Recording tips for bands

I work with a lot of bands that have either never recorded before or who have recorded on a home studio setup of some kind. I have come to discover that a lot of these guys dont necessarily know how to use their tools the right way. Im not putting anybody down or anything like that, but there are just some things about your instruments that you absolutely need to know.

Lets start off with guitar intonnation. This is absolutely something that you must have done before you record. What this does is put all of your strings in perfect tune with each other and with the guitar. Your clean parts come out cleaner your dirty parts come out dirtier, and over all there is an added clarity. The notes you are playing will will not be fighting each other. They will sing together in harmony (no pun intended lol). This will also add to your sustain, and who couldnt use more of that!

I have a lot more to cover, but we will leave it at that for now. However i will retract and say that you actually need to have your guitat intonated perfectly all the time. I understand that 30 or 40 bucks every 3 months might not be in your budget, but this is an easy process and you should learn how to do it yourself anyway. Ok im done on this one for now ,but there is a lot more coming.

I would like to add to this post.

Drummers: Tune your drums. The resonance from your heads and shells will sound so much better. Work on your articulation when you hit your drum (especially the snare). This will give a more solid sound and help control the tone of your snare through out the song. Ex. Typically you wouldn't want the snare sound to change through out the song from a "chat" to a "chang".

Timing..... timing is VERY IMPORTANT! Even though you may sound tight with your band in your rehearsal space, if you record on time with the metronome, you will sound much better as a whole. You can do this without your band. Buy a cheap metronome and some headphones/ear buds, and play different rhythms to the click track. This will help condition you to play with the metronome in the studio. Not to mention it will help sharpen your skills even outside the studio. And who wouldn't like to get better?

Let's not forget vocalists, they need to be prepared meaning warmed up, lyric sheets printed, and bring something to drink for godsake. We at Screamhouse try to keep water on hand but unfortunatly sometimes we run out , and I know some studios don't even go that far.

Make sure you bring something to drink just incase the studio doesn't have any liquids to provide you with.


Also give an honorable mention to bass players, don't really have any pointers for you guys just didn't want to forget ya.

For bass players:

DONT change your strings before going into the studio. I see this a lot--- bass strings take a while to break in. When you first change them, unless stretched properly, they have a tendancy to go flat after playing for a minute or two. But the main reason is that new bass strings are overly bright which doesnt make for a very good recorded bass sound.

LOL Digitat welcome to the forum! That avatar is funny as hell! Where are you from? What do you do?

didjital wrote:

For bass players:

DONT change your strings before going into the studio. I see this a lot--- bass strings take a while to break in. When you first change them, unless stretched properly, they have a tendancy to go flat after playing for a minute or two. But the main reason is that new bass strings are overly bright which doesnt make for a very good recorded bass sound.

Wow you know I never thought of that... I was just given them honorable mention lol. But it makes sense. One thing I see bass players do is not warm up either, and oh another thing for bass players stop using your fuzz boxes to get "your sound."

Most good engineers can recreate your fuzz effect with plug ins. A dry bass signal is a clean bass signal.

Im from West Palm Beach. Been a recording engineer for 20+ years--- also did live sound for a while. Im a musician also; I play pretty much everything...

Not sure I agree with the other guys comment about the bass distortion. In my opinion, I ALWAYS have the guy record with his signature sound. All you have to do it take a DI in addition to it for the mix. When I record I always want the guys to do what they want--- after all it is their album. If the tone sucks, you can always talk to them about it, but ultimately its THEIR product. If the effect or tone is critical to the vibe of the production, I always print it--- just give yourself a couple of other tracks just in case it wont sit right later. Also, a lot of times the sound is critical to the performance. Imagine playing a screaming guitar solo with no distortion...

When I record bass I always use multiple tracks (quite a luxury in the digital age). Usually what I will do is DI before the amp, take a line out from the amp (if there is one), close mic the cab (within 2 feet) and put a second mic back about 12 feet. I tend to use dynamics for this, but Ive gotten good results with large diaphragm condensers too (especially with the distant mic). believe it or not, with the distant mic you usually get the deepest, driest tone. It seems counter-intuitive, but with the size of the low-end wave lengths it really does do well.

well the problem I had is that I had a guy that used so much fuzz the notes were so muddy you couldn't tell if it was a bass or fart literally.

I'm all for the signature sound theory, but I also would like to believe that if you come to a studio or pay to go to a studio that your trusting these guys to get the best possible sound out of you, even if it means changing a few things just for the recording process. It's just I've learned that what works at rehearsal or live may not always work in the studio.

Guitar tone for example seems to always be subject to this theory. I know from expierence that I've had to adjust what I do live when taking it to the studio.

All I'm saying is trust your engineer afterall there is a reason you went there to begin with, right?

I understand what you're saying--- but my point was that you'll at least have it on tape. You would of course get other tracks too at the same time (DI for instance would not have the fuzz)-- or have him do a second (or third!) take as well. I"m of the philosophy that you record WAY more stuff than you'll need, because you can take it out later... but its always a bitch to have to go back and re-record.

As far as guitar sounds... again, I usually let them go with their signature sound--- I'll just usually hi-pass it pretty extremely during the mix. I also make a point of NOT telling the guitar player that Im gonna do that-- they tend to freak out about it, even though they dont realize that you HAVE to do it to get it to gel with the bass. Ill automate the hi-pass so its set lower when the guitar is exposed without the bass.

I got ya. I guess one thing about this industry is that there never really is a wrong way to do things. It's like one artist telling another he's holding the paint brush wrong, it just doesn't work like that. Obviously the basics all stay the same but achieving sound I guess is left up for debate.


I'd like to hear some of the stuff you've done though you got a website to check out?

havent been doing much recording lately--- I do have a band coming in on the 18th. Ive mostly been doing freelance mixing and mastering through the internet, which is nice because I dont have rockers spilling beer on the console!

Here's a track I recently mixed and mastered for a band out of Ohio--- song name is "Listen to your body":

http://soundcloud.com/didjital-siamcollective/ltyb-final

There was a bit of a plosive problem with the vox that I tried to get under control...

Also, its mastered about 1-2 db hotter than I probably would normally have done, but they wanted it as loud as some nickelback song they sent me (!).

That page is one I set up for and Irish band I'm mixing too, siam collective--- that's where the other 2 songs came from. They only sent me stems, so I was limited as to what I could do, but I think its pretty cool stuff:)