Thursday, August 7, 2014

"Live" Tracking in the Studio

Many times musical groups will want to "live" track in the studio. They come in practiced and ready for the engineer to push record while they play all together just like they do at a live gig. When they listen back to the take it is usually not what they expected. Most of the time the artists are not pleased with their performance all or parts of it, and want to dub in spots or re-record certain parts. The next thing you know the live feel is gone and so is the reason they wanted to live track in the first place. Our suggestion to live track enthusiasts is to expect imperfection. Music is made by human beings not robots. If you want a live recording it will sound like a live recording with all the little mistakes that may happen. Quite frankly, with the near perfection that software and multiple takes can get us these days, a nice live recording with all the human elements in it, is refreshing.
See you in the studio !



Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Recording the Human Voice, Not As Easy As It Seems.

The human voice, a plethora of EQ diversity. This makes the recording engineer's job very challenging. Every studio client comes into the recording session with a mindset they want to sound like their favorite artist or famous personality. The recording session usually begins with ,  " I want to sound like so and so...."   So we try our best with the magic of EQ and software to make the recording client sound like who they imagined. The reality however is they sound like themselves !  This is a big hurdle to get over when working with clients. Many artist who spend time in the studio recording their voice, end up understanding they have a unique sound all their own. They realize this early and embrace it.  Other clients fight it and spend a lot of money and engineering time, chasing someone else's sound.  For all the future recording clients  out there I am here to say, "You have your own sound and it is unique. like it !".  I hope it is that simple.
See you in the studio !!!
K

Sunday, January 5, 2014

Loud or Not, Does Digital Boosts Degrade Audio Quality ?

A friend of mine got their son a record player for Christmas. The young kid who has grown up with MP3 digital music, was in awe at the sound depth, and warmth of the vinyl records. He was also amazed at how the volume of the records was so much less than his CD's. This brings up the old argument of which is better, vinyl or digital. Certainly, the digital quality of today's music is amazing, but their is something about vinyl and analog. So I purposely brought the young audiophile into the studio to let him hear some digital uncompressed music at the -10db thresholds that most of records were produced at. He definitely liked the difference as he felt that the uncompressed, lower volume sound was easier to listen to and he was able to hear some things he did not hear before.
In order to compete engineers push the digital envelope and can usually get incredible results. But I bet everyone of them still likes the analog, deep down in their audio souls.  Hope to see you in the studio !