audiot

there you go. because of the pauses in between here are the links to the original article as well as the first three parts of what i wrote about it. you may skip the link to part 1, because that was just me presenting the link to you:

• original article
• recording vocals (part 1)
• recording vocals (part 2)
• recording vocals (part 3)

ok, now what’s left are points 5, 6 and 7. and they are more or less about the image people seem to have of singers everywhere. i can’t say i blame them, singers often are a real pain. and that’s what makes things a little hard for the “normal” ones sometimes. on the other hand, sometimes it’s just necessary for a singer to stand his/her ground and demand things others might find weird or wrong. i’m not going to start a philosophical debate here, but let’s just say, the voice is a unique instrument because it’s a part of our body. it’s easily harmed or even destroyed and one needs to take great care of it in order to keep it functional at peak efficiency. now, instrumentalists often just don’t get it. if they have troubles, they can simply change the strings or the heads, a screw or whatever else to fix it. but this isn’t the case with the voice. so singers have to be a bit overprotective, while others need to understand why.

that being said, there is of course no use in singers being bitchy and behaving like little princesses and even i threw out singers myself because of this. by the way, there are guitarists out there, known to be quite bitchy themselves, but let’s not go there…

now, there is certainly nothing wrong with making the vocalist comfortable. so be sure to have some hookers and lots of pizza standing by :-) as for the extra people, don’t ever let someone in who has nothing to do with the recording. i don’t care how good a friend he/she is to you, do you go to work with your friends? sitting on their desk while they’re in their office? i thought so. you’re there to work, easy as that. so throw ‘em out. and this goes for every recording session, not just vocals. bringing extra people just screams out “i’m not taking this seriously at all!”

as a singer, i’m happy if the studio people have water etc. for me, but i always bring my own, because you can just not count on it. it’s the same as with the lyrics. make sure you bring everything you need yourself. if you don’t need it, fine. you can leave it in the car, but you can always get it should the need arise. there’s nothing worse than a cancelled session, or one with less than good results, because of nothing to drink or something similarly stupid. so just be prepared for everything. and to get back to the “be professional” aspect: be able to do your job no matter what the circumstances are. even if there are morons lurking around, you might just not be in the position to do anything about it – if you’re there as a hired gun for instance. so hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

the practice aspect is worth mentioning as well. a singer needs to warm up, for everything. no matter if it’s rehearsals, a live gig or a recording session, warming up is critical. not just to keep the voice healthy and intact but also to make it sound better on the recording. a warmed-up voice sounds different and can be controlled a lot better, so warming up is important. but don’t go over the top with this. it’s a warm up, nothing more. the actual performance is what you need to focus on, so don’t let the warming up eat up your resources. by the way, this is not the time to practice. you should know what you’re doing by now. and, again, be professional. time is of the essence here. depending on the singing-style and the genre of the music you might be able to sing for hours without any problem OR you might have only 15 minutes before the voice sounds less than perfect! so make the best of it, take breaks whenever necessary and drink a lot. you’ll regret it big time if you settle for a crappy take because there was not enough time and you couldn’t do it any better at that very moment.

wow, here’s my favorite: never give negative feedback to the singer. that’s bullsh!t, at least in my book. if your singer can’t handle feedback (that includes both positive and negative), get rid of him/her. that same thing goes for any other musician you’re dealing with. now, i know it’s not that easy, although it should be. chances are you’re stuck with li’l princess, so well, be diplomatic if you have to. you should know who you’re dealing with before the session – know your enemy :-) so be aware if this person can handle feedback or not. everyone involved in the recording process should be on the same side, so if the performance was not good, the performer should be able to hear about it, because it’s for the greater good (now you have to mumble “the greater good” – anyone seen “Hot Fuzz”?). can you imagine a bad sounding recording because noone told the singer he/she was off? there’s too much at stake here. so this goes out to all singers: be able to handle feedback, if it’s constructive of course. if you’re off, deal with it! know your limits, accept your mistakes and do it better next time. closing your eyes and ears won’t do anyone any good, especially yourself. but for the non-singers who are stuck with such an idiot: do what you have to, to get through this. but now might be a good time to start secretly plotting against your singer, so you can have a real one by the time the next session is at hand…

good luck

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once more, i discovered an interesting discussion on new music strategies right here. it’s about when to put your own musicstuff online. is it better to wait until it’s properly mixed, mastered, produced – so it’s good in quality, maybe even polished and slick. or is the answer more like “now”?

there’s a lot of comments that lean more to the one or the other side, but one aspect seems to be quite important to most of them. the fear of scaring your fans (or people that might become fans) away. boo!

my thoughts on this are a bit different, i’m saying “now”! put it all up, all you’ve got. polished? fine. raw? fine. good? fine. it sucks? fine. no matter what, show it to the world! now! you might think, so what has he put up so far? and you’re right, i might be the last person on earth to give advice about this. and i don’t, it’s just my thoughts on it, remember? by the way, i put stuff up here – remember? and it was neither good quality nor good songwriting or whatever, it was just nothing, a little gag. but back to me being the last person…. right now, i have nothing to upload. ridiculous? damn right it is. it’s a shame that all those years i spent making music only exist as memories and stories – i can’t change that. but i can do better from now on – and i will.

now why is it good if you upload anything that just sucks? well, for one, any publicity is good publicity. and this is now more true than ever. you might scare people who otherwise would have become your fans? think again. tastes differ. one man’s crap is another man’s gold. maybe your sweet little popsong is soooooo bad, it becomes a punkhit – who knows? and if noone likes it at all (and that’s hard to believe, someone on earth would love it. guaranteed.), so what? if you work on your internet-appearance, so that you’re findable – you have as many chances as you like. so the first hundred visitors didn’t like it? maybe the next hundred will. no? maybe the next hundred will. no? maybe the nex….. you won’t run out of possible fans, it’s the internet.

another thing that comes to my mind is the renaissance of bad quality. since everybody’s able to put cellphone-videos online in an instant, there are no more quality issues. today people sit in front of their screen watching clips that are just plain black (maybe with a little blurry-brown-something) and sound like a horsie making love to a running lawnmower. if someone would have brought you a vhs-tape with that clip to watch it on your tv in the pre-web-era? yep, my thoughts exactly. and let’s not forget: even well known acts put up low-quality-stuff. think bathroom sessions of the barenaked ladies – and people loved them. certainly, it’s nicely performed. what if you just can’t play? again, who cares? you will improve, and someday people might be proud of having known you since your first steps. even if they’re not, even if noone likes your music. i say it’s still far better than not releasing it to the public. because now it’s out there and its never going back. YOU are out there and you’re never going back. there’s more danger in waiting and trimming and polishing a little more and trimming again and…. “cool, there’s a new effect-device coming out next month. this will so improve this song of mine. i’m saving some money to buy it and then this song will rock and i can put it up there…..” this never ends. you’re really planning on releasing something as soon as it’s perfect? that moment will never come. it’s not the past, where independent artists saved money to make an album and because of limited time and cash, needed to decide which song and how long etc. today you have the possibilities to throw out whatever you like and an infinite amount of trials, so………………….

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well, this entry is not meant as a guideline or a review or something similar. it’s more like some thoughts about gear needed to do some decent recording.

when i first got into recording i was somewhere around the age of 15 and a friend of mine asked for my help with some tunes he wanted to do. he was a techno-fan back then (ugh), had lots of equipment from an Atari ST (yay!) to multiple synths and samplers – things that were needed back then. he knew how to use these things but had no idea about music, some kind of techie one might say. so he wanted me to do the other half. anyhoo, today i sometimes think about those ridiculous amounts of gear filling whole rooms and causing nothing but trouble. we usually spent one half hour creating music and 5 hours solving technical problems, what a nightmare.

and nowadays the world is more complex, we’re not far away from fridges that only let us open their door if we haven’t crossed our personal calory-barrier for the day and already use wordprocessing software that patronizes us beyond belief. but who would have thought that recording music would be so much easier almost twenty years later than above mentioned teen-memory. certainly, the need for know-how hasn’t vanished (and in my opinion that’s a good thing), there are however lots of people who underestimate this. probably because the very process of producing music has become so much simpler.

back then, to record a standard band setup, you would have needed lots of microphones, at least one guitar amp, one bass amp, a mixing console, maybe preamps for the mics, compressors, gates, maybe expanders, reverbs, other effects – and i haven’t even talked about the actual recording device yet… today you need a laptop and some software – and if you’re really going at it, two mics, a midi controller and an interface. that’s it. no more need for large spaces, no more need to wait until your neighbors are not home. of course, more gear can be helpful in terms of streamlining or more possibilities, but let’s face it, with a good laptop and a program like Reason, you can achieve results far better than even some professional productions from 10-20 years ago.

so how does my setup look like? right now, it’s much more gear than necessary – simply because i piled up stuff during the last decade when those things were still needed. some of it will have to go, but some items will stay, for i use them not only to record but maybe to play live or for other non-recording-reasons. and i’m afraid i couldn’t even list all of it without doing some archeological excavation first….

but i can list my future setup which will be complete before the end of this year:

1. one of them new aluminium macbooks, yummy
2. Reason 4
3. a Motu 828 audio interface
4. some new Ultrasone headphones
5. and some new nearfield monitors, not sure which ones yet…
6. - 759. all the stuff that’s lying around here and that i use occasionally

but almost all of the work is done with the first two pieces (and some listening-device).

the only question left is what do i do with the extra space?