Benji Valdez

Details on how to record and mix a complete song

I started reading The Beatles Complete Recording sessions again for about the third (or fourth?) time. In it, it lists all The Beatles recording sessions chronologically with comments about how the tracks were recorded, what takes were kept to make it to the album, and which ones were scrapped. Whenever I read this book I get inspired to start recording again, so I went to my library to get some books on home recording.

I don’t think I’m very good at recording yet, but I know some of the stuff I’ve recorded is (recording quality wise) better than other stuff I’ve heard on myspace. An example of what I’m talking about is like this song I recorded on a boom box with Billy playing drums (kinda). Although don’t misunderstand my comment as saying songs recorded this way suck, they don’t, one of my favorite Iowa City artists, Samuel Lock Ward records in this way and I think it’s brilliant. He even has an album called Boombox by Bedside in which he recorded all the tracks on a boom box with all the wonderful tape hiss included . (I should also note that he’s also in another great band called the Miracles of God which don’t specifically record using Lo-Fi methods, though I read somewhere that their first album was recorded on a cassete 4 track, but it still sounds pretty damn good to me). Another awesome Iowa City band that records this way is CroKane, they are a two piece that plays old style blues. Because they record this way their recordings sound almost like they were recorded in the 50’s like Johnny Lee Hooker or Leadbelly, you know like when they used to have just one microphone and have it record straight into a device that cuts the record as it’s recording. So like I said, don’t think I’m knocking down this way of recording or anything, It definitely serves it’s purpose when that’s what you’re going for.

Anyway my point is many people who are recording their own songs and are trying to get sounds like on commercial records by recording this way just don’t seem to know what they are doing. Another thing is that some people who are using quality recording devices like an all in one console or a computer still don’t have very good recordings because they don’t know or understand how to mix a song properly to get good results.

This brings me back to my trip to the library and an idea I had. When I went to they library I specifically wanted a book that came with a CD with examples of how to mix a song properly, because like I said above I still don’t think I’m very good at it. Only problem was my library only had one book that came with a CD it was called The Complete Idiots Guide to Home Recording. I absolutely hate books with these kind of titles (like the dummies series) because they insinuate the person reading it is a moron. Since my library lacked any other book with a CD I checked it out. After I started reading it I was very surprised though, it is a very good book with lots of great information and examples, it just has a very stupid title. Anyway the only problem with this book (besides the stupid title) is that it uses Pro Tools Free which only runs on Windows 98/ME and you can’t download it anymore anyway (unless you look reaallly hard). So the info is good but since the software is outdated it’s somewhat useless to learn from. So I went off to search the internet for something similar, but I couldn’t find anything close to detailed articles with example sound files (I found a ton of articles on the subject but no example files, then I found some example files but no details on how the person mixing the song got those results).

So this brings me to my idea, I decided I’ll try myself to record a song detailing every aspect of it with pictures, sound, and maybe video. Like I said a few times before I’m not the most experienced when it comes to recording and mixing but maybe by doing this I’ll be able to learn what techniques work best and which don’t. Perhaps maybe I’ll even get feedback from people more experienced than me saying how they would have done this or that differently to make it sound better. Anyway I don’t wanna fall into the same trap as the Author of the book I just mentioned with outdated software. I’d like to try to find some kind of free software (preferably GNU GPL so that I know it will always be available for free even if I have to offer it on my site). I know of a GPL’ed program called Traverso that would work, but it has some latency problems so it’s out of the question for now. I also know of one called Kristal that is free but has a limitation of 16 tracks (which isn’t bad) and doesn’t support midi. Plus it’s not GPL so who knows if it will ever get outdated (the website says the current download is from 2004, so it’s already 5 years old). I know of a really nice one called Reaper but it’s not free and you’re suppose to buy it after 30 days for $60 (unless you want the commercial license which cost $225). The good thing about this one is that it doesn’t expire after 30 days, it just continues to give you a message that you should buy it and still works as a full version. Only problem is since it’s not free GPL software it’s unpredictable, you never know if the author of the program will decide that he wants to revoke this generous offer to keep it a full version even after it has expired.
I know of another program called Ardour which is free GPL software and looks really nice, only thing is it’s only available for GNU/Linux and Mac (I’ve read theirs a Windows version that was developed but won’t be released because of complicated issues).
Lastly theirs Audacity, but while it’s an excellent audio editor, is multi-platform, and free under the GNU GPL, I also think it’s a terrible multitrack DAW. The way it saves project files totally sucks, plus the fact that you can’t use the effects in real time, you have to preview them first, also makes it a poor choice.
So before I do anything I’ll need to do some research, if anyone knows of a good multi-platform GPL multitrack program leave me a comment, or send me an email at moc.xobni@emptyzedlavijneb and let me know.
Well I think that about does it, if I’m able to pull this off hopefully it will come out as a quality article that will be of good value to anyone wanting to make better sounding recordings. Perhaps if it comes out okay I’ll also make a pdf of the articles available for offline viewing.