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Pulse!

Fix It in the Mix: Recording a Rock Band

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Pulse!

December 2021

Last time, I talked about recording solo artists and duets and offered some general advice about recording. This time I’m going to focus on recording a standard rock band: drums, bass guitar, guitar(s), keyboard, and vocals. Working with a band requires more experimentation, and it will challenge you to come up with more creative solutions than recording and mixing smaller acts. But in my book, that’s part of the fun. So this time, I’ll concentrate mainly on process and production tips to help make the final product (your music) better; they may also save you some time and a few headaches. I’ve already covered some basics on microphones and how they “hear” in prior articles, so if you haven’t read those articles, now’s a good time to catch up.

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Fix It in the Mix: A Seven Nation Army of Me

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September 2021

This month in “Fix It in the Mix,” I’ll focus on recording music, like modern pop and electronica, that’s primarily non-acoustic but may have one or a few acoustic instruments thrown in (including vocals, the original acoustic instrument).

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Fix It in the Mix: All About Mike(s)

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July 2021

Last time in “Fix It in the Mix,” I talked a lot about planning a recording session. I’ll talk a bit more about that here, but this installment is mostly about the process of recording itself. I don’t focus too much on precisely where to place the microphone(s) for any given instrument—there are countless sources for the best way to mike, for example, a drum kit or an acoustic guitar (all of which are both right and wrong). This series is more about giving you the most basic tools for translating what you hear in your head into something playable on a stereo. And in this installment I talk about how microphones “hear,” and give you some basic techniques for getting them to give you the sound you want.

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Fix It in the Mix: The Plan

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May 2021

In March, I detailed one way you could set up a fully functional home recording studio for a total cost of under $5000 USD. This month’s column is the first installment in a companion series about how to effectively plan and use such a low-cost home studio. While I made sure the products recommended in my original article were of good quality, and refer to them again here, that piece was more a proof of concept than a shopping list.

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The Gear You'll Need to Set Up Your Own Recording Studio

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March 2021

Hi—I’m glad you’re back. In this month’s column I share the results of the thought experiment I teased you about last month.

Not very long ago, the cost of the gear needed to effectively record a band or any kind of small music group would be prohibitive without your having to take out a loan. But with today’s powerful computers and the increasing sophistication of hardware modeling, working entirely “in the box”—that is, not using a traditional mixing console and such analog processing hardware as compressors and equalizers, but their software equivalents—is not only feasible but is increasingly the norm.

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Mark Phillips: Audiophile, Recording Engineer, and Now SoundStage! Contributor

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February 2021

Hi, and welcome to SoundStage! Xperience. My name’s Mark Phillips, and I’ve had a lifelong love affair with music and audio. I suspect that’s true for y’all, too. My path here to the SoundStage! family of websites may be unusual, but then, there’s no established career path for audio reviewing. Being a good writer isn’t enough—just as important are years of critical listening. I liken it to the training a sommelier goes through, but refining the sense of hearing instead of smell and taste. My training in critical listening came from being a recording engineer, first for classical and jazz recitals at a large university, and later, mostly rock in my own studio and independently. I left the field not long before the digital audio workstation (DAW) revolutionized recording.

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Dire Straits on MoFi Vinyl

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March 2020

In 1978, when Dire Straits released their first album, Dire Straits, punk and new wave were rising, and disco’s days were numbered. A glance at the albums released that year, however, shows that there was still interest in the roots-based music that was Dire Straits’ specialty. Mark Knopfler, Dire Straits’ songwriter and lead singer, wrote songs that took in jazz, folk, blues, and more, and his lead-guitar playing was imaginative and elegant. Guitar heroes by then were unfashionable, but Knopfler’s emphasis on melody over flash and his skills as a composer made his band -- younger brother and rhythm guitarist David Knopfler, bassist John Illsley, and drummer Pick Withers -- stand out from the pack.

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Best of the Decade in Jazz

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December 2019

My first best-of-the-decade list was a defensive reaction to the frequently revived notion that jazz is dying, or worse. Those kinds of negative notions were swirling again in 2009, so I decided to look back at the recordings that had caught my ear over the previous ten years.

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Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea Reissued in Blue Note's Tone Poet Series

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This year is the 80th anniversary of Blue Note Records, the venerable jazz label established by Alfred Lion and Max Margulis in 1939. While other record companies played important roles in documenting jazz, Blue Note’s presence in the marketplace overshadows them. It’s doubtful that any other jazz label is better known, or has more recordings currently available in various formats -- the number of Blue Note titles in circulation on CD, as downloads, or on recent vinyl pressings is staggering. Blue Note is also a favorite of audiophile reissue labels, several of which have licensed albums from its catalog to release as new LPs.

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Bernie Grundman Remasters Frank Zappa

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November 2018

Twenty-five years after Frank Zappa’s death from prostate cancer at age 52, it’s still difficult to assess his career, in part because it was so multifaceted. Composer, guitarist, satirist, free-speech activist -- Zappa had many sides, and while they often overlapped, it’s easier to appreciate each of them separately: he was almost compulsively prolific. In his last 27 years he released 64 albums, many of them multi-disc sets, and since then the Zappa Family Trust has released an additional 49 albums, bringing the total of available Zappa releases to 111.

Read more …

  1. Two I Missed the First Time Around: Judee Sill and Murray Head
  2. Newvelle Records' Subscription LP Service
  3. Is There Room for Taste in Audio?
  4. Is High-End Audio Still About Music?
  5. A Crisis in Headphone Measurement?
  6. What Does a Brand Mean in 2018?
  7. The Differences Between Home Theater and High-End Audio . . . Two Decades On
  8. The Problem with Blind Testing
  9. Is It Possible to Say Something Stupid About Audio?
  10. Do Digital Masters Ruin Vinyl Records?
  11. The Indispensable Headphones -- and What They Say About What Matters Most
  12. What We Really Need from New Audio Products
  13. Does Love of Physical Media Have Anything to Do With Love of Music?
  14. What Does Samsung's Purchase of Harman Portend?
  15. Can Headphone Measurements Get Better?
  16. Science, Belief, and Audio
  17. The Five Best New Headphones and Earphones from CES 2017
  18. Six Audio Predictions for 2017
  19. Can We Know What the Artist Intends?
  20. How Audio Products Are Really Designed
  21. Is It Valid to Say that an Audio Product Sucks?
  22. Four Rules for Getting Great In-Wall Sound
  23. Why Most Audio Products Don't Deserve Glowing Reviews
  24. What the USB-C Revolution Will Mean for Headphones
  25. The Future of Headphone Listening
  26. A Cheap Wireless Speaker Shows the Future of Audio
  27. A Shakeup at Sonos Shakes Up the Audio Industry
  28. Can You Trust Customer Reviews on Amazon?
  29. The Five Best New Headphones at CES 2016
  30. What We Can and Can't Tell from Measurements of Headphones
  31. Why Hi-Rez Audio Still Struggles
  32. The Five Best Noise-Canceling Headphones and Earphones (According to Me)
  33. Why Believing in Headphone Break-in Can Be Harmful
  34. The Most Promising (and Unexplored) Area in High-End Audio
  35. The Five Best Closed-Back, Over-Ear Headphones (According to Me)
  36. Does a Product's Backstory Matter?
  37. The Five Best Earphones (According to Me)
  38. Why Headphone Amps Drive Me Nuts
  39. We Need a New Definition of "Audiophile"
  40. How Bad are Digital Streams and Downloads?
  41. What CES 2015 Means for the Future of Audio
  42. The Biggest Audio Development of 2014
  43. Why Simpler Isn’t Always -- or Even Usually -- Better
  44. Audiophiles: Stop Hating on Science!
  45. Should You Listen to Someone Who Criticizes Your Taste in Headphones?
  46. Dolby Atmos: A Lot More than More Channels
  47. Do Subwoofers Have a Sound?
  48. Why Dynamic-Range Compression Is Not the Work of the Devil
  49. Why Designing Wireless Speakers and Soundbars Is So Different . . . and So Much Harder
  50. What Measurements Really Tell You About Headphones
  51. The Point People Are Missing About Pono
  52. Why You Shouldn’t Ridicule the Bluetooth Speaker
  53. Are Headphones for Serious Listening?
  54. Binaural Recordings
  55. A Modern A/V Receiver: The Onkyo TX-NR808
  56. Cheap Stuff Can Be Surprisingly Good
  57. All About the 6th-Generation Apple iPod Nano
  58. ThinkFlood RedEye Universal Remote Application and Transmitter
  59. How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Home Audio
  60. Is Bipolar Dead?
  61. Media Players and Servers: Something for Everyone
  62. (Don’t) Look Before You Leap
  63. In Praise of 5.1
  64. 3D Home Theater: Should You Wait?
  65. iPod Touch Apps: Free is Good
  66. The Apple iPad and Alternatives
  67. New Integrated Amps Are Truly Integrated

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