Polishing turds, the tips and tricks thread

[ze kink]

Yeah, we all know you ain't going to get chocolate out of crap. I still think this could make an interesting topic, as there seems to be a bunch of members here who've got great results from subpar recordings.

I've most always recorded my own stuff, and as I really enjoy tracking and hunting sounds and mic choices/placements, I have to spend less time getting sounds while mixing. But now, I've been mixing a couple of projects that have been recorded by someone else, and with some very different approaches I'd aim for personally, like using a pretty dry and dead sounding wood snare for a rock track, XY overheads instead of a wider AB, or choosing a hihat spot mic instead of a mono room or snare bottom. And obviously with some stuff that's not done entirely "correctly" either, such as the tom tracks being recorded too hot and clipped, and the snare track with gratuitous amounts of ugly off-axis hihat bleed.

So obviously, the approach that needs to be taken with a project such as this, is not "dialing the bad stuff out" of the starting sounds, but instead getting stuff to sound good from a bad starting point. Polishing turds, if you will.

Besides using samples and reamping DI'd stuff (no DI's in this project BTW), I've noticed:
- That you can make mic'd acoustic guitars with too much room less obnoxious with a smooth but high HPF, and then modulation.
- Haas doubling can bigginate a lead guitar that's too weak on it's own, and also lives in the same range as vocals so cannot be in the center.
- Haas stuff on mono synth tracks too.
- Subliminal room reverb on the spot mics can compensate somewhat boring overheads.
- The hi-hat spot mic is actually a good sidechain source: try duplicating, strip silencing/gating and using it in bashing parts to compress overheads or the snare (especially if you're not gating/expanding it).
- Duplicate and strip silence the snare, nudge a few ms and use that to trigger the gate on a snare track. Old trick but still valid.
- Duplicate the snare, gate it so it's just a short spank and distort it. Boost the lows too. Maybe some reverb, maybe not. Sort of a ghetto snare bottom.
- Don't compress the snare, instead send to a bus for individual parallel compression. Gate and compress to taste, but use lightly so it doesn't make the dynamics go all weird.
- Lame programmed, electronic drums? Reamp them through a fuzz/distortion pedal and a battery powered Marshall amp, then mic that. Record it to a seperate track and blend it in a little bit.
- Reamp the guitar DI's through a fuzz pedal. They sound like crap on their own but can give some interesting presence when blended in.

What are your own cool ideas you've used? My personal favourite is probably the Marshall MS-2, I always seem to get something interesting when running stuff through it.

 

[Jordon]

The sludgy/fuzzy rhythm track is a great trick to beef up guitars. I know Johnny K uses this technique on damn near every heavy record he does.

2 rhythm tracks on each side, then 2 more rhythm tracks up the center going through the most fuzzed-out, unintelligible tone you can imagine. Definition is the enemy with these "sludge" tracks. Then, slowly blend them in. You don't want them to be noticeable, but when you mute them, you should feel the girth of the guitars disappear. Needless to say, they have to be INCREDIBLY tight.

 

[abaga129]

The sludgy/fuzzy rhythm track is a great trick to beef up guitars. I know Johnny K uses this technique on damn near every heavy record he does.

2 rhythm tracks on each side, then 2 more rhythm tracks up the center going through the most fuzzed-out, unintelligible tone you can imagine. Definition is the enemy with these "sludge" tracks. Then, slowly blend them in. You don't want them to be noticeable, but when you mute them, you should feel the girth of the guitars disappear. Needless to say, they have to be INCREDIBLY tight.

That's a pretty interesting technique. I'll be sure to try that some time, are the centered tracks just doubles of the original tracks or are they separate takes?

 

[heshian46]

Nothing too ground-breaking here but:

Blend a nice mono or stereo room impulse (briscati, lexicon, etc.) lightly under poorly tracked or less than ideal overhead tracks to give them some life and depth. Make sure to EQ out any wierd peaks or midrange honkiness from the OHs first.

 

[He's Dead, Jim]

As someone recording POD Farm turds, I would like to keep this thread going at all costs

 

[Jordon]

That's a pretty interesting technique. I'll be sure to try that some time, are the centered tracks just doubles of the original tracks or are they separate takes?

It's 6 rhythm tracks in total. 2 on each side like you would usually do when quad-tracking, then 2 of the sludge tracks, which are each another performance of the rhythm tracks, either straight up the middle or panned slightly left and right.

 

[crillemannen]

I usually flush my turds down the toilet

 

[Igor Samurovic]

If your bass guitar hasn't got enough grit on its own, try distorting it. However, then there's another problem. When you distort it, it will sound terrible because distortion will be hit by the huge low end and then those terrible mids that you will scoop out of the distorted tone. So you are not gaining anything if the signal sucks. However, now there's another trick: ReaPitch (from cockos) can change formant and work like an exciter. Change formant via ReaPitch and you will create high end out of nowhere, I have no idea how this works. The problem you're faced with is that it sounds artificial clean, because pick attack also gets transposed higher up. However, if you put a formant of 6-12, then put a bandpass that kills everything but 500-4000, and then distort it, it will sound VERY attacky. I personally use x30 for distortion, a screamer before it can streamline pick attack so that it sounds more natural. Put a cab sim to liking. After this is done, you're best off putting a new bandpass that lets only 500-4000 hz pass (REQ 2 is great for this!). Now mix this track as you would any distorted bass track, find a place it'd sit in well (I find it to be 1000-1500 in my mixes) and boost that, but keep in mind that you might have to tame the attack with deesser or C4 so that it doesn't get too aggressive.

 

[Revson]

Don't have a room mic? Send all the drum shell mics (even the kick) to a reverb buss. Keep the reverb time short and blend to taste. It really helps liven up the drums.

Got a weak sounding solo? Duplicate it, pitch shift it down an octave, blend it in.

Vocals aren't poppin' and lockin'? Throw a distortion plugin on it. I like DaTube in Cubase. Keep it subtle though.

Got a natural snare that's not cutting through? Pitch shift it up and it'll give you a nice snap.

Somebody gave you a guitar track recorded using a solid state Crate and no DI? Tell him the file was corrupted and he has to come re-record it.

 

[Igor Samurovic]

Somebody gave you a guitar track recorded using a solid state Crate and no DI? Tell him the file was corrupted and he has to come re-record it.

This is probably the best suggestion ever.

 

[botus99]

Somebody gave you a guitar track recorded using a solid state Crate and no DI? Tell him the file was corrupted and he has to come re-record it.

 

[abaga129]

It's 6 rhythm tracks in total. 2 on each side like you would usually do when quad-tracking, then 2 of the sludge tracks, which are each another performance of the rhythm tracks, either straight up the middle or panned slightly left and right.

That's a lot of tracking

 

[Jordon]

That's a lot of tracking

Totally worth it if the musicians are capable of playing tight enough. I've been using that trick for the past few months and it really does help marry the guitar tracks to the bass and oddly adds girth to the guitars without muddying up the mix.

 

[AllanD]

Natural Drums: If drums are poorly tuned and recorded, the nastiness of the tuning is usually found in the mids. Most natural drums can be usable blended with a sample if you scoop the fuck out of the mids on the shells.

 

[Igor Samurovic]

When it comes to adding fatness, it is also a nice idea to make an uberly distorted bass track in the middle, but add an octaver before distortion (+12). Then highpass the tone @4khz and lowpass @where your lowpass is located on a guitar. What this will cause is a lot of uber high harmonics that play an octave, but we won't be able to perceive this as an octave that easily because of how high the highpass is. In my case, a lowpass is @12khz, so this is mostly recommended to augment bright guitar tones with more 'bass guitar' content, not recomended for treble-deficient tones! Remember to turn this track off when bass is solo'd, if you want to avoid the octaver sounding as octaver as all costs.

 

[Kalapuikko]

Really cool tip! Another similar would be adding some thick rugs around the kit so that they are hanging roughly 1 meter above the floor. You can do this using some mic boom stands aligned vertically. This way you would get less direct cymbals in the room, but the kick and snare would shoot right through!

This works surprisingly well, tried it the last time I recorded drums. Head at the position of my blumlein room pair I could only see the shells, and the difference was really good. Definitely going to continue using that. I think I got the inspiration from Eric Valentine, he posted a photo to somewhere where he had something blocking the cymbals from the room mics.

 

[Uros]

Cool thread. I'll add one tip - when you feel that drums could have a little more weight to them - reamp them (only shells) through a PA with a stereo mic pair or a mono room mic, and THEN pitch shift that track/s a full octave down. Then slowly blend it in with the original track, adjust dry/wet ratio to taste with full mix going. You can hear this effect in practice in Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun, listen those mighty drums pounding during the solo. They did the pitch shifting with Eventide Harmonizer, tho. In any case, really massive.

Of course, add a compression/limiting, distortion, etc. to taste, if you want.

edit: this pitch shift thingy could also work on your room tracks, if you have a couple of them. just make a copy of the room track and pitch shift it (LP it, to get rid of the cymbals, you don't need them for this).

 

[meanmrmustad]

Shitty band? bad drum take? program it... Bad guitar part? record it.... Bad vocals? shoot the vocalist.....charge em moooooooooooooooooooooooore

 

[The StabbinCabin]

I don't think the 6 sludgy guitar takes or the pitch-shifted drums are a turn polishing technique- but fucking fantastic ideas.

I feel a stickied thread in the works for a non-traditional approach for tracking that yield very cool results with possible audio examples of DAW-less reproductions. It'd go over basics, maybe force a bit of people to try something differently their next session.

OT:

Bricasti RedRoom impulse with proper enveloping and eq underneath dry guitars, especially sims, have helped get a larger and slightly more three dimensional sound. Being able to automate it in a separate bus also helps.

With the Crate amp comment. I've actually gotten decent results with solid state Crates. Literally my second recording ever, but it's not bad...

 

[Uros]

Eh, today nearly everything is some form of turd polishing.

Anyway, here's another useful tip - if you want bigger low end on your kick - make a copy of it, delay it ~18-25 ms, cut everything from ~150 Hz and upwards, boost 50-60 Hz 4 or 5 dB and flip its phase. Blend to taste. What you'll get is bigger low end without actually increasing volume, because two tracks don't hit at the same time. These are only rough numbers, so as always - experiment.