recording techniques

[Jay Kahrs]

But was it gas or electric? If it was electric I'd have taken a DI and the mic. If it's gas then a mic only.

[Dave Martin]

Originally posted by Jay Kahrs
But was it gas or electric? If it was electric I'd have taken a DI and the mic. If it's gas then a mic only.

Only wimps use an electric chain saw. And as a musical instrument, only gas has the growl you want. Kind of like a real Marshall compared to a Pod.

[digitaltoast]

[i]
so did you do clicky kicks? how was that done "professionally", i always taped a quarter to the head. [/B]

Yeah, enquiring minds want to know.

Would the quarter trick require a wooden beater?

[mwagener]

No, never really used the Quarter trick. We used wooden or hard plastic beaters and sometimes those pads which you glue to the head and a heavy right foot.

I think if you used a wooden beater AND a quarter it would be overkill. With a wood beater, a bright mic, a fast mic pre and a little (or a little more) EQ around 4KHz might do the trick. To find the spot for the high end EQ, take a parametric EQ, bring the level up all the way (turn your speakers down before you do that) and make the bandwith as narrow as it gets. Then slowly dial through the frequency band (while the drummer is playing the kick kind of fast) until the peaks take youre head off, turn the level of that frequency back until its comfartable and widen the bandwith a little. This works for most percussion instruments.
For the low end try to mult the kick mic to two inputs on the board, polarity reverse one of them and delay it about 19 - 21 ms (to determine the frequency of a combfilter: f = 1 divided by time, so 1divided by 0.02 sec [20ms] = 50 Hz), then use a low pass filter to get rid of everything above 200 Hz. Mix that channel in with the straight kick mic, gives you that speaker-bouncing-off-the-front-grill sound.

[alphajerk]

now they make the Flam pads for kicks, either leather or plastic with a sticky back. i used to use a quarter and a plastic beater... now that i think about it, the quarter trick never sounded like a pantera record but had a cool sound on its own. im going to start doing that again lol the only downside is the quarter eventually cut into the kick severely limiting the life of the head.

[Jay Kahrs]

I haven't used the quarter trick in years but when I did I taped one to the pedal and one to the head. Go for the max! Now when I want that sound I'll put a trigger on the kick, EQ it and run that to tape and mix the impulse with the orginal kick sound. Perfect for metal. Why trigger a sample when the trigger is good enough?

[cymatics]

How about tracking guitars for 'stomp box songs'?

By that I mean songs like Nirvana's "Lithium" where the guitarist switches from a clean sound to a stomp box/distorted amp channel from verse to chorus.

I often find that the guitar sound is tailored to the distorted sound and the clean sound is horrible. I've tried tracking verse and chorus separately to get a better clean sound. but when you get into double tracking it eats up tracks pretty fast. I've also tried punching the clean parts after the distorted parts are tracked with varying success.

Either way, I often find that the feel suffers by breaking things up too much.

When $ permits I plan on getting a reamp box of some kind to begin tracking a clean DI signal of any 'keeper' takes in additon to the miked signal. That way, a single performance can be manipulated as I see fit down the line.

Any other suggestions?

- jon

[Dave Martin]

Originally posted by cymatics
How about tracking guitars for 'stomp box songs'?

By that I mean songs like Nirvana's "Lithium" where the guitarist switches from a clean sound to a stomp box/distorted amp channel from verse to chorus.

I often find that the guitar sound is tailored to the distorted sound and the clean sound is horrible. I've tried tracking verse and chorus separately to get a better clean sound. but when you get into double tracking it eats up tracks pretty fast. I've also tried punching the clean parts after the distorted parts are tracked with varying success.
.

Any other suggestions?

- jon

I do songs like that with a clean guitar track(s) and a separate dirty guitar track(s). It does eat up a lot of tracks, but there is a benefit besides better tones - it makes mixing MUCH easier when the the clean guitars are on separate faders than the dirty ones. Tailr each set of sound to the song, and you're pretty much done. (But I'm also a believer that the less you have to move the faders in the mix, the better off you are...)

[loudist]

You could have two amps, seperately miced, one tweaked for the clean sound and one tweaked for the stompbox sound with that amp stomp boxed only, this way you have 2 tracks of guitar of the same performance, one always clean, and one always stomped, or stomped in and out. This way when you mix you can make the transitions exact, different treatments of them, and you have the option of mixing in a little of the clean sound for some musicality and definition.

Or if tracks are a concern, you could do the two amps, and you perform the crossfades live to one track while the song is going down, this is much more exciteing and asking for a mixing 'hoop jump'.

[mdvirtual]

Originally posted by cymatics
How about tracking guitars for 'stomp box songs'?

I've been getting around this in Pro Tools by pulling the clean sections to another set of tracks and beefing them up with AmpFarm or SansAmp. That way I can go for the dirty tone I want without worrying so much about compromising. Not exactly ideal, but it does preserve the original feel of the take.

I've also tried overdubs for the clean sections with mixed success - depends on the player/tune. I like Loudist's idea of tracking with two amps, would sure beat trying to do it with plugins!