Cheap Advice On Music

When I first started recording, I used two reel-to-reel tape decks, bouncing each song back and forth between the decks, adding a new part each time. Hardly ideal, but there was no such thing as a multi-track recorder for home use at the time!

With this recording technique, it is not very handy to set a partly completed song aside for awhile to work on something new, what with the tapes being 1800 feet long and the song being somewhere in the middle! As a result, I usually worked on one song until it was done, then started a new song and worked on that until it was done, and so on. There were never more than two or three songs “in process” at the same time.

After I graduated to a 4-track cassette-based recorder, it was very easy to simply set aside a partially completed song on one cassette and start a brand new song on another. So, before long, I had a dozen or more uncompleted songs lying around. I came to realize that I am bigger on having a cool idea, writing a song, and starting to record it than I am on coming back later and actually finishing the recording. I’d rather go come up with something else now!

When I moved on up to the deluxe 8-track digital recorder I am using now, the problem became even worse. At this moment I would say I have about 25 songs on various discs that have been started but still need more instruments and/or vocals to finish them off. Some of these are fully recorded backing tracks that I have no lyrics for. Others have some of the instruments recorded and are now ready for drums, or bass, or keyboard, or whatever. Quite a few have a “scratch” lead vocal that should be re-done.

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Most home recording studios start out simple and small, perhaps consisting only of a studio-in-a-box standalone recorder or a bare-bones computer-based setup. But then we start adding things, don’t we? An outboard mixer for the drums, brought in on Aux Return 2. An effects unit we like better than any of our plugins so we use it as an insert on Channels 3 and 4. A new mic pre that we use instead of the built-in one on Microphone Input 1. Maybe even a patch panel!

At first, it’s easy to keep all this straight in your head as you leap to quickly make all the right connections and adjustments before you lose the inspiration for that new epic song. But as time goes by and you make more changes, you will find yourself losing track of the connections you don’t use very often. What inserts did I plug that effects unit into again? Argh! What is this cable in the #11 output jack on the patch panel?

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We know that musical creativity has a lot to do with our mood, the mindspace we are in when we are writing or recording a song. We also know that the visual environment within which we work has a big influence on our mood. So, with these facts in mind, take a look at your own home studio. Does it look like a stimulating yet relaxing environment that will release the imagination? Or does it look like a corner of a cinder-block basement with a bare light bulb overhead?

Two ways to instantly create a mellower mood in your studio both have to do with lighting:

• Make it dimmer
• Use a colored light bulb

Harsh, overly-bright light is a real mood killer. Other than maybe when reading lyrics, I find I don’t need all that much light to work. Are you the same? Try turning off as many lights as possible, and use lower-wattage bulbs in the ones you leave on. Emphasize indirect lighting. No bare bulbs, please!

In my home studio, I always have a red (or blue) floodlight aimed at the ceiling in a corner, in addition to regular (if dim) white bulbs near the recorder, keyboard, etc. The floodlight suffuses the room with a colored glow that I find conducive to creativity. Maybe the same will work for you!

[An expanded version of this Mini-Tip appears in my eBook, Cheap Advice On Home Recording.]

Back in the 60s, when I first got interested in audio gear, home audio systems that were considered to be “hi-fi” (high fidelity) typically had total distortion values of around 0.1%. This was considered to be an inaudible level, especially in the light of research showing that distortion had to rise to 1% or more before most people would begin to notice it. So 0.1% distortion sounded “perfect.”

Despite this, improvements in electronic components and circuitry brought ever-decreasing distortion specs of 0.01%, .005%, .001%, and so on. Although nobody would complain about improved specs, we were pretty clearly past the point where any normal person could detect the results of still further improvement in the sound. It didn’t get “more perfect.”

It seems to me that something like this has happened to modern recording, even on a hobby level. Digital recording and processing gives us a 90 dB dynamic range. We record our tracks at 24 bits with a 96 kHz sampling rate. The frequency response is virtually infinite. And the distortion? Jeez, it must be down to 0.0000001% by now! Everything sounds perfect.

Then what do people do with our perfectly recorded songs? They download them as mp3 files and listen with earbuds. They play the CD in the car while driving and talking to friends. They listen on the computer. They listen while they run on a treadmill. What they don’t do is sit quietly and listen to the music on a “hi-fi” system while thinking “My goodness, this song has very low distortion.” Read the rest…