Self Sufficient Musician

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a million-dollar studio to produce a recording worthy of public consumption — or even mass success. There are times and occasions where it’s good to spend money, go to
a studio and let others worry about the recording end of things, but I
generally encourage musicians, particularly those who aspire to be Self
Sufficient, to learn how to record themselves.

Studio engineers tend to obsess over this gear and that, and they endlessly debate the merits of sonic difference only discernable in the very best of listening environments.  Sure, we’re making art — but music is also a communication.   The role of tools is to make Good Enough recordings so that imperfections are not distracting. Once that’s achieved, everything else is a marginal benefit at best.

That said, there are some fundamental competence you must master as a producer of a recording in order to have your recordings compete in the market place.

I’m going to discuss these qualities more in abstract here — there will be more focused articles that give practical tips on how to achieve these qualities.

1. Performance

First and foremost, you have to sing and play like you mean it.  This is often very overlooked by inexperienced acts.  They think if they book time at a nice studio and play your songs, that’ll make a good recording — but if they aren’t comfortable playing their best in a foreign and sterile environment that can be a recording studio, then the resulting recording will simply not cut it.

This is why I’ve always advised musicians to consider comfort as one of the primary factors to consider in choosing a place to record.  It’s better to record in one’s home, with noise and poor-sounding rooms and all, but still play your balls out, than to capture a timid and unnatural performance in a squeaky-clean studio. If you put enough gusto into your performances, then your recording can overcome all other obstacles.   Everything else is forgivable if you capture a soul-stirring performance.  Without a good performance, all the technological wizardly will not make a good recording.

2. Arrangements

Arrangements are hidden secrets that seldom gets mentioned for some reason.  It’s immensely powerful, yet it’s often difficult to find musicians who really know how to arrange a song — to arrange voices and instruments to give the song its most effective presentation.

Arrangements are more art than science, but some fundamental principles exist, such as:

• Leave them wanting more (don’t over-repeat a section)
• Build from thin to thick (start with sparser instrumentation and build up)
• Build from low to high (if you add harmonies/instruments in higher registers, then taking them out later in the song will feel like a let down)

Arrangements has the power to transform an ordinary song into a modern-day classic, or turn a diamond into a dud covered in mud.  It can totally make or break a song.  In recordings, a decent song arranged well and performed well will be very listenable even when the production quality isn’t high at all.  I would say if anything, pour more creativity here than in how to get an amazing drum sound.  Again, the sound quality’s role is to be good enough not to be distracting.  Arrangements, on the other hand, will always have a strong impact.

3. Clarity

Micing, or the know-how of where to place what kind of mic depending on the instruments/sound you want to create, is actually not a rocket science.  You can just follow a few basic rules and achieve pretty competent results.  This is also where the quality of gear does affect the outcome — simply put, more expensive mics and mic-preamps just sound better.

That’s not to say that affordable gear can’t be used to achieve Good Enough results so that the production quality isn’t distracting listeners.  Of all possible sins inappropriate mic placements can commit, lack of clarity/muddiness is probably the biggest one.  It’s not good to listen to recording where there’s too much clarity and everything sounds bright, thin and piercing — but that can be more easily tamed and made acceptable (if not good) than muddy recordings.  And in this age of digital recording, watch out for digital distortion, too — if you record a sound that’s too loud, digital recordings can’t really handle it.

Learn to mic so that you can stay clear of muddiness and distortion, and you have yourself a good start as an engineer.

4. Dynamics

Dynamics in performance — the contrast between soft and loud, small and big — is immensely important, but here I’m talking about proper handling of dynamics in recording.

For better or worse, modern popular music are all compressed.  It means that a mechanical processing is applied to the captured performance of instruments/voices to limit its dynamic range, so that softer parts are not very soft and louder parts are not very loud.  The whole recording has a very even volume level, and you can hear the vocalist loud and clear above instruments even when s/he is whispering.

How to apply compression has become an art in itself, and this is perhaps one of the first thing you want to master when you are learning how to record.  The specifics of this I won’t discuss here, but the goal is to create a nice and even recording where you don’t have to strain to hear the quieter parts nor the louder parts will overwhelm the listeners, but not so compressed that it sounds artificial and unnatural.  This is best done by compressing little by little in multiple stages — compress a little when recording (first capturing the performance — though this is hotly debated nowadays), compress a little at mixing and of course, compression will be used at mastering.

5. Ambience/Reverb

Now, here’s a mistake every recordist makes at least once: too much reverb.

Reverb simulates the reverberation that occurs in a room/setting and gives a sense of the space in which the music is played, from cathedrals to stadiums to garages.  These tiny flutters of echo are fun to use because they can sound more “pro” and also cover up some ugly details of low-budget recordings — but it’s just so easy to go overboard.  Remember, lack of clarity is a bigger sin than too much muddiness?  Reverb can increase your clarity or decrease it, depending on how you use it.

6. Blend and Mix

Now we’re getting into the area of mixing, which is a separate, though related, art from recording (which is basically capturing what’s played).  It takes some practice to be able to balance out the instruments so that they all belong to one recording, playing this one song.  This is a whole book of a topic in itself, and nothing is better than trying and experimenting.  If you did reasonably well in all the other steps up to here, then this step shouldn’t be too hard for you.  A good place to start is:

• Listen to your favorite recordings and pay attention to where instruments are placed in the space: left forward, or right toward the back?
• Leave the lead vocal on the too-loud side than too-soft.
• Start adding from the lowest instrument up.  It’s hard to hear details of the low-end instruments, like kick and bass, when higher instruments are already in the mix
• When EQ-ing, avoid doing anything drastic (+/- 6dB or more) and do more cutting than boosting
• Don’t go too fancy with reverb, echo and other effects — focus on more on making all the instruments sound as if they are played in the same room.

Conclusion: Build from Ground Up

Above are listed more or less in the order of importance/its impact on the final recording.  Even on a very affordable gear, if you learn how to use it well by minding the above points, you can make a very competent recording.

Just for kicks, listen to The All 57 Song by Kelly McGuire, a great demonstration made by recording everything with the Shure SM57.  Also, I found Studio Buddy, a free little application from Taxi, to be very invaluable when learning the basics.

Just like any other skills, recording is a skill best developed over a long period of time — you can’t hope to create a professional recording by just doing it for a week.  But it’s very fun and empowering to learn how to record, and today’s digital gear allows most everyone to afford and create competent recordings. Every aspiring musicians should have some hands-on experience with recording themselves, if only for the purpose of being able to communicate with and understand recording engineers.  If you’re like me, you get hooked on it and realize what an amazing rich palette of creativity recording offers.

Happy tweaking!

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