You would be surprised how many layers there are in there. Sometimes I've opened up sessions where there are 30, 40, 50 layers of vocals, where it just sounds like a lead vocal with maybe some subtle harmony, but there's a ton going on that creates this feeling, this vibe. This is the Self Recording Band Podcast, the show where we help you make exciting records on your own, wherever you are DIY style, let's go. Hello and welcome to the Self Recording Band Podcast. I'm your host, benedikt Hein. If you are new to the show, welcome. So stoked to have you. If you are already a listener, welcome back. Glad you're hanging out with us again. This is available on Spotify, apple Podcasts wherever you consume podcasts, or on YouTube, so there's a video version as well. In case you are not aware, today we're doing part two of what we started last week, which is we talk about the biggest home recording mistakes that we've seen this past month, which is the month of September 2023, although this episode will be out a little later. But we're talking about the project we've just been working on and we want to break down the biggest home recording mistakes we've seen from working with self recording bands, so you don't have to make these same mistakes. We get to work on a lot of different projects and a lot of different songs every month, and many of them are home recordings, which means that the source tones often are kind of problematic, which is fine. There's always ways to deal with that, but sometimes it's just, or always. It's just better to get it right at the source or to prevent, like, having to go back and forth a lot. So, yeah, in order for you to not have to go through this and make these same mistakes, we're doing this episode and, as always, I'm doing it with my friend and co-host, malcolm Owen Flutt. Hello, malcolm, how are you? Hey, benny, I'm great man. How are you doing? I'm doing great too. I picked up, or like I installed Soundtoy Superplate after you told me about it last time.

And.

I love it. And, by the way, yeah, it is great and, by the way, did you say you bought it? I just want to make sure you didn't pay twice for it, because if you have Soundtoy's 5, the bundle I don't know if you have, but it was included already- no, I needed to upgrade, but it caught like the upgrade was like 20 bucks or something. Soundtoy's loyalty has always been top notch, so it was like well, it was a little weird for me, because I looked at it and I almost bought it, and then I was like I have Soundtoy's 5, so it's probably included, and then I just had to download the whole package again and re-install it, and then it was included.

I mean, I like it so much that even if I did, I'm happy yeah.

I have totally Did. You see my YouTube video on it?

Oh no, I haven't. You might have a breakdown. The whole auto decay feature in there and it's awesome. People seem to like it, so check that out. Shameless plug, awesome, cool, yeah. So, as Benny mentioned, though, this episode is about mistakes we commonly see, and I definitely have a mistake I need to mention in our banter here. I did another show this past week. That wasn't a mistake, but yeah, how did that go? The show was fun, man, it was great. But I borrowed back the Evertoon that I sold and after finally playing a show with an Evertoon guitar for the first time, I don't know what I was thinking I shouldn't have told it. And I think I may be in the band, or last week I even talked about how I was just playing this guitar. Again, I was like I don't know what I was thinking about, playing a show without needing to tune. It's amazing. I went and picked up this guitar on I can't remember Wednesday or Tuesday or something. I played the show on Thursday and we had a practice in between there and I didn't tune it once, like literally from pick up, like. I didn't tune it when I picked it up. He just pulled it out of a case and yeah, no tuning at all. So amazing.

Which means you didn't put on new strings for your show. I didn't.

No, no, I didn't. They were sounding pretty trashy.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you would have in the studio though, right?

Yes, in the studio I certainly would have for our 30 minute opening set. Nah.

I get it, I get it, I get it. Awesome man, yeah, I mean. So that means how long is it going to take you to get one of these again, to buy another?

guitar that I just sold for more money because they've gone up in price Like an idiot. I don't know man. I got to think about it long and hard. I haven't returned it yet. Derek Madden, who listens to these podcasts and send our Facebook community? Sorry, man, I'll think about returning it to you eventually.

Yeah, I mean, I think there is a rule Like if you have something for more than I don't know, a couple of weeks or so, it's yours, basically.

Oh, really Okay, I just Fantastic news.

Yeah, I think so. Maybe you're lucky. Yeah, oh man. Yeah, that was a mistake, that was really a mistake with that guitar.

Don't sell guitars. It's the moral of the story, Exactly exactly.

Yeah, also one more music related banter. Actually I had so much fun this week playing with my I mean like mixing with my new SSL controller that I got, that I showed you last time and I was kind of skeptical at first if, like, yeah, if it's just something I wanted or if it's something that really improved things. But I've done a few mixes now and it's so cool, like, yeah, it's really, and I don't know for how long it lasts Like, right now it's fresh. It's just a different approach and that's why it's cool. But like, just, it's a different approach to mixing, really Not seeing a plug-in, just turning knobs again and selecting a channel, just listening. I wouldn't even need to need a screen at this point. So I just have my faders and I have my EQ and my compressor on the other hand, and I just do things and, man, I just enjoyed it so much and yeah, it's incredible.

That's awesome. There you go. It's really really cool. I've been looking forward to years or something and we're going to be watching the podcast and you're going to have a full SSL like actual console in front of you. I have.

So I've been looking at the. No, it won't happen anytime soon, but I've been looking at the origin consoles for quite a while now because they're so cool. Like this is origin of the new ones. But I can. I just it doesn't make sense to spend that much. I mean they are kind of affordable in the whole. When you're talking about large format consoles. You can't spend much more on that and they used to be much more expensive, but still we're talking 50 grand or so.

We'd have deep shame whenever we had like a you don't need expensive gear. Episode.

Exactly, exactly, no, and also I don't want to the thing. The reason why I'm not getting it and never will, probably never will, not anytime soon is that I want the full recall in the box thing. That's what I want. So I don't want to mix on analog gear, actually I just I use it still, I print stuff through the analog gear and then it's committed and in the session. But when it comes to mixing revisions and being able to just tweak something really quickly when I have to, I won't give that up, yeah. I know that's invaluable. Exactly, exactly, anyway, okay, so let's talk about the mistakes today. So, again, I said it last time, but in case you haven't listened to that episode yet, go back and do that first of all. But if you haven't yet, these are not things that are only, like, necessary when you work with external mixing engineers. These are also relevant when you're mixing yourself, because you want to set yourself up for success. You don't want to sabotage yourself and you, yeah, you want to. It's just best practices, basically, and things you just generally want to avoid, regardless if you're doing it yourself or not. And also, none of these have to do with, so, back to gear. None of these have to do with, like, not having expensive gear or certain plugins or anything that will cost you lots of money. They are all things that you can control and fix with the things you already have. So I just want to say that and yeah, so what are the things that we're talking about today?

Well, I want to mention one more thing, because I think we forgot to mention it in our last episode, is that these are mistakes that we have seen recently. But what I forgot to point out last episode is that there are probably mistakes that Benny and I have also made at some point in our career Actually probably predating career, when it wasn't a career yet. So it's like I'm saying that to just don't feel bad if you're like, oh guilty, it's not, and it didn't stop these songs from getting mixed either. Right, but it did get in the way of us starting our mix or, yeah, like actually one of these gets in the way of it turning out fine.

Yeah, and one of these actually cost the artist that we were working with some extra money because there was extra effort required to fix something that was not our fault and there was no other way, and so this can happen. It can delay the project, and it all turned out well in the end, but it could have been a smoother process.

Yeah, I think it's just easy, when we're like you know top three mistakes, for people to be like oh I suck, and it's like no, it's just, everybody makes mistakes. We're just trying to stop you from having to deal with these yourself 100% glad you said that, michael.

All right, so let's just start at the top here. So the first one is not actually recording like a technical mistake, an engineering mistake, but it's something that is pretty common, at least in sessions that I get a lot. I don't know if it's the same for you, malcolm, but what I'm talking about is that sometimes people sent me songs that are recorded fine, well like songs, are good, but there are no vocal layers, no additional vocal layers, just the lead vocal. And you might think, well, what's wrong with that? You know, depends on the genre. Sometimes there's nothing wrong with that. If it's like a singer-songwriter thing or something you know various sparse arrangement type of thing can work. But if they tell me they want to sound like you know, and then they listed a bunch of like modern radio rock or metal or metalcore or pop, punk or whatever type of records, then what I'm hearing on these records are doubles and harmonies and you know all kinds of backing vocals and these beautiful layers that are not the same throughout the entire song. But yeah, most importantly in the chorus is the producers do a lot to create a lift in the chorus and to open it up and things like that and when they say they want to sound like that and all they sent me is just one lead vocal track, I'm having a very hard time making that work. As a mixer there's always things you can do, but you can only do so much. So I'd say, when in doubt, in most genres, most modern genres at least record a minimum of a couple of layers, like doubles and the harmony and maybe octaves, something simple you can pull off. You can always mute it if it's too much. But when in doubt, just do something and maybe study a few, download some multi-tracks, watch things like Song Exploder or study how other songs have been arranged. Yeah, enough of my monologue here. What do you think about that, malcolm?

Yeah, I totally agree. This is one that people figure out quickly on their own, I think as well, because it's just something that we almost all universally like is vocal layers sound good. It is something that happens so commonly in modern productions that when you realize it's what you're missing in your own production, you're quick to fix it. So it's generally like a first time somebody has recorded their own music move, when it's just one vocal that gets sent to me and then either I communicate to them like could you send me some more, or they figure it out on their own, and then it's never really an issue again. But we want to stop that from happening in the first place, and we could probably offer some tips on how to pull this off, because, if you're like me, harmonies are not a natural thing to come by. I can do it, you know, put a guitar or a piano in my hand and I can sit there and figure them out, but I'm kind of slow at it. It's not something I can just like sing along with the song and add a harmony. I have friends that can do that and that's magical and I should put more practice into that, but I just don't really have it that dialed in myself. So if you are like me and harmonizing is not a natural talent that you have developed yet keyword yet you can still get away with vocal layers very easily with just some like go to basics that work like 99% of the time, and the one that always works is just doubles, you know, just singing the exact same melody and give us a left and a right of that so you can have three tracks total. So your lead, your left and your right double and then, if you want a center, double two if you really want to go big foo fighter style or something. But then on top of that, a low octave also tends to work all the time and pretty much what we're doing here is just it's the same notes. Why wouldn't it work, right? Yeah, so just a low octave tends to work really well, and it might. Low octaves are one of those things that might sound weird, soloed or too loud, but once you mix it down it really thickens it up. So if you have to put on like a Johnny Cash voice to hit down there, don't worry about it, probably still going to work. And on the flip side, a high octave can also be amazing, like then you might have to falsetto for that. But again, it doesn't really matter if it's like as strong as your lead performance and in your you know core register, if you can hit the notes, it's probably going to be useful, is my opinion. With all of these, we're trying to get them as tight to the lead vocal as we can, usually. If that doesn't sound right, of course experiment, but as a default I would say try and make them as tight, timing and pitch wise and inflection wise to your lead vocal as you can.

Yeah, and pay especially pay attention to plosives and sibilant sounds in the vocal. So it's kind of weird when you pan so you have a lead vocal and then doubles left and right, for example. And what we don't want, especially on headphones, is when we hear, like the left and right, you know, the different S's and T's and stuff from all kinds from different sides. That's really distracting. So make sure to make them, make them really tight, timing wise. Yeah, those were great, great tips. And then there's, like you know, the third and the fifth. And, by the way, listen to the interview episode we did with Jill Zimmerman, because she was actually talking about what you can do if you are struggling with coming up with harmonies. There's a great, you know section in it about this. And we just had, like last week, we had a coaching call in the self-recording syndicate, our coaching program, where we discussed this and where I actually gave advice and show people how I use my MIDI keyboard to come up with harmonies or how I use, you know, pitch correction tools to come up with harmonies. And we discussed this as a group because there are certain tricks and certain techniques that you can use even if you don't know theory. So, yeah, if you're you know, if you want to be part of that, by the way, just go to the self-recordingcom slash call and apply for our coaching, because there you'll learn how to do it and you don't have to worry about it.

There's tools that make it so much easier now, which is also helpful. I should have mentioned that. Just you know, open auto-tune or Melodyne or whatever you've got in your DAW and Yankee round and literally you might be able to get away with using it without even having to sing again. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I do that when I, when there's no chance, like when people just can't send me additional layers for whatever reason, I sometimes sneak in a little fake harmony, if that helps. The song you know.

Absolutely. I do it with lows all the time. Sometimes I prefer it to a real low.

It just is so tight.

Yeah, one more pro tip here. This is kind of a mixing tip, but the consonants thing and the plosives thing, more so. Consonants and S's in particular with getting them to match. There's tools, like you know, elastic audio and vocal line, which will tighten our performances to our lead vocal, and you can do that manually or automatically with these different tools. So that's good to know. But, honestly, for years now I've been throwing a de-esser on my backing vocals, my layers, and cranking it to its max setting to essentially eliminate anything that sounds like a T or an S, anything I can get to trigger it, and they're just deleted essentially from those tracks, the equivalent to being deleted, and only the lead vocal has those sounds. And I haven't been unhappy yet. It just, yes, just get rid of them. And the only thing I would say is sometimes it sounds cool to have breaths on all of them and sometimes it also doesn't.

Yeah, totally, and also know that in most cases these layers are just, they play a supporting sort of role. They are, you know, sometimes they are pretty obvious, but oftentimes they are very subtle and you wouldn't believe in some of your favorite songs where you think it's just a lead vocal. If you listen closely you would be surprised, like, how many layers there are in there. Sometimes, Like I've opened up sessions and I've watched videos of people breaking down sessions where there are like 30, 40, 50 layers of vocals where it just sounds like, you know, a lead vocal with maybe some subtle harmony, but there's a ton going on that creates this feel and this vibe. And why I'm saying this? Because you can have all the feel you want in the lead vocal. And again, we're not. We're going to make an entire episode, sort of on this topic very soon. We're not trying to create something absolutely perfect or artificial here, but you can have all the feel you want in the lead vocal. You just want to make sure that whatever that feel is that the backing vocals are supporting it and are sort of playing together well with that, because they are just. You know, they just add something to the lead vocal and they need to be tight together. It's not that everything has to be super perfect, but they have to match together because otherwise it's distracting and most people don't want it to sound like a big choir. They want it to sound like a clear lead vocal, but with that little bit of extra lift in the chorus, for example. You know, and yes totally, totally.

We're going kind of deeper on this than I intended, but it's fun to talk about.

Let's do it.

I just heard that one of my like original favorite bands was this band called King Cade. They're from the island here, love them to death and I just started listening to them again yesterday on my drive back from the city and hadn't listened to them in years. And they did a couple songs right before they disbanded with Devin Townsend and, who's amazing, both as a musician, producer and, yeah, in kind of every way he they did these songs with him and there's the vocal contrast in this production is just mind blowing. I'm going to send it to you, benny.

And maybe throw a link in the show notes for the song.

But the contrast between a single vocal, or at least what seems like a single vocal, to the doubles coming in huge on the sides for certain lines, and just it's so explosive. And the point I'm making here is that the more design you can do as the engineer and producer and self recording artist in providing the mixer with where that contrast is meant to live, the better. So I have definitely advised some people I've worked with to just double everything, give me as many layers as you can and send it to me. And those are the people that just really have no idea where it should be. They just they just can't feel confident in making a decision about where there should be doubles and where there shouldn't be, where there should be harmonies, where there shouldn't be. And in that case I was just like, yeah, give me as much as you can, I'll make that happen on my side and that works. But it's not ideal. If you, the artist and ultimately the person that had this entire creative idea, can make that decision in the recording process and only send me doubles and layers where you want them, that is way better. Yeah, we always want you to be intentional and craft your production to sound like it's actually meant to, but I always lead to these kind of fail safes. It's like, yeah, just tell the whole song, we'll have it then. But yeah, if you, if you feel confident, like no, I want it to hit here and here and here I mean it's just the courses, for example then just do that.

Yeah, there's nothing better than, you know, opening a rough mix or like creating a quick little rough balance and being able to Play and the song just works because the arrangement is so great where I there's some sessions where I just feel like, great, I don't have to automate much here. Like this already works. Like the course is big, this part is small. You know, everything speaks to me the way it should and and there's so much less that I have to do and and and manipulate in order to, you know, for the song to work. So this is the best thing ever and, yeah, it's just the song on its own has to work. And, by the way, if you're not already Aware of it or if you haven't watched it yet, if you go to the self recording bed calm, slash, standout mixes. This is my guide on Balancing and creating what I call a rough mix that is better than most people's finished mix, and this is exactly why and what this is about. This is about, without plugins, without any fancy stuff, how you can create sort of forward motion throughout the song, how you can create dynamics from part to part, how you balance every part in every, every you know section of the song so well that by the end of it you just hit play and you have a song that works. And the better the recording is in the arrangement is, the easier this process is, because basically all you have to do is find a good spot for each fader and you're done right. So for the rough mix, and if it's not the case, you have to clip, gain stuff up and down, you have to automate stuff, you have to, you know, create new tracks for certain parts, and of course this is all things we do. But if the arrangement is really well thought out and you know where there are additional vocal layers, guitar doubles and all of that, it's, it's just. It just makes your life as a mixer so much easier and the song just just works.

Yeah, one more potential side effect of getting too much is also that it might sound good both ways. So I might receive, you know, doubles throughout the entire thing and be like, yeah, it sounds nice having them there all the time, right, and not and miss that opportunity For that, that contrast that I just mentioned, where you know, if we take them out in certain parts or just turn them way down in certain parts, like that might make the song that a little bit better. So it, without knowing that and having that sent to us that way, we just it might not turn out that way. So again, if you have a vision, make sure you just go for the vision.

Yep, put your producer head on, as we always say, and make that decision. Yes, all right, let's get to the next point here. The next one is bad comps or no comps at all. Comping means if you record a couple of different takes for a certain section, like if you try a certain section a couple of times, or the Whole song, if you played in all in one go Then you do that, you play that section of that song a couple of times and then you pick the best parts for each section, because it's very rare that you can, you know, play the one perfect take start to finish, so you might pick a certain section from here and another section from that take. And when you do that, then you got to be careful with a few things. So the mistake that I was, that I wanted to talk about here, was people, like a band, sent me drum tracks and they recorded it themselves and they chose the takes, they comped it, they sent the. You know, they committed, they printed the comps and sent over the drum tracks. And then, when I listen to them, there were some parts where they ended a certain part On a certain symbol and they started the next part on a different symbol and they didn't notice it. And so at the point where they comped it together, the sustain of the one symbol was cut off and the new symbol was coming in, and it was like this you know interruption there. Or you know there were other spots where the snare tuning would change, you know, pretty, pretty dramatically from one part to the next, where you know the end of the, the verse, all of a sudden the snare dropped quite significantly and they didn't notice that and Things like that. So when you comp your take together, make sure that it still sounds like one take, because that's what you want, what you're going for, unless it's intentional, of course, as always. But yeah, just just make sure you do this right and you don't make comping mistakes. So the same is true for guitar. Sometimes people accidentally cut away the, the pick attack, or they forget that. You know there's the, the chord of the last part was supposed to ring out, and then they cut off the sustain and stuff like that. So bad comps, hear that all the time. What do we mean with no comps at all?

now come no comps at all actually isn't no comps at all. No comps at all. There's not comp being onto the same track is what I meant by that note. Yeah, and again, this isn't like this isn't gonna ruin a project, but it just is a lot more work and it makes the session huge and cluttery and then adds this huge step of me trying to then Actually comp it into a track so I can mix it. But what I mean by Not comping onto the same track is, let's say, you have a Guitar just for, let's say, a mono guitar track. You know recording that and you play the intro and now it's the verse is gonna be your next take. So you make a new track and you, so that you can listen to the last track, your intro, as your pre-roll, and then you punch in on the verse on this new track and then the chorus comes and you add another track and now you've got three guitar tracks and every part you just record onto a new track Because they overlap just barely. You know, they're like the guitar parts obviously lead in from one to the other and for, for whatever reason, some people I don't know why they gravitate to doing this, but they're they're either afraid to work, like punch in on the same track and deal with that edit, or I Don't know why they do it honestly. Yeah, I'm not sure, but but what you should know is that they should just all exist on the same track. You should be punching in onto the same track that the part previous part was on, as if you just played it in one take. You know, and it should sound that way with a proper punch in an edit. The only exception is if it is a not possible scenario when one guitar holds out a chord and a new riff starts over that sustained chord. That is the only time you would add a new track, but otherwise it should just be on the same track.

Two exceptions actually. I think one is the overlap and the other exception would be if it's a completely different sound, then I sometimes prefer to have a different track. So everything where I would use to have to use, you know, heavy automation, plug-in automation, to make it work, I prefer to have it just on a new track. So if the verse guitar is clean and the chorus guitar is distorted or whatever, then please make two tracks, or you know, just stuff like that makes it easier to have and separate tracks because I can treat them then differently. Or you can treat them differently if you're mixing yourself. But if it's the same rhythm guitar with the same tone throughout the song and it doesn't overlap the only reason for you punching in was because you couldn't play it in one go then I all means just put it on one track at the end. Also, if you can't do that because there's still, you know, a little bit of overlap or whatever, that just tells you that the take wasn't tight enough, maybe because you know if it was tight then it would. You know it would work in one go. If it's something that you can't, you can't play in one go, then it should also work if you can't be together. If it doesn't, then one thing was late or another thing was early or something's wrong, so put it on one track, as Malcolm said, absolutely agreed. And what I actually thought you mean, malcolm and I want to add this real quick is, again, not something that is causing a big problem at the end, but it's so much more work for you if you do it that way. I've seen people not using the actual comping feature where you can like create a loop and then record over and over and over and then you, you know, can open up that list and pick the parts. But I've seen people create a new track to record a new take for the same part and then they have to mute the old one, listen to that one and then they mute those two and then they create a new one, and so they end up having a stack of like different takes for that same part where they then have to manually Edit out you know what they want to use, delete the rest. Where most all yeah you know, yeah, in Pro Tools is play listing and in in Cubase it's just called, I think, comping feature or whatever. But it's just like a very simple, effective way where you can collapse the whole playlist or the all those takes into one Lane. You can open them again if you want to, you can pick different parts and once you're done you can commit it. And that is so much easier than Creating a new track for every single new take and having to manually mute the old ones and stuff. And I know that I've certainly done that in the beginning because I didn't know that this feature existed.

So do you know, like you saying that right, there didn't know this feature existed? That, actually, I think probably answer is why I see this other scenario as well. It's. It's probably just you don't know that this is there and this is Fundamental. It's something we should have talked on much sooner than this, probably. Yeah, almost 200 episodes in. But but, yeah, this idea of comping and play listing and being knowing how to efficiently manage that in your individual DAW, like there's a shortcut for me to be able to throw Whatever playlist I'm on this, the highlighted section up to my, you know, top master comp playlist so that I can just build that as we go grab the best bits of every little performance. Yeah, and then, of course, you have to go do the cross bait and stuff. We need to do a whole comp in episode.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah also, I think one reason for for for why it happens is people might be afraid when they punch in that if they do it wrong they lose some of the old recordings like it was on tape. You don't have to be afraid of that, because the way it works is depending on how you set it, though. There's different settings for the punch in, so I can only speak for Two Cubase users right now, but I assume it's the same in Pro Tools. So in Cubase, if you set so, you put a marker at the spot where you want to punch in, meaning you hit play anywhere before that, and once the the playhead hits, like the cursor hits that marker, it starts automatically recording and it mutes whatever was there before. So you can listen to the part before that and buy the time you reach the punch in point. The recording starts automatically. The thing is, if you leave it as it is set by default, it won't actually start the recording at this spot, but it will start it a little earlier. You just don't see it. So if you are a little early, for example, and you're afraid that now the pick attack is cut off or you accidentally deleted something from the old track. You don't have to be afraid that this happens, because you can, just after the recording, grab the beginning of this new event that you created, drag it slightly to the left and there you'll see your pick attack. Or, you know, like, there's a little bit of, like you know, a buffer, there's a little bit of safety feature built in there so that you don't have to worry about the punch in spot being exactly correct. It doesn't really matter, you can manipulate it after the fact, yeah, and you. But you can, however, change that setting and make it so that it actually deletes whatever was there before, like pretending it's tape or something. I don't know why you would want to do that, but you could. And if you do that, then you got to be very precise. But the default setting is full. Yeah, the default setting is foolproof. So just just figure out whatever you're using, just Google or look into the manual and figure out punch in and things like pre-roll. You know, these are probably two words. You want to look up and then find those settings and how it works, and then you know punch in and punch out, and then you'll you'll find the explanation for how to do it, and then it will. Your life will be much easier.

So now I feel like if we want to provide the main solution to both of the kind of problems we issued here, we mentioned here is that like, for example, benny's drum example, where it was a different symbol and then they come in on like a different one, that's probably a case of not doing pre-roll. And what we mean by pre-roll is that you actually play along with whatever you just recorded before that. So if you've done the intro and now you're moving on to the first verse, you play along with the intro into the verse. You don't just start playing once it hits a verse. It's not a hard start and stop kind of thing, and same with the take before. If you're recording the intro and you haven't even got to the verse, you should still play into the verse, even if the the record is stops you there, just so there's that kind of like you know that transition is actually being played. It has to get nailed essentially, and that is because all of that information before is sustaining and cut like if you're on drums especially, the cymbals are ringing, the shells are ringing and if it just just silent and then you start playing, that'll sound totally different.

Yeah, agreed, and it's just in general. I think it feels better. In many cases it's just different. Sometimes it's the opposite. You know, as always it depends. Sometimes it's good to just start on the one, because then you hit this pick attack right, the way it's supposed to be. But in many cases it feels more natural if you flow into it naturally. So, yeah, all right. So the next one bad preamps. I don't actually know if it was a bad preamp. So what happened was a band sent me tracks where, again, it was drums and the tracks were fine, with the exception of one of the room tracks, and so on one of the room mics, not on every song and not even on every part, just on certain parts there were. There was noise, there was like a buzzing, crackling, you know some dropouts. So there were some. Either a bad connection, bad cable, bad preamp I don't really know what it was, but it was. Something was wrong and they didn't notice because it was rooms, they probably didn't have it really loud and the, you know, in their rough mix there's two of them. So they just didn't catch that. And yeah, I mean it's not the end of the world, they couldn't re-record. But you know there's room samples that we can use and there's, you know, that other room mic that was we can use as a mono. There's ways to solve that. But if they would have to like, just, you know it was immediately, it wasn't like five songs in or so, it was right at the beginning on almost every, every song in certain parts. So just do a quick, you know quality control, just quickly go through the tracks, listen to everything, double check everything you know, and make sure that that stuff just works, because it's probably probably would have been a really easy fix and they just overlooked it. And I've had that a couple of times, especially on things that are seemingly unimportant, like rooms, you know, but in the mix they can become pretty important and stuff like that just gets louder also in the mix if it stays in there.

So yeah, this exact thing happened to me once. So, like this is definitely one that I'm like, yeah, guilty, it was room mics, it's just one of them on a stereo pair and it was a bad preamp in our case. But the trouble was it was intermittent, so we did our soundtrack and we sold everything and it was good. It's just, at some point during the recording it started to fail and sputtering in and out. And if we wanted to be more diligent, which I should have been, as the engineer, I should have been occasionally soloing through things to just make sure everything is still seeming normal, so I've had probably a better balance up where I could have noticed that that was happening. But I will say that sometimes I like tracking drums with the rooms quite low so that it's more close mic-oriented and I can really pay attention to timing. Essentially. So I missed it entirely. Another way you could see that was happening is just looking at your waveforms and seeing like hey, why is one side of my room pair way quieter than the other? That would have caught it too.

It also wild things. It was like a total bummer and it happened.

But, like Benny said, at least it was just on the rooms and there was ways around making it still work. Yeah, it could have been caught.

Totally, totally. And if you don't want to interrupt the flow, or if you you know you do what you can, but you know sometimes you still miss it, at least at the end of the session or right after you finish the song, as long as things are still set up, just do a quick quality check there, because then you can still if it's really a bad thing, you can still go back and replace that part. But once you tear everything down and you know send over the files, it's like there was no choice, there was no chance to fix it in this scenario. So before you move on to the next song, just make sure that things are really good, just the quality control.

Yeah, that's a great. You might notice other things like maybe like hey, why does the ride mic sound like it's over?

the floor, tom now. Oh, it got hit and moved you know like you'll notice something. Yeah, this is a common thing where people be like I think we've recorded enough, just let's move on to the next song and we'll deal with that later, and they are not sure that what they have is really that they got a really good take. So I do that sometimes too, where I don't want to interrupt the flow. But I also, you know, I got a kind of you know, I'm a little more experienced with that and I have a workflow where I make notes on like, okay, this take was good, this take was good here, this was bad here. We need to do it again here. And I'm pretty confident that I know I got good takes for every single part and I keep track of that and I will, when in doubt, like comp on the fly and make sure that we really have everything and then move on. But I've seen a lot of people, just, you know, record 15 takes and then be like, oh, yeah, that's, that's enough, let's move on to the next one. And then when everything's you know, when the cheer everything down and they are starting to prep the session for the mix, they realize, oh, there's this one part where, like, none of the takes are really good, you know so yeah, yeah it's yeah you got to know, especially drums, you just got to like.

That's why I think it's so important to be able to again and talking about comping be able to comp on the fly and quickly, just because, like it's so worth checking that you're good.

Also, I'm not a big fan of leaving that decision entirely too later, like it's such a soul sucking process to have to go through every single take again and then pick the ones that you like. It's so much better to just be really present while you're recording, pick the stuff that are the takes that are good, get rid of the ones that aren't. Trust your gut there, and then at the end of the session you have your comp, basically, or you at least know which takes are the ones you're going to pick, and it's just a great feeling to know. All right, we have it and you know we can move on to the next thing. And if you have to, if you know that whenever you have you open up the session again, you have to go through 346 takes to and then make a decision which ones are actually good you chances are you probably won't even do it. You're going to listen to the first couple and then be like, yeah, let's just take that one because we're not going to listen to all of them, and so this is this happened so often. You're going to completely ignore the other takes and just cut corners there and so just be present, take frequently, you know breaks frequently, so you don't miss anything, and make those decisions as you record, because you won't do it properly later.

In a perfect world. I love this idea. In a perfect world, I think, after like three, four takes, you should do a rough comp and in theory you should be done. That's probably a fantastic drummer in there with you. But why I think this is a good idea. Even if you don't maybe have a studio world-class level drummer, that's going to have given you exactly what you need in those three or four takes is that you're going to have a really good understanding of what you do and don't have after you've done that comp, and so is your drummer. So you're now forcing yourself to look at what you actually have and be like okay, so if we chose the best parts of these three or four takes, which takes so much less time than if you have like 16 takes, yeah, right, and you can. Really. If you have three or four takes, you ignore the first one. It's probably garbage Drums, I find, anyways, and you'll know if it's not. But yeah, you put that together, your comp, and just like real bold comps like, okay, first quarter of the song, second quarter of the song, best three, four and okay, let's have a listen. Oh, wow, they're playing really quiet from take to take. This isn't going to work. We have to fix that, so you can't comp them. That's a huge discovery right there, you know if you did 16 without discovering that you're not going to get the song done. The drummer is going to be exhausted and playing terribly by them. Totally, you're going to catch those things early. Yeah, you catch it all early and maybe you also find out hey, we're done. Why would I get you to play it over? And over again, destroy your drum skins and get tired before the next song. Let's move on.

Sometimes you notice that that takes are so similar it doesn't get much better, and you realize it doesn't matter if I do five more or 10 more. It will probably still be kind of the same, and so there's no point in doing that, yeah.

Also, and huge benefit of this is if you're like, okay, this, like this, is pretty good, but why don't I like this part? I think we need to change the drum beat for this one section. Like you can go back into being a producer and not just an engineer focused on parts being played perfectly. And again, if you do that after you beat the drums to death for 20 takes, it's like it's so hard to then change what the drummer's trying to do.

Yeah, all of the above, yeah, totally yeah, it's a skill you can learn and it's really cool. I mean, with drums, you probably have someone else in the room with you anyways, but some drummers record themselves also. It's best if you are at least two people, where one is, you know, taking care of the recording and the other one's playing, because then the person recording can listen and again be present and pay attention and you can also make notes, which is what I always do. I try to be really present, really focused, listen to exactly what's going on and I'm going to be like okay, this felt great, you know, take one intro really cool. Take five chorus awesome, this one's crap, this one's crap, this one's crap. And then when I do my rough comp, I already know I won't forget, because I made notes of the things that I liked and didn't like, and if I don't do that, I have to again listen to everything again and I don't want to do that, and so yeah and there's no reason.

Yeah, there's no reason. Yeah, you have to listen to them again. You just listen to it. Why, like you just weren't actually paying attention.

Yeah, yeah, because after a while you will lose, you know, focus it will get. You will get distracted or whatever people are, it doesn't help if there's like 10 people in the room, you know, make sure that you know everything. Everybody who's there is actually also present and wants to be there and contribute and, if not, send them somewhere else but like and take breaks frequently. But if you do that then yeah, as Malcolm said, there's no reason to go through it all again. And I will, of course, if what I have, if I listen to that and it's not what I thought sometimes this happens, I will look for an alternative or have them play it again. But I do my best to be really, really in the moment and trust my gut, whether or not it feels right. And the drummer will do the same. If you, or the people you personally recording whatever instrument it is, If you communicate with them and they realize you're present and you're there, they will also pay attention and they will have a feeling too, for, like oftentimes, they will will tell me that one felt great, that one was great. I want to keep that, you know, or get rid of that one, I want to play it differently.

So they will tell you as well, and you're going to pay attention to that, to that too, or be like oh, I like the one you chose here, but for the Phil, could we go back to the second take? You know, going into that course, I nailed it. I did a different film. It's like yes, I like that. You know what you were doing, that's awesome yeah, yeah. I don't know how we got onto it like deep dive into drum comping. Honestly, I don't know how we got here. Yeah, we got.

I was just looking at the outline and it says bad preamps.

And I'm like okay, this is not on our outline at all, no, no, but it's like it's.

It's it all sort of belongs together. It's all about comping, it's about noticing. I think we got there by because you said do a quality control, double check things, you know. And yeah, you're so right, we completely lost, lost the direction here. Anyway, back to the outline. The next one, the last one on our list for today was also one that I got, but I'm sure you had that too, malcolm where people are sending you things and they think, and again, no shame, like I'm not like throwing anyone under the bus here, like people are, they mean to do the right thing but they get it wrong Meaning. In this case, they sent me a session that had just MIDI drums, no audio drums and just the eyes, no amps printed. And so when I get that, I mean I knew the band and I knew the genre, but still I kind of have to. If that's all I have, I have to produce this completely, almost Like I have to come up with tones and sounds and then the static and the vision, because MIDI doesn't have any audio information and the eyes are just the eyes. So how do I know which guitar tone you want? How do I know? Sometimes with that example, I didn't even know like there could be a clean part where I think it's a high gain thing, you know, and I, when I re-amp it, I don't even know what you want, like for these parts, and with drums as well, like, do you want a lot of room? Do you want it super dry? Do you want, you know, high pitch, low pitch, snare, drum or like, just make a decision there. And if you're, if you can't make a decision and if you tell me, hey, we're not, we don't know what we're doing, you can you please pick drum sounds that fit, or can you please pick a guitar amp that works, then yeah, I can do that, but then please still send me whatever you've been listening to while you were tracking, because that tells me a lot about what you actually like, what you reacted to. It might not be perfect, it might not be the sound you want on the record, but I still know at least, like how much gain did you use, how, what were the characteristics of the drums, which drums did you actually play, because worst case, the mapping doesn't work and then I trigger the wrong thing, you know, or like I just need to hear what you were hearing during tracking period, and so please don't ever send these completely empty shells of a session where it's like nothing is in there except the vocals basically.

So yeah, absolutely it. It has happened to me as well. It's usually keys that this happens. Oh yeah, this likes and like Oregon and I'm like, okay, oregon's that's. That's a wide gamut of sounds. They can be, you know, take me like the ballgame kind of sound, or or totally different. They can be jazzy, they can be rock, they can be all over the map. So I really need to know what your organ sounded like when you recorded it. So please send me the way file as well. Or it just says synth and that's like oh man.

Yeah, but again, people don't know what they don't know, and we have an entire episode on how MIDI actually works. So if that is your problem, listen to that, because MIDI is not audio. Midi is just, you know, a Command that tells the sampler to to do a certain thing, but it doesn't have any musical information, any audio in it. And In, yeah, and the DI is also just the DI. It's a clean sound directly out of the guitar and you could do all kinds of things with it. So what's what's important, as always, is the thing about, like, just being a producer. Just know what you want to make and even if you don't know what you're doing technically, you still know what you want. You still know, you know you had something in mind when you wrote that song. You have references, you have bands. You like is it's not that you do it completely, you know you, you have something in mind, you've listened to something. There are people who you know, honestly, just listen to the DI when they record, but even they know what they want in the end, hopefully, so and and. So, if that's the case, just do your best and send over whatever version of the rough mix you have or, like the just include the files, that the prints of the actual tracks, and then Both yeah, both AI. The rough mix is important too, by the way, because the rough mix tells yeah, tells us a lot about what you like than what you didn't like. Sometimes I, without a rough mix, I might turn up things that I think are really important and exciting in the song and when I listen to the rough mix turns out that it was just a supporting thing, that you don't actually want it to have up Front. You know things like that. Yeah, so it's just important to get what you actually want. Anything you want to add to this welcome?

I mean I think that was all over the map. This episode was like. I don't know if other people are like me, but when I have like a phone call, I wander and then I like end the phone call and I'm like where am I? I just walked, I walked outside, I'm in the backfield now. Yeah, this was the episode equivalent of that. Yeah.

Yeah, maybe someone can do a like worst podcasting mistakes episode and then.

Become a lot of fun useful stuff. It just wasn't maybe as like articulate as we normally are.

Yeah, I mean, but you know what, at the same time, I like these episodes where we're passionate about this and I like these episodes where we just, you know, go deep, but deeper on certain things than we intended to, just because it matters to us. And, like you know, these, these stories come up and I don't know, I personally enjoy it, hope, hope, you do too, you guys. All right, by the way, if you have, you know, I know we have some people listening who are also producers and work on many, many projects, and maybe you are just a hobby musician, but you have different projects or whatever. If you have some, any sort of experience and you have witnessed Mistakes in the past where you feel like people could benefit from hearing that so they don't have to make the same mistakes, then share your stories, share your mistakes, send them to us because we can include them in a future episode like that. I think it's fun. As we said last time, I think these are some of the most valuable episodes. If we can help you avoid the most common mistakes. It's almost half the battle, oftentimes more valuable than showing you the how to. So, yeah, just send them over its podcast at the self recording band comm or Join our facebook community. It's it's been growing pretty quickly lately, so every single week we're having like 20 or 25 new people in there. If you go to the self recording band comm slash community, you can join that and just yeah. Just send it to us, just post it and let us know, and then, who knows, we might do an episode on it, definitely cool. Thank you for listening. See you next week, all right.