Hey StanOriginally Posted by stan
"What's my recording process"?
This is likely to be a long post, so if anybody is not interested in my recording workflow, turn away NOW!
Keep in mind that I am a rank novice at this stuff, but this is just the way I do it.
I guess for me it’s a bit like jamming with real people, you start off with an idea, and then it magically gets a life of its own and then you have no idea where it’s going. I am not a song writer and I have never had an idea in my head of how the song should go, it always evolves over time. Actually two of those songs have exactly the same chord progression but they went in 2 different directions, hopefully they sound different enough to fool some people.
My usual workflow:
1. First off I usually start with a nice chord progression either played on keyboard or the guitar. Nearly all my stuff is just a repeating 3 or 4 chord vamp. Very rarely in the standard AABAB type song structure, with verses and choruses etc. The hard part is to make it sound interesting over 3 odd minutes.
2. Next to go down would be a basic drum pattern. I don't worry about fills or alternating patterns etc. Just a basic pattern that fits in with the feel and the rhythm of the chord progression.
3. Then a basic bass line to help pin down the drums and lay down a good bedding track.
Because I don’t own a mic everything other than the guitars and bass will be MIDI. This makes editing simple but time consuming.
4. If the original vamp was on guitar I then will decide between piano, organ or synth. Again just something basic that fits the mood of the song. Obviously if the original idea came from a keyboard now would come the rhythm guitars. I say guitars plural because I always double track rhythm guitars hard left and hard right. I will use different EQ and amp settings for each but keep them both similar in texture, but different. If you just copy and paste the first track it just lacks something and sounds very bland and sterile.
5. Once that is done I would usually have about 8 bars recorded and I will put Reaper into loop mode and start noodling around with the guitar. If I am lucky (very lucky) "something" will sound OK and that will then give me an idea of where it is going.
6. I will then copy and paste the bedding track as many times as needed and keep putting down guitar leads over it until I am fairly happy.
By then I have the bare bones of the song sorted, and then the time consuming part takes over….Editing.
7. With the song structure roughly in place I will go back to the drums and add additional hits and ghost notes (one note at a time) to the snare, kick, cymbals, hats, toms and then some fills to highlight the different parts of the song.
8. Then go back to the bass. As the song has probably changed direction since the initial bass was laid down I will probably re-record the bass to fit the new song. As a bassist I pride myself on my timing, but I will still have to go back and edit notes so that they fit perfectly with the kick and snare. It’s a much glossed over part of getting the backing to sound tight.
When I'm happy with the bass I copy and paste that track to a second channel, the first I will leave just as a DI with some light EQ and Compression if necessary, and the second track I will amp it with an Amp Sim and apply more aggressive EQ and Compression. The bass tracks are never panned left or right but just left in the middle.
I will also set up another channel that I feed the Drums and Bass into and do some parallel compression with heaps of compression and feed it back into the mix. This is commonly called "New York Compression". Google "New York Compression" for a better description.
9. Re-visit the Rhythm section if need be.
10. Repeat steps 7 to 9 ad nauseum until you are utterly sick of hearing this damn monotonous rubbish (now you know where the Thread Title comes from lol.) If you let it, this process will never end. At some stage you have to tell yourself "that's as good as I can get it" and then move on.
That’s the recording part done. Next will come Mixing and then Mastering. But that as they say in the classics, that is another story.
I know I rambled a bit but I hope that some of that made sense, if not just let me know.
Cheers
rob
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