I just got an early Xmas present - MacBook- with Garage Band software. Being a neophyte to home recording I am hoping you guys and gals can share the specific equipment that you use to record your harp. Do you mike your amp ? Do you use a line out ? What do you use for interfaces ? Can just playing into an USB mic and coloring it with software amp effects do the trick ? I need your input. Thanks
welcome to the coolest thing out there IMO. We now have the ability and control to make recordings that will stand up to pro studio stuff and it is affordable. I started playing when it was big studios, tape, established labels controlled the market, record pressing factories, etc. That put making a recording out of the reach of 90%+ of musicians. Now we all can be recording artists!
With that said, it is a long road, much like learning to play an instrument. One can take it as far as they are inspired to. I would like to suggest this and that to you as far as gear goes but it sounds like your budget is out of my area of knowledge. I was there but that was many years ago and what I knew with entry level gear has been far surpassed. What I can tell you is to let your ears guide your recordings. The ears don't lie. Also the really cool mix you hear in your head and what comes out on playback will probably be much different. That is ok, it is part of the journey. It is pretty easy to make a decent sounding recording today but to take it to that sonically pleasing level is a lifetime journey. That is what never ceases to intrique me. If you dig the sound of my recordings I will gladly share the gear/setup/process. Walter
---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
thanks! I have been at the recording thing for like 35 years. I started with tape and now use the computer with samplitude recording software. I use some fairly expensive plugins, preamps, compressors, mics. I also built a studio on our property. It is set up for my one man band. The key is to figure out what gear/setup of room will work best for what you do.
The best thing with all this is having a dedicated space to record 24/7. All I have to do is wait a bit for the tubes in the preamps/amps to warm up. THere is no set up or breakdown of gear. The space is strictly for me to record in. This allows the spontaneous energy I thrive on to flourish. I remember over the years having to set up and breakdown all my gear because of not having enough space in our places to leave it up. Most of that recording was done with funky tape machines and cheap mics. Still I had a blast and it has inspired me to create my current set up.
What is your budget? I probably have about 15 grand in gear. Ouch, I bet I have a lot more than that... and that is not counting guitars, keys, drums, harps, amps, and at least 50 grand in the studio building ( an converted detached 2 car garage that is state of the art with full bath and bed setup). I know this is pretty expensive but I record approx. 30-60 hours a week. It is my sanity den. Music has guided my life and it continues to unfold more beatiful things as the years go by. Recording keeps me playing music. Without it, I would probably quit playing. Live gigs are not of much interest to me anymore unless the scene is right but somehow playing in the studio brings all the best of my live playing encounters into it.
Even with entry level gear, one can get a good recording if it is done right. It all depends on how inspired you are with sonic quality. I am cracked on getting world class quality. It will keep me busy till I die. If you live near me (columbus ohio) you are welcome to come by. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
For a basic home setup I would go with a audio interface and mic. Get an interface similar to say m-audio's Fast Track pro. Two channels, line or XLR input. Then a mic and cable.
That will allow you to record not only harp, but vocals, and guitar if you like.
Another route is you can get an effects pedal similar to the Digitech RP 250 which has a USB and doubles as an interface.
I would not recommend using line in. :)
As a hobbiest you can get really good recordings for not a whole lot of outlay.
One thing to make sure however when you get an audio interface is to make sure it is MAC compatible. The aforementioned M-Audio sometimes has issues. But mine works fine with my macbook pro.
I also have a Sapphire Pro I use on my desktop. Its a class or two up from the fast track.
My typical harp setup is the digitech RP 250 USB into the computer, I use an sm57 mic.
I switched to this set up for harp when I got the digitech. Before that I used my M-Audio fast track with the sm57 to record.(the fast track is also USB)
Audio Interfaces for recording come in all shapes and sizes. USB or Firewire.
As Walter asked what is your budget and what are you requirements for what you want to do?
To answer your first question if the USB mic is good enough then you can certainly use it to record directly and color the sound with software. But like directly using the line in I wouldn't really recommend that as the best way :)
I have pretty much at one point or another done all of the above :)
They also make stand alone recorders that you can then dump the output to computer if that is your bag. My band recorded three cds on a Korg 12 channel recorder then dumped the tracks to computer for final mastering for example.
I do all my recording in the corner of the living room where I have my little station set up. My to my girlfriends chagrin at times :) It doesn;t always stay the neatest in the world :)
I'm pretty happy with my USB Blue Yeti microphone. You'll also want a good set of headphones for playback. One of the frustrating things about recording I've discovered is that you can mix something down 'perfectly' and it will sound great on a set of speakers, then you play it on something else and it sounds terrible. There are tricks for balancing everything out, but they are still beyond me. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I don't.
"One of the frustrating things about recording I've discovered is that you can mix something down 'perfectly' and it will sound great on a set of speakers, then you play it on something else and it sounds terrible. There are tricks for balancing everything out, but they are still beyond me. Sometimes I get lucky, sometimes I don't."
Here is a tip for mixdown. Play someone elses cd that you really like the mix on or just pick a classic recording you like, and play it on your system. Be sure to pick one that has the sonic quality you are after. I listen to lots of Sinatra's capitol and reprise stuff for this. Then play your songs right after them. You will hear differences and try to mix yours closer to the pro recorded stuff. You will learn the character of your speakers and also learn what a world of difference exists between a decent recording and real nice recording. Also play them on your car stereo, and whatever other players you have. the sad thing is most people today are listening to music on crap gear- mp3 players and stuff with cheap earphones. Mixing with headphones is very misleading. Speakers make for much better across the spectrum results. If you mix loud, and your room is not treated for sound, what you hear will rarely transfer to most systems. I have heard of guys mixing grammy records of pretty cheap monitors. the thing is they had been mixing on them forever and knew them inside out for their sound characteristics. Mixing with backing tracks is the easiest way to get a decent sound because most of the mixing work is already done for you. Still you have to mix your tones with the tracks tones. Recording like I do is one of the hardest ways to go. Having multiple instruments all within inches of each other and all recorded at the same time live, makes it a real challenge. Mic choice and mic placement becomes critical. Overdubbing eliminates most of this but I find going back to a song of no interst. Also using the harp in a rack makes it very trebly due to no hand deading. I share the same mic for the harp and my vocals. The harp likes the highs cut way back and the mids boosted. the vocals like the mids cut and highs boosted. Finding a happy medium is an ever going challenge for me. The biggest trick of all though is this- Time spent doing it :-) Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
One of the most effective things you can do to get quality recordings is to eliminate the noise that lurks at very low levels in virtually all recordings. I'm using an old Sound Forge program that displays the waveforms of your recording as well as playing it through your computer, and here's what I do to eliminate noise. I scan the wave display to find an area that has nothing but noise in it (very small waves looking random). I select that area to isolate it and then run a function that calculates the RMS power level of that noise and also tells the peak value. Then I use the Noise Gate function to eliminate all signal that is equal to or below that peak value. Yes that does take out a tiny fraction of the signal that is not noise, but unless you had extremely high noise levels, you won't be able to hear any degradation - and the new clarity of the desired sound will astound you.
Another thing you can do is Normalize the remaining good signal to a level of -2.5db. That is a standard value for average sound recordings and still allows for much higher peak sounds like gunshots or whatever. Normalizing adjusts the amplitude of all the signals in order to place the peaks under a certain level as you specify. In any case only the rarest peaks should ever be allowed to go over -6db, which is the level that most standard mixers and players will redline and clip or distort. Speaking of normalizing, you may need to select some areas which average much higher or lower than the rest of the mix, and normalize them separately in order that the sound levels throughout are relatively consistent. Have fun.
Last Edited by on Dec 05, 2011 7:02 PM
This was done using the internal microphone in the mac and Garage Band software. The Band is from the magic band in Garage Band. The effects are a little overdrive with some reverb and echo. Just sittin' in front of the Mac and playing away.
The Mozart uses Finale's synth for the Harpsichord and Digital Performer software to record using a small Mackie mixer and an Audio Technica AT 3035 mic and a cm2000 AKG and the digital performer reverb. All on the MAC.
For digital performer I use the motu 828 firewire interface. ----------
Emile "Diggs" D'Amico a Legend In His Own Mind How you doin'
Last Edited by on Dec 06, 2011 2:50 AM
I would be careful with normalizing and removing hiss. Normalizing takes away a lot of the dynamics and if the sound is already clipped, all you will do is lower the volume of the distorted sound. THere is no fixing it. The noise removal tools, especially if they are freebies or come with a budget software, tend to also take away a lot of frequencies that are part of your music. The best thing is to make sure your recording levels are set to below clipping. On tape, going in the red zone was good stuff. On digital it means bad stuff. Set your levels well below the red zone and you will not have any clipping. Hit your instruments and voice a bit harder than you normally do and set the levels to that. Recording at lower levels can be made up via the gains on each track channel and the mastering channel compressors/limiters/eqs, on the recording software. You will not add more hiss recording low and then turning it up louder on mixdown. THis goes totally against tape. With tape you wanted it red zoning a good part of the time and if you recorded the levels too low and then turned them up, you would also bring the tape machine noises up with it. Digital makes no hiss. You can turn from 0-10 and there will be no noise. If you have it, like I do, it is from tube guitar amps and tube preamps. IMO this all mixes together nice and adds to the sound. Part of the digital dryness is the lack of machine noises. On my current universal audio tape simulators (studer A800 and ampex atr-102) you have the option to use any amount/eliminate the hiss, flutter, noise, that exist on the actual machines. Listen to the latest remaster of Miles Davis's shades of blue. There is a ton of machine noise/hiss on this recording but IMO it adds to the beauty of it. IMO this is one stellar sounding recording. The same goes for the sinatra stuff on capital and reprise. The more space you leave, the more you will hear the noise. Most rock and amplified blues bands create so much sound you don't really hear it because they leave very little totally quiet spaces. I haved learned all this the hard way..... but it sure is fun to figure things out on my own! Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
I always hated Scotch and it made me sick just to smell it until someone gave me some 18 year old stuff. At that point I almost became a Scotch drinker!! The price stopped me. lol ---------- Tommy
@walter Yeah, your right about hiss. It's essentially a high frequency white noise and if you try to squelch the high frequencies you end up taking the defining edges off the song sound. What I suggested is erasing the random noise (possibly containing some of the hiss) which comprises the lowest power levels and appears in the spaces between song sounds. That removes only sounds which you can't hear in the midst of the much more powerful song sounds, but which dirty up the spaces. Thanks for your comments, which promted me to make this distinction! (power vs frequency) Oh, and my sense of 'normalizing' is simply compression or expansion of the overall amplitude (volume) of the song, and as I said, being careful to keep it under the redline/clipping level.
Last Edited by on Dec 06, 2011 9:16 AM
hi lor: I have to say this- take what I say with a grain of salt. I record about a cd a day and spend no time to no more than a few minutes per song on mixdown/mastering. If I spent more time, I would have an eternal log jam of songs waiting to be mastered. I guess just mixing songs 30-70 hours a week for years has sort of brought me to a specific zone for my music. I have learned where to set dials, mics, etc, for a decent sound. I keep saying someday I am going to record a complete cd of my music with lots of overdubs via playing one instrument at a time and will spend a ton of time tweaking each track. I have started this project more times than I can count but before things get really rolling I am driven to sing songs... If my well runs dry I reckon I will get on that idea someday. I rarely record others unless they are friends but have found it to be a fairly easy process. Most of their music is either blues or acousticly based and similar to what I do as far as how the setup/mixing goes. For the low end stuff I often use the 90 or 150 cut on the neve 1081 eq. That pretty much eliminates a lot of low end crud without disturbing the sonic quality. I love them universal audio plugins! I understand what you are saying with normalizing/compression. I do little of either because I run 4 tracks live and each mic is so close to each other that if I compress tracks it raises the other instruments/voice on all tracks and I lose much of the little isolation I get with everything being so close. I dig natural bleeding and use a very light compression on my vocal/harp mic via a universal audio 6176 channel strip (hardware not plugin). Everything else is non compressed going in to computer. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
When I got a new computer, I bought a Focusrite Saffire 6 usb audio interface.If you've got a mac, you'd do well to use the firewire version.
Nearly any audio interface will do. They average about 200 bucks new, give or take, and the one I got has 2 inputs so as others mentioned, you can plug a mic/guitar in, two instruments, whatever you want.
The audio interface gives you a great preamp, with some versatile connectivity compared to direct USB. I bought a Shure SM57 to go with the setup. $300 bucks by the time I was done.
DAW (digital audio workstation) software can vary widely. If you want to speak the language of the industry, Pro Tools is the de-facto software people are using. I worked with both a lite version of Ableton Live that came with my interface, and like it a lot. Also, for free, or very low cost, is a DAW by the name of Reaper that I was using to start with - very good. Very versatile. You can use 3rd party software plug-ins and effects with either, but right off the bat, the Ableton software included more, and integrated more easily for me so I'm sticking with it.
Some of the higher end usb mics might not be bad either, but I'm not a fan of plugging in via usb and using any onboard sound card or software control via the OS, compared to a hardware interface that will handle it all better, or allow more options for connectivity and sound.
If 300 bucks is too rich for your blood, the 100 dollar USB mics might be the next best option. Also depends upon your intent with the recording. If you're doing it to hear your own progress or save ideas, cheap will do. If you're trying to make a presentable album or release to the public, you may be a great player but you'll be hard to listen to if the audio is inferior.
Stay away from USB mics...they almost universally have latency issues, and their quality is never as good as a condenser mic-mixer combo. I've worked with both fairly extensively, and can say with a fair amount of certainty that if you want to mix your tracks well, multi-track, and master, the USB mic route will end up giving you a bunch of headaches. They're also really, really easy to punch in on, which is a constant annoyance. If you're recording from an amp, you're probably end up frustrated. The condenser mic-mixer deals with that far better. I've never recorded amped up harp, but I'd imagine it works in much the same way as guitar, placement-wise. Obviously, placement is pretty easy for acoustic harp recording. You'll also find that the timbre of your vocal recording is far better on a mic with a mixer compared to what you'll get out of a USB mic.
Blackbird: I also have a saffire 6 ad have been using it for a while. It's got a great interface. I'm not using a firewire version, and have used it on both PCs and Macs. If you're looking for a longterm investment in it, and versatility to boot, I'd just stick with the USB version (unless the firewire version also has the USB option -- I'm not sure). With regards to recording software, Ableton is great for DJing and electronic music, but I'm not a fan of its recording capabilities. It's annoyingly complicated to just lay a track down. It's way better than garageband, though. I happen to really like the layout on Audacity/Adobe Audition, and Logic is great.
"Stay away from USB mics...they almost universally have latency issues,"
WRONG, wrong and wrong again
Please don't use your own bad experience and probable incompetence on that point, as a general rule....USB works great (Marshall, Blue Microphones.....)
Btw my own experience is more than 2 years using these types of microphones with the live effects passing thru
Cristal: I wouldn't assume incompetence in someone so easily. The fact is (and I've even seen the specs provided for products, along with many anecdotes), USB mics nearly always have more latency than a decent mic-mixer set-up. Does that mean that you can't record a good track on a USB mic? Nope. Not at all.
If you're using a USB mic in your videos (you're a fantastic musician, by the way), then it's clear that you're an example of someone who records successfully with one. However, if you're doing serious layering of tracks, working with vocal harmonies, multiple guitar overdubs, a harp track here and there, the final mix gets pretty flimsy. That said, I'm a lot better at mic placement and have improved at all of my instruments since I last tried to produce a song on a USB mic -- it's been a while.
Also, @ lor and waltertore: I'm pretty sure it's accepted that one should shoot to normalize as little as possible. Especially if you want to export to mp3. Especially if you're doing it across the whole mix and not on individual tracks. I tend to filter most things at 40 and 16500 (the range of human hearing), but I'll fuck around with harmonica and vocals more. I want as much superfluous glow on my guitars as possible. Walter, I'm pretty on board with your method, from what you described. A lot of white noise comes from poor recording conditions/bad mic placement, I find. Both are things that I should be able to correct, so that's what I try to do.
there is such a spectrum of recording setups, level of quality, that it is very difficult to figure it all out on ones own. What works for ones needs will not for another. What one considers good quality is crap to another. Same with mics, preamps, compressors... and the list goes on and on. The best thing one can do is find someone who is a skilled recording person and consult with them. Your needs and budget will best be served going this route. Trying to gets bits of this and that from topics like this can often lead to frustration and money spent on wrong/unecessary stuff. Walter ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
This may be way over simplified, but I've got some pretty good results recording live bands using a digital camera in video mode and later ripping the audio out of it.
It has become clear to me that the word "normalize" is not a standard technical term because I detect a couple of different interpretations above, including my own. The differences concern frequency versus amplitude. Unfortunately I don't know at this moment (I will do some research) what the equivalent accepted terms for the various interpretations are. Anybody already know?
While there is more than one way to skin a cat. It all comes down to the goal of the project.
IMHO, I would be more likely to suggest a USB interface than a USB mic. While there are applications where it will work, there are more advantages to using a regular condenser mic into a preamp. You can do anything a USB mic can and more!
If you just want to record harmonica from the room live against maybe a backing track, the USB will work (see Cristelle). However, once you go beyond that - mutliple tracks, multiple instruments, overdubs, etc, you have more flexibility (besides latency issues) with the USB interface.
I have a Blackbird Onyx from Mackie, which according to all online accounts (gearslutz.com, reviews, music sites) is a fantastic buy for the price and actually has very nice preamps. I am not well versed in home recording. I know a fair amount about gear, but not so much about mixing/mastering, but the Onyx lets me do any number of things.
Right now, I am trying to workout a way to use my mixer to send a feed to the computer and record everything live. This is really easy to do, but I haven't had to time to mix for recording, if that makes sense. I have spent time getting a good room mix, but that doesn't create the best direct feed.
However, I can easily record the room sound with a condenser mic into the Onyx. So, what I am messing with now is taking a direct feed from the board and room mic at the same time...can't do that with a USB mic. The difficulty is getting a solid mix from the PA knowing I can't tweak everything afterwards (so it truely is a live recording).
I guess what I am getting at is a USB mic limits you to having the equivalent of one condenser mic. You can't use it for direct recording.
Mike the best way to get a live feed is to have a multiple input interface. You could use a real mixer with as many inputs as you want into it and then send it to your interface as well but if your interface only has say 1 or 2 inputs, it will be the mix you send in that will forever there. I use a motu 2408mk3. It allows me to run 8 seperate inputs at once. I upgraded this summer from a m audio delta 1010. Here is a link to it.
http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/Delta1010/
If you are interested I am selling it cheap. It will allow you to send 8 seperate inputs to direct track that will appear on your recording software. I am not sure what you are using and if the gear needs preamps or not. I send everything into my via mics and preamps. The can of worms, once opened, only will continue to grow and tap you wallet! Walter
PS: I just looked up your mackie unit- no need for what the delta 1010. It is in theory, basically the same as my delta and motu, only with preamps. You should be able to send your stuff into it, each on its own channel, up to 8 channels. As long as the levels are below clipping, you are good to go. Of course mic choices, mic placements, and where the amplified gear is set up will affect things like isolation and bleeding. If you are running direct gear, that is eliminated because it run on a signal to the interface instead of an amplified sound via a mic. Much of Motowns stuff was recorded with direct bass and guitars. It can sound really cool if your board has some good preamps. I recorded Omar Colman with the sean carney band in my studio using directs for the harp and bass with good results- a link: www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1200562
When you get done recording, it should appear on the mixing template you set up on you recording software project and you can mix levels,eq, effects, etc, to a final mix. Is that not happening? ---------- walter tore's spontobeat - a real one man band and over 1 million spontaneously created songs and growing. I record about 300 full length cds a year. " life is a daring adventure or nothing at all" - helen keller
