Instrument(and Vocal)Recording Tips and Tricksdaniellevitin.com/levitinlab/articles/2004-Levitin-Audio-Anecdotes.pdf · Instrument(and Vocal)Recording Tips and Tricks Daniel J. Levitin

Instrument(and Vocal)Recording Tips and Tricks

Daniel J. Levitin

I started recording musi c when I was 12, taping our junior high school band on an old Ampex reel-to-reel ma chine. I quickly learned that differ­ent br and s of t ape affect th e sound differently , th at microph one placement is crit ical , and th at th e most imp ortant tool in an engineer 's arsena l is his or her ears . I have been lucky enough to work with , collab ora te with , wat ch and talk with some of th e best recording engineers in th e history of popular music . Th e one thing th ey all share , besides a love for music, is tha t they all listen very carefully and use their ears as the final judge of whether something is being done right. There are no hard-and-f ast rule s about which microphon e to use for a given sit uat ion, where to place it , or how to record , but I have gleaned a few shortcuts that might make cer tain situations easier.

Thi s art icle is a collect ion of th e mos t pra ctical amon g th ese tip s. It is divid ed into five sections . Th e first two reveal tricks for record ing the two instruments that tend to give people the most troubl e: drum s and guitars . Th e third section discusses track manag ement for recordists faced with an ever-increasing number of tracks (real or virt ua l) and no idea how to use th em. Fin ally, th e last two section s are quick tips on how to thicken vocals, and how to make instrum ents sound huge using compression and pannin g.

1 Drums Th e two bro ad approaches to recordin g drum s and percu ssion are either to use prerecord ed drum sounds-su ch as from a synthe sizer , drum machin e,

147

148 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

sampler , etc .-o r to record live drum s. Each has it s advanta ges and it s dr awbacks. Prere cord ed drum s offer bett er contr ol and consistency of th e sound, and the y comp lete ly eliminate "leakage" of the live drums ont o oth er instrument al t racks tha t are record ed at th e same t ime. However , a nuan ced perf orman ce, in te rms of t emp ora l variati on and dynami c and timbr al var iat ion , is more difficult to achieve. Many musicians prefer live drums because of t he feel, subtl ety and nuanc e th at a good dru mmer can cont ribute. Most imp ort antl y, a live drumm er playing along with othe r musicians can modi fy her perform an ce in real tim e to accomm oda te spont aneous changes in th e song's arr angement . Increasingl y, since about 1984, pr oduc ers are workin g with a hybri d appr oach in which live drums are used to trigger pr erecorde d dr um sounds. This is discussed in Sect ion 1.3. Fir st , I will describ e some tri cks for recording drum s acoust ically, th en I will describe t riggering.

Live drum recordin g of a stand ard rock drum kit is most typically accomp lished with mul tiple micropho nes--on e microp hone on each drum , one to thr ee micro phone s on the snare drum, and two or four overhead or "ambient" microphon es. Thi s is a lot of t ra nsducers in a sm all space and leads to phasing problems, which are distor tion s of the spati al image caused by sound from a given sourc e reaching micro phones at different tim es. Th e effect of such ph ase pro blems is manifest ed in th e final st ereo (or multi channel) mix as a sort of swishing or drif ting of the soun d th rough th e sound field, a failur e of th e sounds from a given instrument to maint ain a sta ble location in space. This can lead to muddine ss and psychoacous tic masking effect s of other instr ument s.

Th e most parsimonious soluti on is to record th e drum kit with a very small number of microphone s , say, two or thr ee. In an ideal situati on, the recordin g room meets one of two extremes; it is eit her perfectly dead or it has a nice, musically desira ble reverb erati on . In the case of a dea d room , digital reverb erati on can be add ed to t he drum tr ack as a whole , and in th e case of th e musi cally desirable reverb erant room , the drum kit can be record ed wit h the room 's natu ral reverb , and no supp lementa ry pro cessing is necessary . However , rooms seldom meet eithe r of th ese ex­tr emes, and th e aesth eti c requirements of most modern record s call for very parti cular snare and kick sounds tha t cannot typically be accom­plishe d withou t signa l pro cessing. Thi s requires sepa rate snare and kick mics (so th at th ese signa ls can be isolated and tr eated separa tely from the rest of th e kit ).

Chrissie Hynd e of th e Pr et enders invit~d me to inspect t he studi o set­up at Air Studios in London when she and her band were recordin g Middl e of th e Road in 1982. Produ cer Chris Thomas had set up th e drum kit s

1. Drums 149

in the middl e of a very large, reverb erant room with a high ceiling , and had spent several days moving microphone s around in ord er to captur e a live sound with only thr ee mics: two ambi ent mics th at were severa l yards abo ve and in fron t of th e kit , and one mic inside th e kick drum . The result (which you can hear in the first fifteen second s of the song) is one of the grea t drum sounds on record, but it t ook an enormous am ount of time and mone y, and an esp ecially sonorous room. Most of the t ime, producer s and engineers close-mic th e drum s so th at th ey can be tr eated digitally and a room sound creat ed art ificially. This brin gs us back to th e phase probl em.

1.1 Getting Drum Overhead Mics in Phase

In a typic al set-up , th e engineer might plac e a pair of microphon es out in the room to pick up an overall ambienc e of the room t o be mixed in with th e close mics in ord er to provide a bit of th e room 's natural sound . Similarly, a pair of mics might be placed dire ctl y above th e drums in ord er to captur e the cymbal s and tom toms (especially when th e toms aren' t individually miked). This also applies to recording larg e arr ays of Latin or African p ercussion , in which th e percussionist is moving around a great deal , or playin g a numb er of different instrum ent s durin g th e perform an ce, and the engineer want s to just place a pair of mics overhead to pick up whatever happens. It is essential in all the se cases for th e mics to be in phase.

The trick to ensure th at a given pair of mics is in ph ase is to inten ­tionally put one of th em complete ly (that is, 180 0) out of phase with th e other and th en move one or both of them around until most of the sound you hear thr ough th em is cancelled out. You won 't have to move th e mic much- sometimes a few inches or fraction s of an inch will do . Wearing headphon es, go out into the recording room and just move one of th e mics around until you find the pla ce in the m om where the sound in your headphon es has reached a minimum volum e level. Some people also de­scribe th e out-of-ph ase sound as being "hollow." When you' ve found this minimum volume position , it is your proof th at the two mics are optim ally placed with respect to each other. When you throw the mics in phase , you will be cert ain that you have found the positi on that pr ovides the most sta ble image, the most in-phase position possible. Thi s tri ck relies on th e psychoacou sti c fact th at it is easier to hear th e cancellat ion of nod es- the null point or minimum-than it is to hear th e maximum point.

Nearly all higher -end recordin g consoles have an out-of-phas e swit ch th at you can flip to put one of your mics out of phase; it looks like a zero

150 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

with a line throu gh it: 0. (Obviously, you don' t pu t bot h mics out of ph ase, because thi s will pu t them in ph ase with each ot her and t he t rick won 't work; ther e has to be a 180 0 differenc e between t he members of t he pa ir you' re repositi onin g.) If your console doesn 't have a ph ase swit ch and you are using a patch bay, you can make yourself an out of ph ase pat ch cable by cross ing the hot and grou nd wires on an unbalan ced syst em , or th e hot and neut ral wires on a balanced system. (B~ sure to use a different color for your ph ase revers ing patc h cab le-a black str ipe running across the length of a yellow cable is custom ary-so that you don't someday thr ow a cha nnel out of ph ase by accident. Believe me, I' ve done this and it is not only embarra ssing, but a pain in th e neck to fix later .) Then use thi s pha se reversing cable in the pat ch bay somewhere in the signal chain between th e mic and the console. Finally , if your console doesn 't have phase switch and you 're not using a pat ch bay, you can make yours elf a phase reversing mic cabl e. It only has to be a foot long or so; you don 't need to swap the whole mic cable- j ust add your phas e reversin g footlon g cab le to the end of the mic cabl e wher e it comes into your ta pe record er, mic preamp , or mixing console, and ta ke it out when you 've found t he right positi onin g of the mic.

1.2 Miking Snares and Kicks

Most people put a mic on th e t op of the sna re . For trig gerin g (see below) you don 't really need the optim al sound from the drum , you only need t o know when it was hit. A mic placed in a st anda rd position above the sna re may pick up all kind s of sounds from ot her inst rume nts , such as the high hat or kick drum , t hat will be a nuisan ce for tr iggering . To solve thi s, put a sma ll piezo elect ric microphone inside t he drum by pushin g it thro ugh the vent hole or ta ping it to th e side of th e drum. You might even like the sound of this and want to mix it in with th e top mic if you' re using the snare 's own sound . Also, put a mic un derneath the snare to capt ure th e sound of th e sna res. Some of the best snare drum sounds I ever recorded came from mixing the t op and bot tom mics. Depend ing on the location of the mics and the way th e drum sounds, you may need to exper iment a bit with ph asing; in some cases, "in pltas e" will work best , in oth er cases you' ll want the top and bot tom mics "out of ph ase." That is to say, you want th e two mics in reverse pha se with each ot her, usually accomplished by a small switch on th e mic pre- amp tha t reverses the elect ronic polari ty of t he signal of th e given mic. It is comm on to pu t the mic on the und ersid e of th e snare in "reverse phase."

1. Drums 151

Kick drum s can be trea ted th e same way for trig gering: t ape a piezo such as the one by Count ryma n onto the inside of th e drum.

1.3 Triggering Drums-Gates-Eq: Overcoming the 5 ms Delay on Triggered Samples

You can obta in t he best of both world s by having a live drumm er play, but enhancing his dr um sounds (or replacing them) with prerecorded sounds . Thi s is most typically done with kicks and snares, although it can be done with any member of th e drum kit. Say you want to "beef up" the sna re sound , or replace it ent irely wit h one in your sam pler . You use t he signal from the microphone th at is picking up the sound of your drum mer hitting her snare t o activat e th e st ored drum sound . Samp lers, drum machines, and ot her sto rage devices usu ally have a j ack lab eled "trigger input" tha t will play th e stor ed sound in respon se t o a voltag e spike at the jac k. This spike can come from any source, but the volt age output of t he mic on th e sna re drum trave ls fast enough to trigger the sampled sound almost imm ediat ely, and cause th e stored snare drum to coincide with th e drumm er 's act ua l snar e. (More about th e "almost imme diat ely" in a moment .) It is possible to use t riggered drum sounds in real time durin g the performance, so tha t the musicians hear your sampled drum sounds as th ey are playing, or to add these sound s lat er to use in the final mix . I'm describing a parti cular case, but th ere is no reason , of course, why you can't use your drummer' s sna re drum hits to tri gger a timb ale , a t amb ouri ne, or even an organ soun d . For that ma tter, you can t rigger sounds with any voltage source, not ju st your dru ms, such as Futur e Man of Bela Fleck and th e Flecktones does when he uses his drumit ar to trig ger per cussion sounds.

Often , the source of your inp ut voltage spike to th e sampler will have ot her sounds in it and will cause your sampl es to tri gger mor e often th an you want th em to. Th e classic case is if t he drumm er is playing a kick­snare patt ern with the kick on beat s one and three and th e sna re on beat s two and four. The kick drum is so loud th at th e snare mic picks it up , and to the trig gering input, they are both volta ge sourc es that it cannot distin guish . Th ere are severa l approa ches to solving th e problem in a "flow chart " type of description .

However , before going into t hese det ails , if you are recording with a DAW (Digita l Audio Worksta t ion) to hard disk using a program such as DigiDesign 's Pr oto ols, you can use a progra m such as Sound Replac er to insert the sound you want whEm you want it . But for those of you who

152 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

are using tape -based recording (eit her ana log or digital), the following tips may be helpful. If your kick drum is percept ibly softe r tha n your snar e drum . Use a noise gate between th e signal and the t rigger inp ut, sett ing th e sensiti vity of th e gat e so tha t the gat e "opens" only when th e snare dru m is played and not when the kick dru m is played. If you haven 't used one before, a noise gat e is a signal processing device th at allows a signal to pa ss only when it exceeds a certa in th reshold that you determin e. Sounds louder th an th is "open t he gate " and sounds th at are softer do not. You can think of it concept ua lly t his way : it automates what you might do manu ally by const ant ly turnin g your snare drum chann el on an d off (as you might do wit h a "mute" butto n on your console) to open the chan nel when the snare drum plays and mut e it when th e kick drum plays. The bette r gat es also have a "decay" parameter t hat you can cont rol to dete rmi ne how long the gate shoul d stay open once it has been opened . In thi s case, you want to set your decay long enough to let your sna re drum trig ger your sam pler. If you pla n to replace th e acoust ic snare sound with th e sampl e, you don 't need to let th e entire snare drum sound t hrough th e gate . Remem ber , you 're only using the snare as a voltage source- -a very short piece of it will suffice. If you plan to mix the two togeth er , however , you will want to make sur e t he enti re snare sound passes thro ugh th e gat e, or alt ernativ ely, mix the acoust ic snare in with th e tri ggered snare by splitti ng the original sna re 's signa l into two paths: one that you use in your mix and one t ha t goes t hrough your gat e an d that you only use for tri ggering. If the kick drum is not soft er than the snare drum (or if the gate didn 't work). Use an expand er to separa te t he kick and snare drum in th e loud­ness domain . An expa nder is th e opposite of a compress or' -it makes loud signals louder and soft signa ls softer relat ive to one another . J ay Kadis of Stanford University prefers to describe gates an d expa nders as th e same t hing : Wh ereas a gate complet ely turns off th e signal th at falls below a certa in threshold, the expan der reduces the level below this threshold by an adjus table amount. Many gate s include expand ers in them. An alt er­native is to use equa lization to sepa rat e the two in the spectral domain. Because the funda mental frequency of a kick drum is typically an octave, or two lower than t hat of the snare, you can use an equa lizer in the signa l cha in before the noise gate t o reduce the low frequencies (th us soften ing th e kick) and to incr ease the high frequen cies (making the snare louder). Some of th e more sophistica ted noise gates, such as th ose by Drawmer, actuall y include an equali zer so tha t you can mor e easily accompli sh this t echn ique, called "freq uency select ive gat ing ."

1. Drums 153

I mentioned earli er that you might spli t the sour ce signa l (th e sna re drum in th is example) into two part s so that you could use one for soun d to mix in with the samp le, and use th e ot her part to tri gger t he sample. Thi s will be especially imp ort ant if you are going to equalize the acoust ically recorded snare dru m and you also intend to use that sound in your mix. If you sp lit the sign al you are free to employ whatev er equalizat ion is necessary on this "dummy " snar e channel th at is only used for tri ggerin g, without irr evocably altering th e sound of the acoustically recorded sna re tha t you may want to ret ain.

1.4 Overcoming Delay on Triggered Samples

Triggering t akes tim e. It is a small amount of time, bu t a finit e, quanti fi­able amoun t of tim e nonethel ess. Typicall y delays in tri ggering are from 3- 7 ms , or about 5 ms on the average. If you ar e repla cing your live dru m sounds with t riggers, t his will cause th e dru m beats to be ever-so-slight ly behind the beat . Thi s may be aes thetically desira ble in some kinds of music, or may be imp erceptibl e in ot hers. But if you want preci sion , you will have to overcome this delay somehow.

Conceptua lly, what you want to do is to get a t rigger voltage corre ­sponding to the sna re dru mm er 's hit to reach th e samp ler 5 IDS before you need it-that is, 5 ms before t he drum mer hits his drum. Unless you are psychic, it is not obvious how to do thi s! In fact, t here is no way to do this in rea l ti me, it can only be done afte r t he dru m t rac ks have been record ed , and can only benefit t he mixed versio n of the song . If you are recording analog. Hist orically, the favor ed solut ion has been to take t he analog ta pe of the dru ms, turn it upside down, add digit al delay to t he drum tr acks you are using as t rigger tra cks (e.g., snare and kick) and record thi s delayed signa l on a fresh tra de Whe n you turn t he ta pe r ight -side-up again, the sna re and kick will app ear early on the new tracks, early enough for you to use them as t riggers and ca use the samp led sound to align pr ecisely t o th e acoust ically recorded one. To det ermine the pr ecise amount of de lay you will need to employ, use an oscilloscope or other measuri ng dev ice to measur e th e delay in milliseconds between t he tri gger volt age and the onset of the sound that is produced by th e sampler (or drum machine or ot her storage dev ice).

Sometimes in t he old days of analog we used t o use the "sync " head to play back th e t rigger trac k, and use th e playb ack head for all th e other instrum ent s. Becau se t he sync head is located an inch and a half or so before th e playback head , it will play back the sound earlier. Thi s works bet te r at slow tap e speeds, such as 15 ips. Th e engineer then uses a digit al

154 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

delay t o fine tune th e amount of delay requir ed between th e samp le and the other instrumen ts. If you are recording digital. Most digital ta pe recor ders won't record back ­wards, unfortunate ly. There are only two solutions in this case . One is to delay all the other inst rume ntal t racks (except your tr igger t racks) by the numb er of milliseconds you need to achieve. If you have a 16-t rack digit al recording for exa mple, and you want to use the snare tra ck to t rigger a samp ler, you' ll need to add 5 ms or so of delay to every t ra ck, perh aps by bo unc ing them to anot her record er , or by offsetting th em on a har d disk-based recording system .

If you are using certai n digit al recorders with built -in memory, you 're in luck and can use the second solution. T he TASCA M DA-88, for exam­ple, will let you advance t ra cks up to 200 samp les (4.5 msec at 44.1 kHz) digitally, since t here's that much system delay built in . Ot her makes and mode ls of digital recorders may have even more memory and hence more offset ting capab ilities.

2 Guitars 2.1 Recording Electric Guitar Direct to Amplify Later

If you thin k you might want to modify the guitar tone lat er , record a t rack of t he guita r dir ect. ("Direct" is the term used to describe when the guitar is plugged directly into the recording equipment with out going through an guita r amplifier. "Cabinet ," short for "speak er cab inet," is the complement ary te rm refers to recordin g a guitar using the cabi net th at is either part of, or connecte d to, a guit ar amplifier.) T hen, you can play back that t rack th rough a guit ar amplifier late r and expe riment with different sounds.

2 .2 Recording Faux 12-String Guitar (If You Don 't Have a 12-String Guitar that Stays in Tune)

This is a famous old t rick, also called "Nashville TUning," deve loped be­cause many 12-str ing guitars are difficult to keep in t une . The guit ar ist first records her pa rt on a norma l six st ring. Then, she st rings up a six strin g guita r using only the uppe r set of st rings from a 12-st ring set and plays the part a second time. The slight t ime changes between the two per formances will thi cken the sound of th e perform ance (if they are not too far off) and th e sound of a 12-strin g is created from two six-st ring guita rs. Another way to achieve thi s is to use a pitc h changer set to an

3 . Track Management 155

oct ave above t he original t uning, send th e gui t ar signa l throu gh it , th en pr int it t o anot her t rac k. Th ere will be t he aforement ioned 5 ms delay, which can be correc t ed as above.

3 Track Management

Few people ever have enough t rac ks . A lar ger numb er of trac ks offers increa sed flexibilit y for how you want t o pr ocess an d mix the instrumen ts. If we ha d an unli mited numb er of t racks , we might record a ty pical rock band like t his:

Track # Instrument 1 Kick close 2 Kick piezo 3 Snare top 4 Sna re bot tom 5 Snar e vent , drum s 6 High hat 7 Tom tom # 1 8 Tom tom # 2 9 Tom to m #3 10 Tom to m # 4 11 Floor to m 12 Cymbals overhe ad left 13 Cymba ls over head right 14 Room , am bient left 15 Room, ambi ent rig ht 16 Re -recor ded, 5 ms adva nce d kick t r igger 17 Triggered Kick sou nd #1 from Samp ler 18 Trig gered Kick sound # 2 from Sampler 19 Tri ggered Sna re sound # 1 from Samp ler 20 Triggered Snar e sound #2 from Samp ler 21 Bass guita r cabinet 22 Bass guita r direct 23 Elect ric guita rs I , top cab ine t 24 Electric guita r I , bo t t om cabi net 25 Ele ctric guita r I , ro om mic 26 Electri c guita r I , direct 23 El ectric guita rs II , top ca binet 24 Elec tric guita r II , bo t tom cab inet 25 E lectr ic guita r II , room mic

156 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

26 Electri c guit ar II , direct 27-36 Lead Vocal Tracks, passes 1-10 37 Comp osite Vocal (see sect ion below) 38-47 Guit ar solo t racks, pa sses 1-10 48 Compos it e Gui t ar solo 49-5 0 Background vocals , ste reo 51- 52 Background voca ls, stereo, pass 2 for thickening 53- 54 Ste reo percussion

If your tr ack needs an orchest ra, horn s, peda l stee l guitar , or other instruments , you could easily eat up mor e tha n ano th er dozen trac ks. If the trac ks are availab le, and you don 't mind keeping tr ack of all this stuff, and your console is big enoug h, thi s is a great luxury . In pr actic e, most people are limit ed to 8, 16, 24, or 48 simulta neously availab le tr acks, and then combining is requir ed (or what th ey call in Brit ain a "reduct ion" ). Looking over t his t ra ck sheet, you might decide th at you are willing to commit yourse lf early on to the balance you have in your drums among tr acks 7- 13, redu cing them to a single stereo trac k. Wheneve r po ssible, keep your snare and kick sound sepa rate for as long as possible because at the final mix down , you may decide you need to change specific asp ects of th ose sounds, such as th e eq on the kick or th e reverb on th e sna re . But you could combine th e different components of your kick and snare sound at an early stage, bringing together Tr acks 1, 2, 17, and 18 to make a single kick tra ck, for exampl e. Wh en recordin g on 8-t ra ck, I typically have had to make the unfortun ate and flexibility-lim itin g choice of reducing all the drums to a single ste reo tr ack pair , meanin g that I need to commit the eq and reverb s to th e drums and recor d th ese effects long before,the fina l mix. If I can spare one more tr ack for a MIDI or SMP TE tim e code pulse (or FSK in the old days) I can still t rigger a new snare or kick sound in rea l tim e dur ing mixd own (subject t o the annoying 1 ms MIDI delay), and can also add keyboard , synt h, and other sequencer lines lat er .

A more parsimoni ous tr ack sheet , aft er redu ction s (t hat might have been done durin g initi al recordin g or at a subsequent reduc tion session) , might look like this :

Track # Instrument 1 Kick (I' ll hop e tha t if I need a tri ggered prere­

cord ed supplement /replac ement I can do it later in real tim e)

2 Snare (Same caveats as apply tp the kick drum ) 3 Drum Overh ead left 4 Drum Overh ead right

157 4. Thickening Background Vocals Using Varispee d

5 Bass Direct (1 can run it out to an amp lat er , durin g th e mix, in real time, if 1 want )

6 Elect ric guita r I 7 Electric guit ar II 8- 9 "Scratc h" area for recording lead vocal and guit ar

solo at t empts, can be erased lat er and used for ster eo ba ckgroun d vocals

10 Compos ite Vocal 11 Composit e Lead Guit ar 12-1 3 St ereo st ring pads/ orchestr a (I' ll use EQ t o pull

out parti cul ar instrum ents lat er if I change my mind about how the y are mixed)

14-15 Stereo piano 16 MIDI , SMPTE , t ime code, et c.

4 Thickening Background Vocals Using Varispeed

To get lush , thi ck backgrou nd vocals , have your background vocalists sing t he par t two or t hree addit iona l tim es wit h the t ap e record er set at a slight ly different sp eed (up to 5% fast and/ or slow). They will have to sing in a different key to accommodate thi s , which will change their voca l ti mbres slightly, and when t he t ape recorder is played ba ck at normal speed , the form ant shi ft will add to the illusion t ha t you had more singers than you act ua lly did .

5 Making Instruments Sound Huge

With modern recording , we can crea te sonic impre ssions th at would be impossibl e t o hear in real life, maki ng instrumen t s sound lar ger th an they really are .

5 .1 Stereo Panning

Pl ace one micr ophon e on th e neck of an acoust ic guit ar , th e oth er near the sound hole, record them on sepa rate t racks, and at rnixdown , pan one tra ck "hard left" and the oth er "ha rd right. " Th e guit ar will now take up t he ent ire soun dfield. On spea kers , th e guit ar will sound as large as the dist ance between th e spea kers. In a living room , for example, with speaker s 8 feet apart , the guit ar will seem to be 8 feet wide! In headph ones, it will sound like your head is act ual ly inside th e guitar .

158 Instrument (and Vocal) Recording Tips and Tricks

George Massenbur g did a beau tiful job of thi s on Lyle Lovett's Joshua Judge s Ruth album, on the song "I've Been to Memphis ". Massenbur g record ed th e piano in stereo, then "split pan" th e two mics as I describ ed , creat ing th e illusion of an enormous pia no.

5.2 Compression

Compre ssion reduces th e dynamic ran ge of a performance , making it tak e up less sonic space. Pa rad oxically, this can mak e an instrument sound larger than it is. No one knows for sure why thi s is so, but I believe it is because of the psycho acoustic phenomen on that our ears are natural , biological compre ssors. The ear compresses very loud sounds and our brain s have learned throu gh millions of year s of evolut ion that compre ssed sounds are very loud ones. To creat e an illusion of size in a recording, compress an instrum ent , and th en you can actu ally reduc e its relativ e volume in the mix (making room for oth er instruments). The classic way this is employed is to compress a distorted electric guit ar and turn it down in th e mix.

5 .3 Small Speakers

Using extremel y close-rniked small spea kers, such as a 4- or 8-inch speaker in a closed-ba ck cabin et tends to make guitars sound bigger. A numbe r of great heavy metal sounding guita rs have be en recorded this way, including tr acks by AC/DC.

6 Conclusions This was a whistl e-st op t our throu gh some tim e-saving tri cks for recordin g instrum ent s and voices. Just as some of th e best musical ideas come from experim enting, so too did many of thes e trick s arise by recordin g engineer s breakin g rule s and experimenting with equipment and sound. Engineerin g can be creat ive too! To paraphr ase a hedoni stic mantr a of the 1970s, "If it sounds good , do it!" Let your ears be the jud ge. An additiona l source of tips and tri cks is th e interne t · user groups and discussion boar ds are good pla ces to excha nge new ideas. In addit ion , Mix Mag azine , EQ Magazine and oth er insider tr ade publi cation s regularly interview produc ers and engineers who describ e some of th eir late st audio discoveries and how th ey crea ted new and innovative sounds. Klepko 's "Under standing Microphon es" (pag e 115) is a good source for addition al inform ation on recordin g instrum ent s and voices.