Recording an album...

digitalscream · May 2014

...is surprisingly easy. My last band made a right meal of it - in fact, they're still trying to get it done two years later. My current band started about 7 months ago, and while we'd started recording the odd track there were a few problems. We decided to start again from scratch almost two weeks ago, and we're over half way through the recording process.

OK, so we're cheating a little (electronic drums + samples, and everything else is going through my Eleven Rack), but it amazes me that people treat it as something that's so damn difficult. If you just don't make it out to be a big challenge and just get on with it, it's suddenly very easy. I mean...we've broken the back of it, and we're fitting it around jobs, gigs and even a wedding.

That is all.

guitarfishbay · May 2014

Your massive time (and money) saver there is the electronic drums. Not only can you edit them really easily you don't have to worry about mic placement, having a nice room, paying for a good engineer/nice room/renting mics etc. You can also drop in/out more easily on recording sessions, whereas setting a drum recording setup from scratch can take a while. The drummer doesn't even need to worry about hitting consistently because it can all be sorted out later. If you're recording a real performance depending on how strict you're being you can do a lot of stop starting for timing and dynamic errors.

Can you tell the last drum recording session we had was stressful?

)

digitalscream · May 2014

Well, we recorded the drums as a "proper" performance - no fine-editing or shifting stuff around, just to get a "human" feel to it.

You're right, though; it saved a huge amount of time and money. He did all 8 tracks in a day

I'm finishing off my parts today, we've got two tracks left on the vocals and then it's just bass (needs some fine-tuning) and the other guitarist's parts.

PolarityMan · May 2014

drums were definitely our killer

Danny1969 · May 2014

I've had a few bands track an album in one day by playing drums, guitars and bass live with me using a lot of screens to control bleed and then doing the vocals in the booth, then the guitar solo's in the control room. So basically an album recorded for £200 in one day but then it's still gotta be mixed ..... which can cost anything from £50 to £300

guitarfishbay · May 2014

That is mega cheap mixing for an album Danny.

Cirrus · May 2014

It totally depends on the project, it's a massive list of variables ranging from the ability of each player to how good or shit the songs are to how you chose to record etc.

If you want to play live with a static mix you can be done in a day if your ensemble can play tightly and you know exactly what you're aiming for.

But it can easily balloon out from there, especially if you want to record drums with different tunings/ sounds (factor in perhaps an hour for each drum tuning change), or if the the desired production require multiple overdubs. Then there's mixing. I think even if you have a consistent sound you're looking at a minimum of 3 hours/ song, unless you really do go for a bare bones aesthetic and don't bother actually mixing at all beyond setting a basic static fader mix.

With our last album, it took time. We had 16 songs on the go and recorded+ mixed them all before picking 12. We have jobs so it was all evenings and weekends, though I did take a couple of weeks off to do the mixing. Because of the way the sessions were split it's hard to pin down an exact time-per-song, but at an estimate each song was;

Pre-production (tightening arrangements, deciding on tones etc): 6 hours of practice time.

Drum and Bass backing track recording: 4 hours including song-specific drum tuning/ mic setup and an average of 6 takes per song

Backing track editing: 2 hours of splicing takes and tidying up minor timing errors.

Guitar recording: 3 hours per track

Misc. overdubs: song dependent. Maybe 30 mins to add a shaker but might have been hours constructing noise collages, extra sessions with backing singers, keyboard and synth work, and sonic "experiments". At a guess, 2 hours per track.

Lead Vocals: 1 hour in which maybe 6 full takes would be sung and extra doubles on some sections.

Vocal comping: 1 hour to pare all takes down into one master take.

Mixing; 2 hours to construct first mix, and on average 1 hour of revision time. Some took longer if heavy automation was needed.

That's what, conservatively 21 hours to get the song from something we can play live from start to finish to a finished mix, ready to master. And if you're the songwriter, arranger, recorder, producer and mixer you have to schedule that over a long enough period of time that you can approach each stage with a fresh perspective. Multiply that 21 hours by 16 and give it to a guy who already works a full time job and frankly I'm amazed we went from first recording session to album release in a year!

:-O

Because the above time doesn't include the actual songwriting and thrashing out a band arrangement. It doesn't include the inevitable wrong turn where you realise you've recorded a song badly and start again. It doesn't include the couple of weeks needed to assimilate the finished mixes and decide on a final track listing. It doesn't include the time spent on artwork, or mastering, or the 2 to 3 months after it's finished when you should be whoring it to the media before you actually release it.

TLDR: It just depends, but there's a good reason it'll take ages if you're self-producing over evenings and weekends!

@Digitalscream, specifically in relation to your post, if you started recording 7 months ago I'd suggest you've had a few practice runs of tracks, worked out what does and doesn't work, and at that stage it'll be much easier to just wipe the slate clean and romp through lots of recording now that you've got the benefit of perspective and hindsight!

IanSavage · May 2014

Danny1969 said:

I've had a few bands track an album in one day by playing drums, guitars and bass live with me using a lot of screens to control bleed and then doing the vocals in the booth, then the guitar solo's in the control room. So basically an album recorded for £200 in one day but then it's still gotta be mixed ..... which can cost anything from £50 to £300

My new lot will be looking at doing pretty much that, it's only a blues three-piece so we're thinking drums in one room with a four-mic 'recorderman' setup, guitar amp in another room or behind a screen with a bit of judicious duvet-ing and bass DI'd to get the basic rhythm tracks, then solo and vocal overdubs. With any luck we can have the basics down in a few days, and mixing can be done at leisure using my (surprisingly excellent-sounding

) home setup. If we can avoid having to hire mics we should be able to get a decent album done in a few weeks for a few hundred quid.

Danny1969 · May 2014

@guitarfishbay : I always get asked how much would it cost to record 1 songs or how much would a 4 track EP be etc and I always have to basically say it depends how good you are.

I had to record a session drummer and bass player once for 3 songs, it was a demo a corporate band was doing. We spent 30 mins setting the kit up and I put about 12 mic's on it. Then I hit record and their first take was flawless, drums and bass recorded in 4 minutes. Second song was the same. So 10 minutes have passed and they had done their parts for 2 songs. There was another 2 hours booked for the session, so for the third song we mucked about a bit to fill the time

@IanSavage

If you can get down to me in office hours you could have a live room and control room for £18 an hour, track it yourself and take the stems away. You can use my mics as well

IanSavage · May 2014

Hmmm...what's your availability like for the week after next (half term)? No guarantee that WE'LL be free, but worth checking....

Danny1969 · May 2014

Pretty clear upto 6 in the eve, all eve's from 6 to 10 are booked but we are always quiet in office hours generally

IanSavage · May 2014

Aaaaaaahhhhhhh, Portsmouth - a bit far I'm afraid Danny, adding an overnighter or two would probably make it too pricey to be done on that kinda timescale (would need to get a few more paid gigs under our belts first

)

digitalscream · May 2014

Of course, I say all that...and today I've had nothing but a nightmare trying to record the last three tracks. Just having a terrible guitar day. Typical.

@Cirrus - sorry, should've been more specific. We didn't start recording the album 7 months ago - that's when we first got together and started writing music. Serious attempts at recording started a couple of months ago, but it was largely experimental and trying to work out how to get the best sound.

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

I've often thought I could specialise in capturing drum-tracks for bands. I get pretty damn good drum sounds (if I do say so myself!) with pretty modest drum gear, and I can edit them to still sound human, but tight as f00k as well.

First Tacoma album took about 3 months to record everything. The last album took 2 months to record. This doesn't include editing and mixing though.

It takes a long time to get pro results imho.

monquixote · May 2014

Did a six track demo with my band with live drums in a day including overdubs for vocals and brass.

It then took 4 months to mix

Danny1969 · May 2014

Drew_fx said:

I've often thought I could specialise in capturing drum-tracks for bands. I get pretty damn good drum sounds (if I do say so myself!) with pretty modest drum gear, and I can edit them to still sound human, but tight as f00k as well.

First Tacoma album took about 3 months to record everything. The last album took 2 months to record. This doesn't include editing and mixing though.

It takes a long time to get pro results imho.

Good recorded drum tracks is generally all about the drummer first and how well he hits, his kit and how well that sounds and the room your recording it in. The other stuff like the mic's you use have little effect in comparison to those other three things

We have guys in my studio that specialize in metal drums, really fast death metal and they will move every single hit but they use a lot of sample replacement triggered from the close mics. Recording natural drums that use a lot of overheads and room mic's rather than close mics is largely dependent on the performance of the drummer, his kit and the room.

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

I disagree on your statement about microphones, having just A/B'd a bunch of microphones on a snare drum two weeks ago - we went with a SE Electronics condensor microphone and a SM57 taped together, sounded great! Imho microphones are ultra-ultra important. But the rest of your post is generally what I think as well.

I managed to get away without using any triggering on the last Tacoma album. A few samples were used, but they were samples we took during the sessions - just to cap off fills with a tom hit that wasn't washed all in cymbals for example.

Danny1969 · May 2014

Condensor on the snare would be nice but most of the time I have a shedload of hat and cymbal bleed in the snare mic when I use a 57 or 906 dynamic ..... getting a nice snare sound without the spill is the holy grail I think

guitarfishbay · May 2014

Our drummer just changed his kit, after our tracking sessions for him are over.... I'm so gutted because his new kit is so much nicer. The new toms are lovely, they sound much better balanced. I think all the toms and the kick are smaller on his new kit and the snare is wooden instead of brass.

Cirrus · May 2014

Danny1969;243107" said:
getting a nice snare sound without the spill is the holy grail I think

As far as Hi hat spill goes, It's all in the playing. The drummer has to balance his kit or it's going to be an uphill struggle. If the internal balance within the instrument is right and the performance is solid, I find the drum mix is much more "robust" against niggling little things like hi hat spill and phase coherency issues. When the hi hat is the loudest thing and is sloshing through the snare mic as loud as the actual drum my question isn't "How do I stop this terrible spill", it's "how do I make this terrible spill sound ok since at the moment the principle hi hat mic is a 180 degree off-axis SM57?"

But for the most part, it's in the performance - mic placement only goes so far.

Danny1969 · May 2014

Cirrus said:

Danny1969;243107" said:
getting a nice snare sound without the spill is the holy grail I think
As far as Hi hat spill goes, It's all in the playing. The drummer has to balance his kit or it's going to be an uphill struggle. If the internal balance within the instrument is right and the performance is solid, I find the drum mix is much more "robust" against niggling little things like hi hat spill and phase coherency issues. When the hi hat is the loudest thing and is sloshing through the snare mic as loud as the actual drum my question isn't "How do I stop this terrible spill", it's "how do I make this terrible spill sound ok since at the moment the principle hi hat mic is a 180 degree off-axis SM57?"

But for the most part, it's in the performance - mic placement only goes so far.

Ah yeah I know, that's kinda the point I was making when Drew said he could work tracking drums for bands. I said first things the drummer, then the kit, then the room etc. I have worked with drummers (and still do) that are very hard to record as they just can't balance the kit themselves and there's always too much cymbal and hat in everything. And then there's the issue of inconsistent hits, bad timing etc. A lot of this goes unnoticed when playing live but not in the studio

I like natural sounding drums. I like the sound of a kit picked up by 2 overheads in either a spaced pair or the Recorder man type setup reinforced with a kick drum mic. Then some room mics added from 4 to 5 metres away. I don't much like the sound of a close mic on snare and toms ..... it always seems to just make a "dok" kind of sound .... because I believe the true sound of a snare is created about a metre away from the drum and a close mic just doesn't capture that. I do use close mics, in a typical session there's generally 12 to 16 mics used on the kit but for me if it's ain't happening in the overheads alone then it's probably never gonna be great. The session guys I record understand this and adjust accordingly. Your average hobby drummer has often never recorded properly in a professional environment so hasn't yet got the adjustment skills .... that's generally the problem with some guys

Spill through any close dynamic mic like a 57 etc always sounds bad to me because of the upper mid spike these mics have and their reduced frequency response .... fine for snares and toms but cymbals through a 57 sound horrible

I'm aware that for metal, a lot of my points are mute .... it's all triggered and replaced anyway and there's no room in the arrangement for the drums to breathe. When I designed and built Live room 1 though it was pacifically to get large natural drum sounds so it's an area that really interest me and an area I'm always keen to learn more about

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

Danny1969;243107" said:
Condensor on the snare would be nice but most of the time I have a shedload of hat and cymbal bleed in the snare mic when I use a 57 or 906 dynamic ..... getting a nice snare sound without the spill is the holy grail I think

Generally I'd force the drummer to move his hihat a bit further away from the snare, and raise it a little higher so I can get the hihat into the null zone of the microphone, and put a beam-blocker sort of thing on it.

This sort of thing: http://www.auralex.com/gallery/images/xp_3lr.jpg

Although usually I'm doing it ghetto style with duct tape and tea towels!!

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

If close mics on a snare or tom are going "dok" instead of "dokTOOOONNNNEEEEEEEpssssshhhh" then your microphone is too close to the skin.

Recording drums for me is one of the most creative things, because you can get so many different tones purely with microphone placement. Which is why I always go overboard with microphones. You can dial it back later on in the mix, but having those tones can be useful.

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

Also, shit drummers is what puts me off from trying my hand as drum engineer. Also self-righteous drummers who wont let you tune their kit for them. Because really... I WOULD know best

PolarityMan · May 2014

You should have heard the arguments with our drummer when we insisted that the floor tom really shouldn't have a half second long pitchbend up by a semi-tone. I have no idea how he managed to contrive the drum to be tuned like that.

Ill have to dig through our sessions and see if we captured it before it was retuned because it was absolutely hilariously bad.

Danny1969 · May 2014

Drew_fx said:

If close mics on a snare or tom are going "dok" instead of "dokTOOOONNNNEEEEEEEpssssshhhh" then your microphone is too close to the skin.

Recording drums for me is one of the most creative things, because you can get so many different tones purely with microphone placement. Which is why I always go overboard with microphones. You can dial it back later on in the mix, but having those tones can be useful.

Yes the further you get from the skin the more like a snare it sounds .... trouble is the further you pull a dynamic mic sway from the source the more you will have unwanted spill getting it it. So generally I think the answer is get the mic further away but hit the drum harder

Using a lot of mic's can be cool and give you a lot of options but it can also turn into a phase fest where everythings a bit weak due to the cancellation

guitarfishbay · May 2014

I think he means he's going to chuck some mics if not necessary later on. I do that when micing a guitar cab now that I have enough inputs to work from.

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

guitarfishbay said:

I think he means he's going to chuck some mics if not necessary later on. I do that when micing a guitar cab now that I have enough inputs to work from.

Correct. It's fun to bring in some other room mics during choruses too, helps beef everything up. It's all about creative options for me when it comes to the mix.

PolarityMan said:

You should have heard the arguments with our drummer when we insisted that the floor tom really shouldn't have a half second long pitchbend up by a semi-tone. I have no idea how he managed to contrive the drum to be tuned like that.

Ill have to dig through our sessions and see if we captured it before it was retuned because it was absolutely hilariously bad.

WOW.

In a word - very bad tuning. The skins should be equal tension both sides, doing this gives you the most pure tone and sustain, with no pitch bend. If you tune the reso head higher than the batter, you'll get a bit less fullness and a bit less sustain, with a bit of a pitch-bend... if you go too far, it'll get really pitch. Likewise if you tune the batter up higher than the reso, you get similar effects. Each drum size has an ideal tuning range too, and this is important to look into before you even begin.

A hell of a lot of drummers cannot tune their kits.

Drew_TNBD · May 2014

In terms of distance from the skins - follow the 4 finger rule, and you should be fine. If you get spill, change the angle of the mic, but not the distance. Some spill is to be expected. Take samples of each drum at a few different intensities. Then during the edit, replace the last hit of each fill with a sample. This will allow you to get rid of cymbal tails that go over the fill into the next bar.

You can also duplicate the track, lowpass one, highpass the other... and fade out the highpassed hits a lot quicker than the lowpassed hits. Kurt Balou does this AFAIK.

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