How to Make the Best Recordings on Earth

Thanks to Jade from OffBeatLove for the article idea

I recently went to see a great funk band perform at a big event. I've been into funk music lately and I really liked their sound; enough that I decided to buy their CD after the show. I was pleased to learn that the album contained pretty much the same set that the band played at the show, and since their set was fantastic I was excited when I put it in the CD player in my car a few days later.

Well... It was clear that it was the same band. The talent showed through, but... it was just so dull! I kept skipping tracks, ready for the next one to blow me away with some badass funkiness. Instead I got that disappointing feeling of being underwhelmed. (Now you know why I don't name the band itself!)

Why does this happen? How does a great band make such a stunningly mediocre album? The answer, good reader, is what I call conservative recording.

Let's say you're just learning how to record. You've learned all the rules of proper recording, like avoiding overloading and conventional EQ techniques. For example, you are supposed to record with a loudness threshold at just below the point of overloading (overloading causes distortion) and you are expected to keep the entire mix that way. When using EQ you are told to dampen tracks instead of boosting them whenever possible. Reverb is only for room ambiance. These and many other techniques make up what is considered 'correct' recording: methods for making music that is pleasing to listen to.

It is vitally important that you learn these rules and implement them. Understanding why these guidelines and practices have been established will make you a better recording artist. What I'm getting at though may involve a fundamental rethinking of the recording and mixing act itself.

In both the visual and musical arts, the great, respected masters have spent years learning the rules of their craft. A master painter has learned perspective, light and shadow, and anatomy techniques. A master musician and composer has a deep understanding of music theory, like chord progressions, rhythm and melody. Their status of 'master' however, was not achieved by their technical skill alone, but also from the skillful way that they bent and broke conventions in ways that surprise and move us and allow us to see the world from a new perspective. Yet they could not have achieved any of that without first learning the rules. One who has no technical skill and who simply breaks conventions will likely end up producing ugly art, and one who has great technical skill but doesn't surprise us will end up boring us to tears. Both trained skill and the creative violation of expectations are necessary to make great art.

How does this all apply to recording? Instead of viewing recording as a means of getting your live performance on tape, you should instead be looking at your recorded music as a separate kind of performance, in a way unrelated to your live one. The recording act should be seen as an integral part of the performance, rather than a means to an end. How you mix your music will affect how people enjoy it, so it should be given just as much care and attention as your playing.

Let your drums overload a bit. Crank the midrange equalizer on your guitar track in a way you've never heard before. Use effects in unconventional ways. Never be afraid to break the rules of recording to see how it sounds. The beauty of digital recording is that you can simply change it back if you don't like it.

Give your recordings some life! Do everything you can to make the recording as breathtaking as the live performance. You and I both know that this is possible, but as long as you keep viewing recording as an obstacle in the way of your music, then you'll never be able to achieve true studio greatness. The problem with the funk band was that they recorded and mixed their music very well, with great technical proficiency, but they didn't take advantage of the opportunities available to them with producing an album.

The sound made by musical instruments and human voices are fundamentally altered and weakened when recorded and played back. You can easily tell the difference between a real guitar playing and one playing through a speaker. This is why we have studios in the first place; you can't just put a microphone in front of a band and expect the recording to sound great. You need to use the recording and mixing tools at your disposal to make that band sound incredible.

So do it. Learn the essentials of good recording, and then add the same level of passion and creativity to your studio work as you would anything else that you love do. Don't play it conservatively. Do it like you mean it, and your album will be something you're proud about.

5 Reasons Why You Should be a Musician Instead of Working in IT

Whenever some bloated media company makes a list of the best jobs available, 'Information Technology' or 'Software Engineer' is invariably on it. Popping up like some wretched leprechaun, it promises you good pay, exciting challenges and opportunities for long-term growth. This must be a lie, as someone clearly tripped, fell on a keyboard and accidentally published jobs like 'Product Brand Manager' and 'Paralegal' on the same list. Don't fall for it. You should become a musician and make people pay you for your music instead. You don't have to worry about 'job stability' when you're unemployed. Here are five reasons why you should give up the corporate hamster-wheel and start making noise:


1. Women - There's no question: rock stars attract the opposite sex. Look at Keith Richards (or better yet, don't), a man who could probably frighten babies just by thinking about them. If women can somehow overlook his terrifying fossilized-magma-face, then they can certainly find the strength to ignore your pasty complexion and never-lifted-anything-heavier-than-a-paycheck body, just as long as you're holding a guitar. Some anthropologists believe music performance evolved as a method to attract potential mates. If this is true, then ghouls like Steven Tyler and dorks like John Mayer so far represent the pinnacle of human evolution. Be afraid.

And if you happen to be a member of the fairer sex, well, if you're not yet tired of having every guy you meet slobber all over you, how about meeting a few more of them by becoming a musician?


2. No Money Problems - Really, how can you have money problems when you have no money? Only the most successful rock gods have to think about nerve-wracking stuff like 'which dollar-bill denomination should I roll up and smoke tonight?' All you'll have to worry about is gas money, Taco Bell and where you can crash after a gig. You get to have the Zen-like existence of a traveling monk, except with burritos and more hair.


3. Better Self-Image - Actually, you don't have to change much here. Instead of being a muscled barbarian warrior with a sweet ax on your D&D character sheet, you get to be a muscled barbarian warrior with a sweet ax on your album cover. What could be better?


4. No More Corporate Butt-Monkey - Corporate life is rough. If people don't like you at your job, you pretty much have to just bend over and take it like a champ. For instance:

Boss: Your code for the donkey level is messed up. The QA testers couldn't even get 3 donkeys in the bed before the whole game crashed. And I know you logged 150 hours of overtime last week to make it, but we decided to put those funds towards gold-plating the inside of the CEO's pockets, so now they're always full of money. Oh yeah, and you're fired."

You: Oh no, who will crush my spirits and make me want to dig my eyes out with pistols now?

No one can really say 'You're fired' to a musician.


5. Fulfill Your Childhood Dream - When you were a kid, did you say, "When I grow up, I want to work hard at my job so that each day I can be propelled a little bit further up the corporate anus"? You probably said something more like "When I'm older, I'm going to play a song so ridiculously awesome that John Lennon himself will have no choice but to crawl his fetid corpse out of the grave and throw up the horns."

Maybe not in so many words.

Though children crying have to be one of the funniest things on this green Earth (see Fig.3), if you think that your child-self would have cried at the sight of your current-self, then you need to snatch up a guitar right now faster than Fat-Elvis would grab a peanut-butter-&-'nana sammich.

After you read this, you'll probably go back to pretending to write an SSH script and when you get home you'll strap on that ever-dignified plastic Guitar Hero toy for your nightly session and think to yourself "I can't make music. I have no talent!" This will be your excuse. Well, I've beaten that argument to death with a bloody wrench already, and I'm still not done talking about it. I challenge you to take up an instrument, quit your job, and start looking for gigs. Give Lennon's corpse an awkward, grimy high-five for me when you get to the top.

You Don't Need Musical Talent to Make Music

You know why I believe in this so much? I'll tell you why.

I joined the school band when I was in fifth grade. I played trumpet. I didn't particularly like playing the trumpet and I only mildly enjoyed class. When, in high school, we had to learn music theory, I was almost completely mystified by things like the Circle of Fifths, chords and other musical concepts. I never did particularly well and and mostly languished in the beginner level classes while my classmates moved on to the advanced ones.

I never showed any real musical talent; indeed, folks around me probably thought I didn't enjoy music at all. I didn't listen to popular bands like other kids my age listened to and I was very vocal about my disappointment in the music on the radio. I appeared to be a pretty un-musical young person.

You know what though? Now I play piano and the banjo. I've learned and understand a great deal about music theory. I've made several hours worth of music. I went to school for Audio Engineering and got an A- on my final independent study (writing and producing a six-song album.) Someone thought my music was good enough to ask me to write music for their game. I write about music, for a site you may have heard of, and actually have people writing to me, me for answers about making music. This is the guy who could barely stay afloat in band class! If those poor folks only knew!

Am I writing just to praise myself? Well, after putting all that together I have to admit it does sound pretty awesome, but that wasn't my point. My point is that if I could do all that without any 'inborn' musical ability, then anyone else can do it too. I don't see myself as a particularly self-motivated guy either, so I'm sure anyone out there can probably do better than me.

I've heard many people say that they won't pick up an instrument simply because they think it is too late for them to learn. There are a lot of scientific studies that say people can't learn as effectively past their teenage years and after age 17 your neural pathways are pretty much do-blah blah blah. Forget that crap. Maybe my neural pathways aren't as flexible as they once were, but I have many other skills and traits that come with age that make up for that problem, like self-discipline, good time management, big-picture thinking, and the prospect of getting paid for what I do. I had none of these things when I was a kid, and my learning was probably much slower because of it.

The only reason you might think that you are aren't a musical person is because society tells you that you aren't. But the fact that you can enjoy music scientifically proves that you can also make it, since you use much of the same parts of your brain for both listening and performing. In many hunter-gatherer cultures, the concept of musical talent doesn't even exist. Everyone is taught how to make music and dance from a young age. This is how our own cultures were until relatively recent times. Why the change? Different values? Elitism? Who knows? You shouldn't let it hold you back.

So what are you waiting for? Angels to come fluttering down, bestowing upon you a golden guitar? You definitely have no excuse now. If you do still have an excuse of some sort, you can bet that the Makeshift Musician will do it's best to unceremoniously blast that one out of the water too. Go pick up an instrument and start playing!

Electronic Musicians: Use Some Acoustic Stuff!

I have a challenge for all you purely electronic musicians out there: incorporate some sort of acoustic instrumentation into your songs. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Sing! You've got a voice, and even if you don't, you probably have a friend who does. Throw in some lyrics. If you're no poet, just write some stuff that doesn't make sense. It wouldn't be the first time an artist did that.

A decent pair of bongos or some other percussion instrument only costs around fifty bucks or more. Go ahead an add some fun drumming. Record multiple takes of the same part for a cool, dense multi-layered effect.

Grab your guitar or steal a friend's. Learn a couple of basic chords or simply learn the exact chords that you're already using and then strum along with your own music. Something as basic as strumming can be very effective. For an example, see Pink Floyd's 'Welcome to the Machine'.

If you are absolutely clumsy with real-world instruments, find a friend who can play something and record them. Recording with other folks is really fun anyway, and it could lead to fantastic collaborations in the future.

Why am I challenging you to do this? There are three interrelated reasons. One is that acoustic instruments not only sound great by themselves, they will also add real gravity to the electronic ones. Synthesizers just sound more legitimate when performing next to physical instruments, and having them mixed together makes for a profoundly rich sound pallete.

The second reason is that by being purely electronic, you are limiting yourself. Now don't get me wrong, I'm a mostly electronic musician myself, but I've still found the time to recorded banjo, guitar, bongos, random percussion, sound effects, my own voice and the voices of others. I see these as challenges. I'm always looking for ways to record real stuff in with my electronics. By getting a microphone and adding some acoustic elements, you are expanding your own potential as a musician, and that can't be a bad thing, right?

The third reason comes from the motto of the old LucasArts Audio Stooges (Michael Land, Clint Bajakian and Pete McConnel), the geniuses behind some of the best music in the game industry: "Music travels through air. If it's not going through air, there's a problem somewhere." Just as it is good to get out of the house and play sometimes, it's good to step out of the computer occasionally and just make some noise. It will enrich your life.

Do-It-Yourself Sound Dampening

This is part 1 of the Makeshift Musician's Comprehensive Guide to Building Your Own Studio

Maybe if you're just starting out with your studio you haven't given it much thought, but do you realize what professionals do when they build a studio? They design the entire place from the ground up, making walls with crazy angles and covering them with different materials. Then they make a separate room for a drum kit and another separate room for vocalists. They cover the walls with either unusually-shaped wood or this unbelievably expensive foam padding with tons of little pyramids cut into it.

Obviously, we at home can't recreate this stuff, but we can throw together our own acoustic dampening setup without giving up thousands of dollars and our first-born.

Most of us don't really get to choose where our studio is, we just have to deal with whatever room we can fit the studio in. I've had, as a studio, my childhood bedroom, a college dorm room, the single-bedroom in a single-bedroom apartment, and the one-car garage of a much nicer apartment. If, however, by some stroke of good fortune you can choose where your studio is, try to choose a room that is somewhat isolated from everything else. You want to be loud and not have to worry about neighbors or roommates attempting to bludgeon you to death after you've played the same guitar solo eighty times just to get it right.

Once you've got your place, what can we do to make it less echo-y? Here are some of my suggestions:

EDIT: My astute readers have suggested that the things I mention the upcoming paragraphs tend to do very little for acoustic dampening, and that the difference between cheap foam and expensive foam is a lot more than pretentiousness. After just a little bit of research, I have to agree with them. Take a look at some of their fantastic advice in the comments section.

Rugs: Go to Goodwill or Wal-Mart and get some big, ugly shaggy carpets like your Aunt has in her living room and nail them to your wall. The more hideous the color, the more fun you'll have putting them up.

Pictures: Since they have flat, non-porous surfaces, pictures would seem like a bad choice for acoustic dampening. However, anyone who's ever moved knows that a room sounds really obnoxious until you put some pictures up on the walls. Get some pictures that you know will inspire creativity.

Egg-crate-style mattress pads: For the true faux-professional look, get some of these while you're at Wal-Mart. Remember, the only difference between expensive acoustic foam and cheap mattress foam is pretentiousness.

Furniture: You'd be surprised at how well furniture can not only scatter sound waves, but also make the studio more comfortable for everyone. Get an old couch or easy chair and see how it changes the feel of the place.

Just remember that the more angles you have in the studio, the more sound gets bounced away harmlessly from your microphones, which is what you want. You don't want the place stark and hospital-like, but you don't want it overly cluttered either. Try to make your studio into something cozy and comfortable and inspiring. I hang huge wall-hangings full of weird geometric patterns in my studio, which have the double-effect of dampening sound and looking awesome at the same time. Experiment a lot and you'll likely find some combination of things that works perfect for you.

This is part 1 of the Studio Guide

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>>> Go to Part 2: Get a Computer For Your Studio

Random Music Making Techniques, Volume 1

There are lots of cool hints and techniques I've wanted to share, but I couldn't think of a good context in which to deliver them. So decided to just put them together in a series of articles. Enjoy!

Stealth Chords: So you have an interesting chord progression in your song. Instead of just leaving your chords as basic triads or whatever, try to change them up a little to make them unique. Take out some of the notes, or arppegiate it occasionally. This may help make the chords blend better with the rest of the music, and it will keep surprising the listener.

Fadeouts: Many folks hate fadeouts. I think they're pretty cool, if done well. If you're doing a fadeout at the end of your song, try introducing a new element just seconds before the song fades out completely. Something like a new melody or maybe a new melody played by a new instrument. This makes the fade out more interesting and will make the song feel like its part of something larger.

Hard Panning: If you have an element in your song that's in the center channel but you want it to have a nice, big presence, try doubling the track and then panning one hard left and one hard right. Sometimes this can give the sound a large enveloping feel.

Key Changes: You've seen Jeopardy right? You know the Jeopardy song? Halfway through it they do a key change, but they don't change anything in the song! It's the exact same music, just transposed up a few steps. I hate this with the fire of a thousand suns. I call that 'technique' artificial lengthening. There's nothing wrong with key changes; they can add so much life to your piece, but for the love of Mike, at least change the melody, if not everything else. Okay, rant over.

Orchestras Play in Concert Halls: remember that if you are making orchestral/symphonic sounding stuff, reverb is very important! Listen to any orchestral recording and you'll hear lots of beautiful reverberation. Spend a lot of time tweaking your settings until it sounds like a real concert hall, and consider simply putting a reverb effect over the entire mix. Whichever works best.

Radio Voice: When recording vocals, for whatever purpose, I've found that a lot of amateurs won't mess with equalization much and leave the voice as is. It's a good idea to play around with the vocals, for instance try cutting out some of the low end. This will often give it a more realistic sound, allow it to mix better, and avoid that deep, booming 'radio voice'. Pay attention to some of your favorite albums and you'll see that the singer doesn't have a lot of deep low-end in his or her voice.

That's all for this edition! Feel free to add your own writing or production techniques in the comments section.