Quote:
Originally Posted by steveschizoid  I tend to want to make a recording where something unique and interesting is happening each moment - something that really catches the ear. I couldn't care less if it's a true representation of a performance. A sitar player and I were waiting on a client to show up the other day. The client had one specific sitar droney type part in mind, but, since he wasn't there, I decided to experiment. I pitch shifted all the guitar to where it could be heard as based on the same root, then had the sitar player over dub a performance, then unshifted the guitar and shifted the sitar to match, and, voila! - a fascinating sound, yet a totally false representation of the performance. Read Geoff Emerick's book. Recording stopped being solely about capturing a true representation of a peformance more than 50 years ago. Gain staging is important on the other hand. Setting your pre's to get the optimal sound on each track is the only approach that makes sense to me. Monitor mixes are best totally divorced from gain staging IMO. |
I completely understand your whole aesthetic, I just don't think you understand mine. putting pitch shifters and all sorts of effects on a band who really don't want or need it is pointless. In this situation I (me, myself, personally....you don't have to!
) I get the sound going in the room itself, check the balance is right between all the instruments before even messing with mics.
Then I will set up my pres so that I achieve a balance as close to this as possible. I can set up pristene pres for some sources or overdrive and then attenuate for others. My goal is to have my monitor faders flat.
It makes things quicker for me at mixdown. I don't see any negative effects from this technique, I have never come across a track where I feel as If I haven't put enough signal to disk.
Also, I don't see this as hard and fast. I'm not saying that I don't go on mind bending sonic journeys sometimes. In fact I do it often. My goal is to have a decent starting point so that when I put the faders up a few weeks later the impetus and character of the track is immediately apparent.
but as they say,
YMMV