>>64209219
Why are you doing this?

>>64209219
What do you think about lo-fi/home recording?

>>64209459
I'm not a big fan of most home recordings because almost all home recordings are not done well. I think the ratty, worn down sounds usually don't come across appealingly. But sometimes the grungy, roomy sound works for bands in more punky-indie genres. I usually like those when it sounds like everything in the room is turned up really really loud.

Programmed genres can be done entirely from home successfully.

What do you think about analog?

>>64209686
I love analog. I'm assuming you mean recording/mixing gear?

>>64209219
how did you into it?

>>64209724
I took a course at a junior college, liked it, then enjoyed doing job shadowing.

>>64209219
Can you send an engineer student an RE201?

I would make enough good dub techno to make up for it.

>>64209787
I wish, and I fucking know you would too

how did you get better at mixing? And how do you stay motivated for recording?

>>64209810
>all dat warmness
I wanna cop one so bad, but they're bloody expensive.

What rig and software you work with senpai?

>>64209219
What genres do you work with?

Any "go-to" gear?

Any "go-to" software?

Is cold calling/emailing a band about producing/mixing/mastering/etc their next sing/record a kosher thing to do? How else are you supposed to get work?

any books you'd rec to a novice?

also, are monitors essential for recording your stuff at home (of course it's gonna be kinda lo-fi anyway I suppose)?

I THOUGHT I TOLD YA, THIS WORLD IS NOT FOR YA

>>64209950
not OP but monitors can always help

>>64209849
I got better at mixing by mixing more. I still get better every mix. It's fucking brutal at first because every mix falls short. Stick with it and you'll learn 1000 little tricks that all add up to a badass mix. The best tip I can give you is to constantly reference your mixes against other people. Make your vocals as loud and powerful as drake, or your guitars as impactful as Rage Against the Machine. Get your ambience as sexy as massive attack, and your reverbs as lush as radiohead. I'm constantly AB-ing with reference tracks.

I stay motivated by doing side hobbies when I'm not endlessly working, they're essential. I meditate, be healthy, fuck the gf. Otherwise I burn out and just stare blankly at a computer screen.

>>64209879
I primarily work in pro tools, but that's because they're what studios use. I love Logic. I love Ableton.

I'd recommend those 2 over Pro Tools for people engineering from home.

>>64209219
Favorite drum overhead mic configuration?

Hey man
Im a keyboard player
And I just started using a passive direct box, a cheapo $20 behringer model, so I can connect my stereo keyboard to a single powered pa speaker. It works great merging the signal to mono, but I swear the sound is thinner somehow through the directbox. like overcompressed or something.

I'm using two 6" trs cables to connect my keyboard stereo outs to the direct box, then a 6ft xlr to connect to the mic-pre on my mixer, then one trs cable from mixer to power amp.

Do you think my hollow compressed sound is because of the direct box or because of the mic preamp on my mixer? It sounded much more full plugging the keyboard directly into the amps using trs cables, but my keyboard can't do mono properly without some extra equipment (hence the di box) and i want to run it on one monitor amp instead of a pair

Any suggestions for achieving a fuller sound? both the di box and the mixer are cheapo behringer designs

I'm getting another pa speaker for this purpose, one that has a mic pre-amp built into the cabinet, so I can bypass the mixer completely. hopefully this will solve it but only time will tell, any suggestions from somebody in the know would be appreciated

How do I approach synth layering? My results always sound like crap

How do you find jobs? Do you sign up for one-off deals or you had some sort of longer employment at some studio?

>>64209916
I work with all genres, but lately I've been primarily hiphop.

For rap vocals, I love using preamps that break up nicely when they're hit a little harder. API, Trident, Neve... the list goes on (do people still say that here?)
I like DBX compressors, the tubetech cl1b and the UA 6176/610.

For scream vocals I use dynamic mics.

Horns and banjos and such use ribbon mics. Tames the harshness


For software:
Slate digital master buss compression
Waves RCompressor
Waves H-Delay
Vallhalla Reverbs, Logic stock room designer, although nothing substitutes a great sounding room on the recording
I don't notice much of a difference in digital EQs, fabfilter is really good

>>64209219
what do you think FL studio

>>64209927
I don't personally cold call bands. I think the best way is to go to their concerts and meet them in person. Making really good music with good musicians requires a good personal relationship, and cold calling isn't really the best way to start. You'll make more connections over time.

But if you don't live anywhere near them then you may as well blow up their phone haha

>>64210148
ahhhh man love the waves plugins

and the valhalla reverbs are cool, sometimes a little unnatural, but that is probably more my inexperience than the plugin itself.

thanks for answering!

>>64210009
What do you think about Reaper?

>>64209950
Mixing secrets for the small studio by Mike Senior is great.

Monitors are not essential, but they're almost worth getting just because they sound so badass and are fun to listen to. I believe you can get a better mix on a pair of apple earbuds and a small bluetooth speaker using a bunch of reference mixes.
Chances are your low end will be anything but flat, and mixes using monitors with sub will translate poorly out of the room

>>64210049
Lame answer, butI like all of them. it really depends on the song, style of music, arrangement, etc.

For example, I love how Radiohead has super wide drums on the track Reckoner, and super tight narrow drums on Weird Fishes.

>>64210083
Not OP, but I would suggest EQ'ing and working with mid/side placement.

>>64210285
>>64209975
thanks both of you lads, appreciate it

My band is recording soon, doing it all ourselves. We want a lofi sound, and we plan on achieving this by reckrding everything clean digitally then mixing it down to cassette tape, recording to the tape at high input level to get it to clip. 3 questions:

>What would be the best method of ripping the finished tape back to a digital file, to send off to be pressed
>is there any way to do this without it becoming a mono mix? I wad thinking of getting a 4 track to do it, but wouldn't that then require more mixing on the 4 track itself?
>What would be ideal room mic placenent for a really noisy, honky kind of "trash can" sounding reverb on guitar leads? Can provide example if you'd like

>>64210285
>Monitors are not essential
Yikes. Hope you're not OP

>>64210052
Gigging keyboard player here, just use the keyboard in mono, do you really need stereo?

>>64210052

It sounds like your troubleshot that the mixer sounds alright. I'm not an expert at live sound setups, but here's my best guess. Either that the direct box is crap, or your gain staging is choking off the keyboard.

Make sure your keyboard is outputting full or almost full volume. On the direct box, make sure the pad isn't engaged. Gain up the preamp to 12 o clock. Basically make sure there is never to heavy a boost or volume cut at any stage of amplification.

If that doesn't work I'd buy a Radial DI and see if that fixes the problem, they're only a 100 bucks and they're the shit.

>>64210428
Why don't you just record to tape in the first place instead of being disingenuous?

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Hi OP;

I'm trying to recreate the synths from this beginning of this song;

( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYtHDE7XxVw - The Appleseed Cast, Fight Song )

While I was able to click around enough patches on Cubase 5's default synth VST's to make something vaguely similar to the choir synth, I really don't feel like I have anywhere to start with the throbbing-sounding one other than that it sounds vaguely like a sine-wave-sorta sound to me.

I asked on facebook if someone could give me tips, and I got this, not understanding what any of it means as I know next to nothing about any of this. Can you or anyone else help?

>>64210528
>recreate the synths
>Cubase 5's default synth VST's

(You)/10

>>64210489
I wanted to, rest of band doesn't want to learn how to use a portastudio

>>64210577

You should totally tell me what I'm looking for my man

>>64210636
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRKvgf80aio

>>64210083
I wish I was a producer so I could give you better advice. Those guys have an ear for knowing what extra textures can add.

A huge part of synth layering is making sure the different layers don't compete. Don't be afraid to layer a few wussy, thin synths on top of a really fatty synth to fill in all the gaps

>>64210156
I think it's fine. I've never used it but Feed me and 9th wonder use it and they're pretty fucking great.

>>64210247
Never used it. I know people swear by it though. I think a DAW is just a vessel to create art with. If you can work fast and unrestricted in it then you have more time for music making

i mostly do noise, how do i make a voice sound louder without just boosting the frequencies?
oh, and i have a really shitty mic and until i'm able to afford a professional one it's all i got, how can i master a shitty recording into something decent?

>>64210464
Well thats where my problem lies. My Nord Electro doesn't actually do mono properly. Its bi-timbral and allows me to send one voice to L, and the other to R. It allows me to optimize piano sounds for mono, but no actual function to output the whole instrument and all sounds to one channel. I can run the stereo pair into a stereo input on my mixer and pan it all the way to one side, but thats a bit more equipment than I want to deal with. ideally I would not have a mixer involved at all.

>>64210468
I just tried tweaking my gain staging and it helped a little bit. Let me ask you this, if I have my keyboard set to full volume right out the gate, and turn it down at every step down the chain. How do I raise my volume while playing without reaching for my mixer or pa volume knobs? how do I access the headroom?

I can see that this is going to take some serious guessing and checking to make the velocity->volume curve feel right for me.

>>64210428
1: Record from a stereo output on a tape player into a stereo audio interface like an Apogee Duet
2: See step 1
3: Get a guitar amp with a fucked up Spring reverb, or find out how to abuse the tone of a guitar amp that has a spring available

>>64210528
I don't really program synths to that calibre, so other people could probably help you out more. Sounds like he's got a chorus on there and a 16th note delay though

Maybe phase modulation? Can anyone else field this one?

What's your preferred method of recording drums, both mic choice and placement?

>>64210770
The spring tank in my fender isn't quite the sound I'm after. I'm going for something like this racket

http://youtu.be/2CupfPCMp4Q

I've NEARLY been able to replicate it with a delay with high feedback and super short delay time, but it still doesn't sound quite right and doesn't have that natural roomy sound.

thx for tape tips anon, in tests we've been using 3.5 to xlr thriugh the audio interface and it makes it sound like utter shit

>>64210718
Use an EQ to notch out all the shittiest frequencies. Boost a really narrow band to find them, then turn them down like 10dB.
Then use compression, find a preset that sounds the best.
Then EQ instruments in the mix that are masking your voice so that you don't have to boost or turn up your voice too much. Try cutting these other instruments between the 1-5 kHz range

>>64210857
Mics for kick in, kick out, snare top/bottom, tom mics, far room mics facing away from the kit, mono mid room mic. Compress the shit out of one of the room mics.
The Overheads can be ORTF, XY or Spaced Pair configuration.
Maybe a random room mic in a cupboard if it sounds cool

I've done a kit with a mono overhead and kick in once and it sounded good. It took me 25 minutes to place the overhead mic in the right spot.

Microphone types? Beta 52, D112 for kick
SM57 or AKG 451 on Snares
421s on toms
KM 184s, AKG 414, U87s on Overheads
Telefunken 251 for mid room mic
TLM 103 or 170 for Far room mics

>>64210924
alright, thanks m8. just one more thing i'm curious about, i know this is fucking retarded but could you give me a TL;DR on the differences between mixing for home listening and a stadium or whatever? i've been told it's something contemporary DJs have completely forgotten despite it being extremely important, but that's just about as far as my knowledge on the subject goes.

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>>64209431
damn, answer this you nerd

>>64210880

You gotta ask a guitar guru about how to get that tone! Sounds fucking cool

Sorry it sounds like shit. Is it a shitty tape player? Is it a shitty interface?
It might be worth bringing it to a studio to use their high quality converters/tape players. Shouldn't be too expensive

>>64211087
Do you mean mixing live sound? Like for a concert?

>>64210186

>if you don't live anywhere near them

That's the thing - I don't live in LA or NY so it's hard to consistently have people to mix. I'd like to think that, with the internet, I can do this sort of thing long distance

>>64211100
It seemed like a good idea at the time

>>64211156
You can, but it's hard to get quality clients without having some sort of established mixing history under your belt. If you'd mixed several reputable albums you'd have an easier time doing it. I had to move to a big city to pull off being a mixer :(

>>64209219
i'm poor and i know nothing about music production

i'm recording every instrument individually by myself on a tascam a friend gave me, then i plan to put everything together and then i guess i'll balance everything until it sounds pretty, how horrible is this and how bad will it sound?

>>64211115
honestly I think the xlr converter thing is the issue, the bassist (who owns it) said he gets volume drops and slight distortion when using it for other things. I'll try to convince them to bring it to someone/let me go out of pocket to do so/see if we can borrow some better equipment, thanks. Super dumb question, but the normal 3.5 out on the computer will be stereo if we run it through the interface and into the tape deck, right? And it would then just be a matter of making sure to send it back through in stereo?

thanks again for the help dude. I'll ask around a bit to figure out that tone, and play around with fucked up room mic placements. It sounds like it was recorded in a public restroom and I luv it.

best means for xlr to usb under $50?

>>64211427
Just get an audio interface. No use spending $50 on a piece of trash.

>>64211454
but I don't want to relly fuck with the sound using gain and shit

>>64211481
What? That doesn't even make sense. If you want it stupid, just use your phone mic, stupid.

>>64211296
Probably not horrible. Use your ears to find the best sounding spot in your house. Record there and that will help immensely

>>64211301
Yes, they should both be stereo. Not trying to beat a dead horse, but you'll get WAY better results running it through some high quality converters. Bad converters distortion isn't nice like cassette saturation. It causes it to thin out and sound whispy

>>64209219
prove that your opinion is worth something.

>>64211481

What >>64211530 said

>>64211530
most audio interfaces have options for gain and such
these are not things I want to fuck with

>>64211723
Are you referring to cable converters or the interface itself? Is there anything you'd recommend for either?

That was fun but I'm taking off now. Thanks!

>>64211852
thank you lad

>>64211136
yeah, that's what i meant.

>>64209219
How often do you purchase from loop masters, prime loops, etc etc..

1)Based on what you've heard from people who do home recording, what's the best piece of advice you think most would benefit from?

2)Favorite freeware VST?

3)Favorite paid VST?