My Philsophy for Recording Music

Why the recording process usually sucks and what to do about it.

Right now I'm listening to Led Zeppelin "IV." Black Dog. Robert Plant sounds like he's in a cave. The drums sound like they're in a small concert hall, the guitar sounds like you're in the studio sitting right in front of the guitar amp, and the bass sounds like it's plugged straight into the board without any micing at all.

Now the guitar solo. It sounds like it was recorded in the bathroom. No, really. Listen to it. All these textures lend themselves to the sound, and make it interesting. You pay attention to it because from part to part you're introduced to a new "room." You move from the hall of Robert Plant's voice to being right next to Jimmy Page's guitar.

Now Rock and Roll. This has a more cohesive sound. If you close your eyes you can almost see the room the band played in. Except Robert Plant is still stuck in that cave. How did he get there? Why doesn't he come out? Well, the obvious answer is that you want people to pay more attention to the vocals so you either pour on the reverb, or you remove it entirely. Extra reverb helps hide flaws in the performance, less reverb makes it more human, bringing you closer to the experience of the music.

Now the Battle of Evermore. The mandolin and guitars come out from the distance, but remain airy as if you're seeing the show in a medium sized hall and you're sitting in the orchestra. Maybe seat J15. Robert's come out of the cave and he sound more like he's a few feet from you, but still in a hall. Sandy Denny, however, sounds like she's on the distant stage.

Stairway to Heaven is the most cohesive. In general it sounds like you're in a hall watching the band, kind of like on The Song Remains the Same. The drums have less reverb, but they're lower in the mix. They help ground the song, but their presence isn't jarring. There is a little guitar bit towards the end that sounds 'right in your face' but it's hardly noticed.

Okay, I'm picking on Led Zeppelin because I happen to be listening to them, but it's a good introduction to my thoughts on recording.

First, you have to decide going in what the listener is going to experience. Imagine you playing for the person listening to the CD. Where are they sitting? What does the room look like? Zeppelin IV sounds mostly like you're sitting in the first row of a large hall. They break this feel occasionally, but it seems like they have a reason for doing so.

My favorite example of this is PJ Harvey's Rid of Me. They're playing in a room about 20' x 20' with a low ceiling. The walls aren't painted, there are cigarette stains on the carpet, and a brown couch you're afraid to sit in in the corner. They're ALL in that room, and they're ALWAYS in that room. It really helps draw the listener in to that experience. Zeppelin IV is more of a social experience. You're not the only one there, and they're not addressing you directly. Contrast this with the recent U2 album All That You Can't Leave Behind. Where's the band? What is Bono looking at when he's singing? Is it you, or is it the last row of the stadium? What is he sitting on, or is he standing? Where's the mic?

Ah, now here's a contrast. Going to California. You're on stage with the band. You can hear the tons of reverb, but everything's got presence. Especially Robert's voice. It's emphasized now not because it's out there huge but because it's closer to you. But wait, in the chorus not only has he gone back into the cave, he's farther in the cave than he was before. "Throw me a line if I reach it in time I'll meet you up there where the path runs straight and high."

For the second chorus he's gotten a bit closer, but he's still in the cave. I wonder if this is a mistake. Why isn't it like the first verse.

Imagine you're playing a show. Where are you in comparison to the audience? What kind of room you're in? Where is the listener sitting? Too many amateur mixes sound like they're nowhere. Studioland. A place that exists only on the recording. You close your eyes and the singer is in a small room and whispering in you ear. The drums are in an empty warehouse with high ceilings broken windows and sunlight streaming in. The bass player is in a closet somewhere and the guitars are in Madison Square Garden.

Back in the day before multi track recording, all recording was either one track (mono) or two track (stereo). There was either one microphone, or two in the room, both feeding the same recorder. The singer stood closest to the microphone, the drums and bass in the back, guitars up front, trumpets towards the back. You'd mix the band by physically moving them around the room. That's one of the reasons you don't hear bass drum on those early recordings, you only heard what made it to the microphone and the bass drum simply didn't project.

Now this didn't quite simulate the live performance experience, but you can bet everything sounded cohesive. Engineers spent as much time getting the room to sound good as they do now getting their equipment to sound good. You go to a moderate sized studio now and it seems any padded room will do as long as they have the outboard gear to simulate the sound of a live room. This never made sense to me.

Get the best sound you can going in. Since you already know the sound you're going for (having visualized the performance the recording's intended to simulate) you can set up the room the way you want it. Assuming that the room is decent sounding to begin with, you can position the amps and drums where they sound the best, or at the very least position the mics where they sound the best.

Here's a good example. Drums. Most engineers start by setting up the drums as follows:

One or two mics for the bass drum (near or inside, and far, or outside)
One or two mics for the snare drum (top, and maybe bottom)
A mic on the high hat
A mic between the top tom drums, two if you want to get real seperation (one for each)
Two mics way up above the drums to catch the cymbals. Since all the other drums are closely mic'd and gated so theres no leakage, you're not going to get anything but the single drum it's supposed to catch so you need mic's to catch the cymbals.

I would much rather start with one mic. You walk around the room and listen for the best sound, the one that most accurately represents what you want to get and stick a mic there. Then have the band run through some songs and start setting up mics. Have an assistant with a headset on so you can talk to him and have him walk around until the mic's are set up well.

Now wait a minute, some of you are going to say. "You mean the whole band is in the same room?" Yep. Nothing is more unnatural and vibe killing that hearing yourself through a $20 pair of headphones and trying to re-create a live performance. Now if you're a seperation nut there are things you can do to encourage a live vibe and still get each instrument on it's own track.

First and foremost, have the band come in already warmed up. Recording is awkward enough as it is, if the band has been playing for a while, usually one set worth, they'll be ready to lay down some great tracks. Even better, have them rehearse in the room they're going to record in. Just be sure that the singer doesn't wear his/her voice out.

Second, get everyone in the same room. You don't rehearse in a booth, why should you record in one? There are some tricks that might help here. There's a bass cabinet that's completely sealed. You float a microphone inside it and the bass player can sit on it. Combined with the headphones, the bass player will get a more complete feel for the music. Don't put drums into the mix, let them mix in their instruments to the ambient level of sound around them, and give them open air style headphones so they don't have to keep one ear uncovered.

Okay, now with everyone in the same room, vocals are going to be a problem. Let's say you're dealing with a singer who's better with the band than with a pair of headphones. This is especially problematic if you plan on doing overdubs to correct errors. My solution is to position the singer's mic in a place that's fairly protected from the band, and resign yourself to using these as scratch tracks.

Okay, so let's say you've completed recording and you're doing overdubs. What's the best way to do overdubs? Well, have the player set up their instrument back out in the main room and play back the whole band through the PA and let them play along. Whatever volume level makes them the most comfortable. And don't break up the recording into pieces, it's impossible to grab the feel from two bars ahead of the mark. Split the signal and send a second one back into whatever closet you were recording them in, though my preference would be to have everyone in the same room from the get go anyway...

Having sat through countless hours of vocal overdubs, I have strong opinions on recoding vocals. I read somewhere that beck records vocals through an SM58 in the control room. I have to say, I agree with this methodology. The singer from my old band could sing beautifully in the control room. She'd sing a part to me in the control room and it would sound great. Stick her in "the booth" and she couldn't do it. I really don't understand mixing the singer's performance back into her headphones so she can hear hearself. I read an interview with a classic producer and he'd set up Aretha Franklin this way: In the biggest room they had, with a speaker right in front of her. Leakage? Quite frankly, getting Aretha's performance right was much more important than leakage. Besides, if you always recorded the vocals this way, the 'leakage' would be consistent and wouldn't spike up in any places.

What's the moral of this story? Get the performer as comfortable as possible. The recording is secondary to the performance. Too many studios are more interested with their professional pride than with capturing a worthwhile performance. Too many bands are satisfied with substandard performances because they think the recording *has* to be a certain way. It's really only been the past couple of decates that we've been obsessed with pristine recording conditions. I trace it back to Stevie Wonder (he played everything and could only do one instrument at a time, his recordings have a great feel, and a lot of seperation). Then the 80's hair bands with the larger-than-life drum sounds that were both up front and stadium like.

Music is an organic thing and should be captured that way, and presented to the listener that way.

Okay, here we are. The mixdown. This is where the engineer usually adds back the reverb he removed by close-micing everything by turning dials and attaching patch cords to everything. Ideally, everything should be done with as few reverb boxes as possible, or at the very least, with them set to similar levels so all of the instruments sound like they're in the same room. You can control their apparent position in the room by mixing the original signal with the affected signal. The less original signal, the farther it will appear from the listener.

One of my favorite tracks is I Am Not What You Want by Cat Power. It sounds like it was recorded on a tape deck in the next room, but it presents an internally consistent world, and the performance is absolutely amazing. It seems like you're not supposed to hear it. I think she set it up that way on purpose. Not in a pre-meditated way, but because she was afraid of the power of the performance, and quite frankly, most engineers would've killed it. I've never seen her do this song live, and I believe that it's because that performance came from a special place in her life. I'm glad she captured it for us to hear.

Some of the best produced tracks I've heard come from before 1970. Louis Armstrong's All Time Greatest Hits. Cab Calloway's Greatest hits. Edith Piaf, Robert Johnson. They all belonged to an era where music was simpler, and recording was simpler. The simplicity shows through.

I think all engineers would acknowledge that the goal of engineering is to make the engineering invisible. Then why is so much work put into it after the recoding has been done and so little before and while the recording is being done? Perhaps becuase you can control knobs and dials easier than you can control room sounds and people. I dunno.

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