordings isn’t equipment, it is EXPERIENCE.

There’s an interesting quote from Hunter S. Thompson, who said; “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side”.

moog voyager

So look, it seems easy.  You print the stereo output of your keyboard, synth, whatever and throw the faders up along with the rest of your mix.  But then you find that it sounds weak, out of place or takes up too much of your sonic “landscape”.  Why is this?  Well, put simply, that keyboard sound wasn’t programmed to fit your mix.  In fact it was probably programmed to make you buy the keyboard.  You can tweak it in the synth, or you can make it your own at the mixing stage.  How do you do that?

mixing console

MAKING YOUR KICK AND BASS SIT RIGHT IN THE MIX

This is the toughie boys and girls; how do you get a great, solid bass end which is both full and punchy without sounding flaccid, farty or muddy?  How do you get the bass and kick just right?

recording acoustic guitar in the studio

The sound of acoustic guitar is so familiar, so well-known, so comfortable to our ears that many make the mistake of assuming that it’s an easy thing to record.  Sure, it can be easy, and it can be a devil of a job too.  Long ago I lost count of the terrible acoustic guitar tones I’ve heard which could have been vastly improved with so little effort.

Oh dear; another record on the radio with an awful, sterile drum sound!  There’s no expression; the “feel” has been sucked out by over-editing.  Where are the dynamics?  Where are the rich tones which change with the playing?  It’s not even close to a real drummer giving a great performance, but what’s this?  There’s actually a human drummer on the track?  I guess his performance was destroyed with Sound Replacer and Beat Detective.  Why is this scenario so common today?  Why is it deemed necessary to make the software re-do the drum parts?  Is it that people have forgotten how to record drums?