Basic rules and tips for recording music (continued) - Part 2

Two - Playing in Time. Ok you have got your click track all set up and you cannot wait to start laying down some cool vibes. You and your fellow musicians put down your tracks live or one at a time but when playing back it sounds slightly disjointed and, frankly, quite loose and a bit dodgy. Just knowing it sounds not quite there is a good sign. Why does it sound like this? Well this is where being a good musician comes into it. The closer you play to the click track the tighter your music will sound, you can still play to the click track while playing before or after the beat (slightly) : great musicians can do this at will but for us mere mortals it is best to try to hit the beats, that’s right : bang on the money! Practice helps enormously. In the digital domain editing can really improve slightly out of time parts but it is very labor intensive and it is not for the dabbler as once you start you have to finish to make any tangible improvements.

Three - Tuning. I do not need to go big on this one, just make sure all your instruments are in tune with each other, use a pitch fork, piano, guitar tuner or whatever but make sure all your instruments are all good to go before the tape rolls. If your singer cannot sing in tune to the detriment of the music then do not buy some auto tune software rather go out and find another singer.

Four - Level : get it down hot. No matter what type of equipment you use, how you record the signal of each instrument is crucial to the end result. People sometime get nervous about this and there are numerous articles out there that completely over complicate this issue. If a recorded signal goes over 0 DB then it will distort and generally speaking be good for nothing. If a recorded signal is weak then it is difficult to place in a mix without turning it up very loud and this can make it very noisy. On tape you can record very hot, this means the level of the signal going onto tape can be quite high.. but still you do not really want the loudest parts to over -4 to -2 db. For recording digitally your highest peaks should not probably be over -4 db: leave yourself some head room… the odd peak a -2 db is acceptable. Many of us do not use compressors while laying down tracks but if you have one and have a very dynamic part that is difficult to record then you should use the compressor to control the peaks so that you do not overload signal – be conservative so as not to squash the sound just control those naughty peaks.