This is all about turd-polishing. I should have known from the outset that this was going to be a rough road, but maaannn....
So, I decided that my band needed to record a 3-song demo a few months before we start playing live. That way, we'd have something for people to listen to so they could at least be somewhat familiar with some of the material. The original plan was to upgrade my recording interface and monitors, track, mix, etc.... Easy-peesey.
The money that I had intended to use to upgrade my interface disappeared when I found out that my tax withholdings were off for the year---to the tune of about $1800. No new interface, no monitors. Instead, it was a question of "How far can we get with what I have?" What I had consisted of a M-Audio Fasttrack, an old Yamaha 4-track tape recorder, a 6-channel Beheringer mixer, and an untested Samick 8-track mixer.
I had planned on tracking 4 tracks of drums. 1 track snare, 1 track kick, 2 stereo overhead tracks with toms mixed in. I was going to daisy-chain a monitoring system together back to the drummer, so at least I could play along with him. The monitor situation didn't work, so he wound up tracking drums by memory---no click, no other instruments, no nothing. He did an admirable job.
But, the Samick 8-channel board didn't work. 7 of the 8 channels cut in and out through the course of tracking. The result? One overhead mic, kick, and snare through the whole thing (kick and snare were through the Beheringer).
We could have re-tracked. We probably should have re-tracked. But, it took forever to schedule the first tracking, and the performances seemed pretty good. Like a fool, I decided to "fix it". The first step was to play back the 4-track into the computer. Simple enough, right? Nope. Because, as I had forgotten from years of NOT recording analog, many 4-tracks varispeed while playing back. Since I wanted to maintain the track seperation, I did the overhead, snare, and kick seperately---which meant that they not only recorded at different times, but at different rates. So, it wasn't a simple fact of lining up the tracks at the beginning, but slicing every snare and kick hit so that it lined up with the overheads. Then there were toms. No toms really came through very well---just the odd "bimp, boomp" in the overhead.
That's where Sneap's Chimaira samples came in. I built a tom track out of those tom sounds, lining them up in like fashion with the overheads like I had done with the snare and kick.
Tracking bass was one of the few things that went as planned. That and vocals. Bass sounded good. Vocals were typical for my voice (trying not to sound like a muppet).
For tracking guitars, we set up in my garage. I used my 5150 through a 1960a cab, my co-guitarist used the Marshall 2203kk through a V30 cab. I moved the computer rig out there, and we mic'd it up with an SM58. No biggie, eh? Except that I'm still lacking actual reference monitors. So, we monitored on my computer speakers, which apparently have a whole lot of nothing where the low midrange exists. Consequently, the guitars sounded okay through them, but turned to pure mud through everything else.
For mixing, I was stuck trying to run through every headphone, earbud, and car stereo that I could get my hands on. To be honest, my wife's Pontiac G6 wound up being the closest thing I've had to a reference monitor. I posted some rough tracks up here earlier--Unavailable and OzNimbus were nice enough to listen through and give me their thoughts. Special thanks to them, because I was kind of mixing pretty much deaf.
Without further ado; the most jerry-rigged recording I've done since I used a VCR for mixdown:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7799997
So, I decided that my band needed to record a 3-song demo a few months before we start playing live. That way, we'd have something for people to listen to so they could at least be somewhat familiar with some of the material. The original plan was to upgrade my recording interface and monitors, track, mix, etc.... Easy-peesey.
The money that I had intended to use to upgrade my interface disappeared when I found out that my tax withholdings were off for the year---to the tune of about $1800. No new interface, no monitors. Instead, it was a question of "How far can we get with what I have?" What I had consisted of a M-Audio Fasttrack, an old Yamaha 4-track tape recorder, a 6-channel Beheringer mixer, and an untested Samick 8-track mixer.
I had planned on tracking 4 tracks of drums. 1 track snare, 1 track kick, 2 stereo overhead tracks with toms mixed in. I was going to daisy-chain a monitoring system together back to the drummer, so at least I could play along with him. The monitor situation didn't work, so he wound up tracking drums by memory---no click, no other instruments, no nothing. He did an admirable job.
But, the Samick 8-channel board didn't work. 7 of the 8 channels cut in and out through the course of tracking. The result? One overhead mic, kick, and snare through the whole thing (kick and snare were through the Beheringer).
We could have re-tracked. We probably should have re-tracked. But, it took forever to schedule the first tracking, and the performances seemed pretty good. Like a fool, I decided to "fix it". The first step was to play back the 4-track into the computer. Simple enough, right? Nope. Because, as I had forgotten from years of NOT recording analog, many 4-tracks varispeed while playing back. Since I wanted to maintain the track seperation, I did the overhead, snare, and kick seperately---which meant that they not only recorded at different times, but at different rates. So, it wasn't a simple fact of lining up the tracks at the beginning, but slicing every snare and kick hit so that it lined up with the overheads. Then there were toms. No toms really came through very well---just the odd "bimp, boomp" in the overhead.
That's where Sneap's Chimaira samples came in. I built a tom track out of those tom sounds, lining them up in like fashion with the overheads like I had done with the snare and kick.
Tracking bass was one of the few things that went as planned. That and vocals. Bass sounded good. Vocals were typical for my voice (trying not to sound like a muppet).
For tracking guitars, we set up in my garage. I used my 5150 through a 1960a cab, my co-guitarist used the Marshall 2203kk through a V30 cab. I moved the computer rig out there, and we mic'd it up with an SM58. No biggie, eh? Except that I'm still lacking actual reference monitors. So, we monitored on my computer speakers, which apparently have a whole lot of nothing where the low midrange exists. Consequently, the guitars sounded okay through them, but turned to pure mud through everything else.
For mixing, I was stuck trying to run through every headphone, earbud, and car stereo that I could get my hands on. To be honest, my wife's Pontiac G6 wound up being the closest thing I've had to a reference monitor. I posted some rough tracks up here earlier--Unavailable and OzNimbus were nice enough to listen through and give me their thoughts. Special thanks to them, because I was kind of mixing pretty much deaf.
Without further ado; the most jerry-rigged recording I've done since I used a VCR for mixdown:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=7799997
