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| Recording Techniques ? - General - General - ezFolk Forums | |||||||||||||||
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steve adams Approved 
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I thought it might be a good idea to start a forum about recording techniques, where people can ask/answer questions, find and offer tips/opinions etc. My own knowledge is limited to what I've learned from using the equipment I have at home, as it probably is for many of us, but I've heard some really well produced sounds on ezFolk so maybe there are people here willing to offer advice to others. I would rather hear a poor recording of a good song/tune than not hear it at all, but a reasonable or well produced sound can add to the listening enjoyment. This is a wide field of expertise and there must be loads of info on the internet, as well as much debate about preferences and technique, so much that it may be more confusing than helpful. So if anyone would like to use this space, please do, maybe it will prove to be useful/helpful to some of us. Thanks.  Steve... There's a forum on the mp3 home page under the same heading, "Recording Techniques ?" Last edited on Tue Aug 12th, 2008 07:54 pm by steve adams ____________________ SteveA. http://ezfolk.com/audio/Steve_Adams |
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theBlackman Approved 
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There is a lot of information in the various forums, I think the MP3 page subject should be in the FORUMS, and not on the MP3 page. Most people, once they sign up don't go to the MP3 page. I have only looked at it about 8 times in the last year or more. I go directly to the FORUMS, or my page, or a page like Holley's or Tony's, or any other specific artist I have an interest in, or the "Home" link from the log-in page. Last edited on Sat May 3rd, 2008 09:41 pm by theBlackman ____________________ Let each day start as a blank page for life to write upon. http://ezfolk.com/audio/dusty http://cdbaby.com/all/theblackman |
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steve adams Approved
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I use the mp3 page often, to see what's going on in general on the site, that's why I put the forum there. I thought it would be easier for people to find. It seems to have generated some interest there and following suggestions I've also posted it here. I've made reference to the mp3 page forum here and vice versa so both can be found. Steve. Last edited on Tue May 27th, 2008 10:26 pm by steve adams ____________________ SteveA. http://ezfolk.com/audio/Steve_Adams |
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steve adams Approved
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Since the introduction of the new style forums, I've been unable to find the previous mp3 home page forum, "recording techniques", as it seems to have been deleted... Thanks to those who contributed, sorry the info is no longer available there... Steve. Edit... mp3 home page forums are back!  All the information that was there seems to have been restored!   Woops! They've gone again.....  maybe they'll return...     Last edited on Wed Aug 13th, 2008 01:23 am by steve adams ____________________ SteveA. http://ezfolk.com/audio/Steve_Adams |
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steve adams Approved
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There are a series of blogs titled "Recording Acoustic Music" written by "ThirdRatePoet", on the new ezFolk Home page. This is a direct link to that series... http://ezfolk.com/blog/author/thirdratepoet/ and a general "Recording" section... http://ezfolk.com/blog/category/recording/ Edit: Since more changes have been made to ezfolk, these links may no longer work. (But they do at the moment!)  Steve. Last edited on Sun Aug 24th, 2008 07:29 pm by steve adams ____________________ SteveA. http://ezfolk.com/audio/Steve_Adams |
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Will Approved 
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steve adams wrote: I thought it might be a good idea to start a forum about recording techniques, I've worked with recording equipment since I was 9 years old, starting with my father's reel-to-reel recorder. As technology improved, recording tape has become defunct, but I have a large archive of old recordings that I am trying to slowly convert into digital form, preserved on recordable CDs and DVDs. Digital recording for the masses arrived several years ago, as affordable digital recorders as low as $200 and recording software has brought studio sound to the home hobbyist. The choice of recording equipment that is right for you depends upon your budget, and where you will be making the recordings. If you are recording primarily at home, and you own a decent, fairly recent computer, you will need recording software, some kind of recording interface (there are dedicated external USB boxes that outperform your computer sound card, which is not audio grade), good microphones and an audio mixer. Better than 95% of the recording that I do nowadays is away from home, so I will describe how I make my recordings on a portable recorder, and edit my recordings with software on my home computer. All of my recordings with Loose Change & Friends and the Earth Tones were done in this manner, edited and mastered in WAV format, before converting to 192 KHz MP3 to be posted at ezFolk. If you are recording primarily live music at concerts or jam sessions, you will need to use a portable digital recorder in conjunction with an audio mixer, microphone, and instrument pickups. (Some folks use a laptop computer for recording, but I dislike the bulk and the software headaches associated with a laptop.) Portable digital recorders such as the Zoom H2 ($199) and H4 ($299) have built-in microphones, and all you would need to do to capture a live recording is to mount the recorder on a camera tripod with the unit upright. If you plug the recorder into a mixing board, I recommend that you use an audio adaptor cable and record off the headphone jack, which usually has a volume control that you can adjust. The reason that I advise this, is that digital recorders such as the Zoom H4 are prone to overloading, which will produce distorted recordings that are unlistenable (and as far as I know, unfixable). (My Sony minidisc recorder, which is now retired after 5 good years of use, had a great automatic level control and almost never overloaded.) I set my Zoom H4 to record in .WAV format at 16 bit resolution (it can be set to 24 bit resolution, but my software fails to recognize the file and I have to convert it back to 16 bit). LIVE RECORDING SET-UP: Live recording may involve elaborate and lengthy set-up (something I go through dozens of times every year). The biggest annoyance is audio feedback; to prevent or at least minimize feedback, you will want to set up your PA speakers well forward of the microphones (so that the speaker cones and the microphones never face each other), and set the volume levels such that audio feedback doesn't occur easily (this is more of an art than science). Every room and venue is different, but there is a simple mathematical equation known as Snell's Law: The angle of incidence = the angle of reflection. The best way to illustrate this principle is to stand in front of a mirror, then shine a flashlight beam at the mirror from various angles. When you hold the flashlight beam at 90 degrees, the beam will bounce right back in your eyes (feedback). When applied to an audio system, you want to adjust your position in the room to avoid having sound bounce off of flat parallel surfaces in back of you and into the microphones; you want to avoid setting up a microphone at 90 degrees to the head of the banjo where a slight decrease in distance causes feedback, etc.- you will generally get the best results if you are within 6 to 12 inches away. MICROPHONE TYPES: There are 2 popular types of microphones available, dynamic and condensor. You will want to select a microphone that is unidirectional (picks up a signal primarily from the front and much less from the back and sides), and not omnidirectional (picks up sound from all directions). Dynamic mikes are used for vocals and instruments; one of the most common and popular models are the Shure SM-58 (which I use), and the Shure SM-57 for instruments. Condensor microphones have a wider and flatter frequency range by using a tiny element (sound sensor) that must be electrically boosted into a detectable signal; older models carried an internal battery, but most condensor mikes require what is called "phantom power" which is an electrical signal sent over the same microphone cable from a power supply. Any decent audio mixer with XLR (3-prong) microphone inputs will supply phantom power. MICROPHONE PLACEMENT: Optimum microphone placement is critical to getting good recordings. A microphone stand with an adjustable boom arm will give you a more precise placement. To determine the proper distance to the mike, use the principle called the inverse square rule; if you double your distance to the microphone, the volume will only be 1/4 as loud. Generally, vocals record well within 3 to 6 inches of the microphone, and generally not more than 12 inches away. Recording vocals very close to the microphone causes the bass response to increase dramatically; this is known as the "proximity effect" and it is sometimes used intentionally by singers. If you play acoustic guitar, you can record with a separate instrument microphone aimed at the sound hole, but if you need a lot of volume in a noisy venue, cranking up the PA volume will induce audio feedback. It's often more convenient and less feedback-prone to use an instrument pickup, either built-in, or a soundhole style pickup. EDITING: After a recording is finished, I connect my Zoom H4 to my Windows computer via USB cable, and it shows up as a hard drive. I copy the WAV file into a subdirectory, then I use a graphical editor from an old version of Cakewalk Pyro 1.5, which displays the WAV file as an oscilloscope-like wave form. Using the editing tools, I identify the beginnings and endings of songs with "markers." When I'm done, I save the edits, which trims them into sequentially numbered separate tracks (the original long WAV file is untouched). I then use Windows and sort the tracks by file size, which I use to weed out the in-between song chatter and periods of silence. I use another version of Cakewalk Pyro (Verision 5) to add fade-in and fade-outs. Because live recordings have applause at the end, finished recordings sound much better if the applause if faded out rather than truncated abruptly without the fade-out. Sometimes, a song will have a rough start (flubbed instrumental opening), and a fade-in will smooth that over. After I have a set of faded tracks (still in WAV format), I use Audio Cleaning Lab 12 to reduce noise, and add effects. Version 12 allows you to layer nearly 10 different digital effects at a time, including reverb, compression, sound field manipulation, EQ, etc. After the tracks are edited, I burn a test CD and audition it on different audio systems in the house and in my van, because there is always a difference between mastering via headphones and via loudspeaker monitors. Because I only have time to do this recording work late at night, I'm forced to use headphones almost all the time. The nice feature about software-based audio mastering is that all of the settings are saved as a file, so you can go back and change the audio settings and save the results under a different name. Last edited on Thu Jul 31st, 2008 04:23 pm by Will ____________________ Will http://ezfolk.com/audio/bands/297/ Loose Change & Friends http://ezfolk.com/audio/bands/245/ http://loosechangeandfriends.com The Earth Tones http://ezfolk.com/audio/bands/337/ |
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steve adams Approved
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Thanks Will, some great information! Steve.
____________________ SteveA. http://ezfolk.com/audio/Steve_Adams |
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| ezFolk Forums > General > General > Recording Techniques ? | |
