Recording Process, Techniques, Tips, Tricks...

[John Koch-Northrup]

Share your recording process and favorite tips and tricks. Everyone records differently - there's no right or wrong. Don't worry about whether you're using a 4-track tape recorder and a guitar or you have that sprawling studio you took a 2nd mortgage on your house to buy...

[peter james]

though it'd take me ages to run through all the things i'd like to say - something i find essential, especially as a means of "controlling" otherwise sonically overbright or "difficult" sounds is eq'ing my reverb and effects returns. this is pretty easy on an analogue set-up - just send your returns to spare channels on the desk.. inside a mac or pc? if you can have them running on seperate channels - give it a try. it's all about cutting frequencies, too..not boosting (though a little low end boost can really big things up).. give it a try. i've never, ever, used dedicated fx returns. i'll shut up now.
cheers.
pj.

[John Koch-Northrup]

All of my effects are routed back to individual tracks - I never use the fx returns either. Besides having some control over the eq - my favorite 'trick' is being able to set up very controlled feedback loops between the original source and various effects feeding back into each other.

Feedback may be thing I overuse the most... subtle, controlled.

[Exuviae]

Normally I would use the phrase "convention has taken a back seat in my current musical productions", but as of this moment, that would be dishonest. Convention, in fact, no longer exists as a part of my process. Convention (rules, impositions, limitations, safezones, etc.) has actually been left at a rest-stop porta-potty some thousand miles back from where I'm currently parked and dreaming. Many years ago, I chose the handle Exuviae because of its implication of the constancy of change-something I wanted to harness in my music; and I feel I did that (to some degree) in my earlier work.
Now-something as crude as recording myself crinkling an empty Doritos bag through a granular delay patch will find itself useful.
Simply put: sound is cool! That's why most of us are here...
Sound manipulation is even cooler!
Convention be damned!
No method is right or wrong; good or bad.
Another fun trick: take two copies of the same loop or passage, pan one halfway to hard left and the other one halfway to hard right; adjust the pitch of one of them ever so slightly up or down just a few cents. You make your mix instantly much "wider and bigger" and you get a free gentle chorus effect. Placing other sounds closer to the middle of the mix will now sound less muddy and feel more spacious.
Then, if you're anyhting like me-you just run the master output of the above through some digitized bit-delay puke effect and turn the whole thing into a beautiful mess that can and will cause sleep paralysis if you happen to nod off...

end of nonsense.

[Nathan Youngblood]

The only way to go!

peter james said:

though it'd take me ages to run through all the things i'd like to say - something i find essential, especially as a means of "controlling" otherwise sonically overbright or "difficult" sounds is eq'ing my reverb and effects returns. this is pretty easy on an analogue set-up - just send your returns to spare channels on the desk.. inside a mac or pc? if you can have them running on seperate channels - give it a try. it's all about cutting frequencies, too..not boosting (though a little low end boost can really big things up).. give it a try. i've never, ever, used dedicated fx returns. i'll shut up now.
cheers.
pj.