EQ Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 31)

LEAKAGE If your mixes are too sterile or studioclean, consider recording some leakage. Leakage (also called bleed or spill) results from picking up an instrument by another instrument’s mic, like a guitar mic picking up the drums from across the room. Leakage changes the recorded sound of the drums from tight to muddy. In fact, some virtual drum instruments, like Fxpansion’s BFD and ToonTrack’s EZ Drummer, allow mixing in leakage within the drum set itself. It’s easy to create leakage while recording with mics: Just place them further away from the source than normal, and record all the instruments at once, without any baffling. ROOM SOUND In the quest for quality recordings, it’s standard practice to treat a studio’s acoustics, often to reduce early reflections (echoes that occur less than about 20ms after the direct sound from the instrument being recorded). Those early reflections tell the ear that the instrument was recorded in a small room. Normally we get rid of the reflections and replace them with artificial reverb, but a lo-fi recording often includes the sound of the room as part of the sound of the recorded instrument. To pick up room reflections, mic farther away than usual from the source and leave the walls uncovered; use the room for its coloration, rather than rejecting the room. For a really spacious effect, consider recording several instruments in stereo with two mics. Pick up instruments or vocals in a hallway, a bathroom, a box, or even outdoors. LO-FI AESTHETICS It’s common to include hi-fi sounds along with lo-fi sounds in the same mix to make a statement to your listeners: “I can record hi-fi sounds, but I choose not to. The trashy sounds are due to a conscious choice rather than a lack of recording chops.” If you have nothing but lo-fi sounds in your mixes, it might sound like you don’t know what you’re doing. Just remember that the ear delights in complexity; the contrast of clean and dirty sounds, modern and vintage, can add a lot of sonic interest. (Note: I recommend the album Mule Variations by Tom Waits—it’s a brilliantly creative lo-fi masterpiece. So is Beck’s Timebomb. Others are “digital hardcore” genre albums by Ronin, Technology Scum, and Cheap Czad.) Steinberg's BitCrusher is a “lo-fi” plug-in that allows changing both sample rate and bit resolution. Digital Lo-Fi Tricks Lo-fi is not just the province of analog recording; digital technology can create sounds so terrifying that small house pets will flee in terror. Here’s how. Reduce your bits and/or lower your sample rate. Some DAWs offer lo-fi plug-ins that allow dialing in a particular number of bits or changing the sample rate, but if not, export your track and bring it into a digital audio editor. Most of these let you export at various bit resolutions and sample rates, or let you re-sample a file; converting to eight-bit resolution is the quickest way to add noise and hiss. Abuse data compression algorithms. This again requires exporting a track and processing it in a digital audio editor, but this time, export as an MP3 or Windows Media Audio file with maximum data compression. The highs will get incredibly weird, and the sound will be muffled. Some editors offer algorithms designed specifically for extremely compressed speech; try these on music. Reduce the level of a track dramatically, then export as a 16-bit file without dithering. By “dramatically,” I mean 70–80dB or so. When these low levels turn into 16-bit files, they’ll be extremely distorted from the quantization noise that occurs naturally at low levels. The more you lower the signal, the worse the sound. Use dither as an effect. Try the same technique mentioned above, but this time, add dither to create a blanket of noise. Different dither types have different sounds; experiment to determine which one sounds better . . . I mean, worse. Sing into a telephone answering machine. This is a little more complicated due to sync issues, but what works is to listen to the tracks on headphones but also send them through speakers. Call your phone number (e.g., call your landline from a cell phone or vice-versa), turn up the speakers before you start singing, then turn them down during the vocals. When you pull the signal off the answering machine, line up the section where you can hear the track with the same section in your DAW; unless your answering machine drifts a lot (unlikely with today’s models, which are based on digital technology instead of cassettes) the vocals will stay sufficiently in sync for at least several minutes. Digital overload. Most DAWs and digital audio editors include DSP for adjusting a track’s level. Normalize the signal to reach maximum level, then amplify the level by 200% or so. You may need to do this several times to get an over-the-top distorted sound. Then, roll off the highs to reduce the amount of “spikiness” and round out the sound a bit. Tasty! —Craig Anderton www.eqmag.com MARCH 2008 EQ 31 http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - March 2008

EQ Magazine - March 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Tool Box Dream Theater Nick Drake LO-FI Recording Tricks Guitar Trax Bass Managment Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Tascam Gigastudio 4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Crane Song Avocet Cad Signature Series Mic Packs Waves GTR3 Kjaerhus MPL-1 Pro SE Ableton Live 7 Centrance Micport Pro, Tapco LINK.midi 4x4, Multi-Gigabyte USB 2.0 Memory Sticks Digital Redux Electrotech, Nine Volt Audio Action Drums, Big Fish Audio Hadeeth 2 Room with a VU

EQ Magazine - March 2008

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