1. Record the raw tracks (e.g. rhythm guitar, bass and drums).
From the start, remember these two key guidelines:
- Always strive for as much separation as possible among instruments. In other words avoid guitars bleeding into drum mics, bass, mics, etc.
- At the same time, always strive for as much of an instrument's natural ambiance as possible. For this, experiment with mic placement to achieve optimum warmth and minimum bleed.
For the drums, there can be many different approaches. There's the one-drum-per-track method in which you can close-mic each drum to its own track with the addition of a room or overhead mic track. For this you can use every available track left over after your initial guitar and bass (or whatever you may be tracking initially) have been accounted for. Another approach would be to sub out the drums right off the bat (provided your mixer has sub-outputs). I think I do this out of habit, because I am so used to having to sub out the drums in normal recording scenarios. And if your intention is to send your bounce mix directly to two tracks on the tape, then it is necessary to sub mix the drums (I don't recommend this, though... see sec. 2 "Make your Bounce Mix" below).
Drums can be submixed nicely to either two, three or four tracks. On two tracks you could make a loosely miked stereo mix. By miking loosely, you allow for some of the room ambience to liven your sound a bit. It'll keep things from sounding too dry, and it will actually help the drums to blend with other instruments. On three tracks, there are even more options. There's the kick + snare + everything else method, in which the kick and snare are close-miked to their own separate tracks and then one ambient mic picks up everything else on a track by itself. Take some time putting that mic in different locations and proximities to the kit to feel out where the best place in your room is. This leans heavily in the direction of the live room sound, which is nice, but you run the risk of loosing control over things like cymbal bleed, etc. For me, I find it very hard to maintain balance and separation of drums in my small cutting room using this method. My favorite method, on the other toe, is the close-miked stereo mix + overhead and/or room mic approach (say that fifty times as fast as you can). I think this gives the best of both worlds: up close definition and separation of each individual piece of the kit on two tracks, brought back to life with some room ambience on a third track. If you have the option of a fourth track, try this with stereo overheads or room mics on two tracks instead of just one. This is not, of course, an exhaustive list. There are many more methods, but any of the above are a good place to start.
One thing I should mention briefly before going on, is phase. Without going into a deep explanation of this phenomenon, I'll just say that often when two mics are engaged upon the same instrument (e.g. the drums) they can be out of phase. You'll know this is happening if the two mic signals listened to simultaneously produce a weaker signal than either one by itself. This happens a lot on drums, since, for instance, a rack tom mic may be picking up some snare drum as well, which has its own mic already. Always do a quick test for phase by panning all your drum tracks to center, turning each on, one at a time, then in pairs, all the while listening for volume decreases. To correct phase, either your mics have to be moved into different positions which are in phase with each other, or, if your console has phase reversal buttons (usually marked by a zero with a slash through it), you can fix the problem that way. The only other option would be to alter some XLR cables specifically for phase reversal. To do this, simply switch the wires at one end on pins two and three. Then mark those cables so you only use them in that situation in the future. When phase is an issue with two mics, only one needs to be altered to correct the situation.
As for recording your other initial tracks, start off by close-miking amplifiers on guitars, and the bass. If you want to go the route of Direct Boxes for bass that's fine (but I usually prefer a mic signal on a bass any day). Keyboards are usually more Direct-friendly, though. The benefit to Direct signals is that they have no bleed from other instruments. Remember.... that's good. The drawbacks, on the other hand, are that the sounds (on a bass in particular) are generally somewhat brittle and cold, unless you spend money on a good box. What work nicely are those ART tube MP's. Like all ART stuff, they suck for most applications, but as direct boxes, they have a few handy controls you can mess with to get the sound you want. More importantly, they're cheap!
Fig. A. My typical setup for Raw Tracking on my 24 x 8 console:
Console Instrument: Send to Ends up
Channel: Sub-Channel: on Track #:
1 Kick drum 2 2
2 Snare drum 1 1
3 Rack Tom 1 1
4 Floor Tom 2 2
5 Overhead/room 3 3
6 Bass Guitar 4 4
7 Guitar 5 5
Note: There is no rule saying you must use all eight tracks for raw tracks. It's actually much easier to save extra guitars, keyboards, etc., for the overdub stage than it is to decide there final level and EQ in the upcoming bounce-mix stage.
2. Make your Bounce Mix.
Once your raw tracks are recorded, they need to be mixed to stereo, then back onto two tracks of your eight track. If you have a DAT player or ?" 2-track recorder, it's ideal to mix down to these, and then feed the mix back to two tracks of your eight track. If not, just bounce to two empty tracks through the submixes on your board. (I prefer the first, though.)
There are two key principles to keep in mind when making this initial mix that are outlined below:
- For the bounce-mix, maintain the hardest panned separation as possible between instruments.
Each track/instrument should be panned entirely right or entirely left. This is called a hard-pan bounce mix. Guitar would be on the right, for example, and bass (yes, the bass) would be on the left. The same would go for all the other instruments besides the overhead/room mic track (this needs to be in the middle to liven the drums as a whole and return balance back to the drum mix). Some people object to the idea of a bass guitar, or the kick drum being separated completely off to one side. For the final mix, it doesn't have to be that way. If you pan the tracks with your left and right mixes only to, say, 9 o'clock and 3 o'clock, or 10 and 2, etc., the overall mix should not be too off balance; using this method, however, it will never be right up the middle. But if you listen back to recordings made when eight track was the best technology out there, by this I mean Beatles, Hendrix, Doors, Stones and the rest of them, you will find highly panned, yet well balanced recordings. Sometimes the entire drum set was off to one side. When a band allows me to, I pan the mix as drastically as I can. (It's just a phase I'm in.)
- Since each instrument is being sent to either the left or right channel, mix instruments of like timbre to different sides.
By hard panning instruments of like timbre away from one another you achieve a better balanced mix in the end. That is why George Martin could get away with having Ringo entirely in the left speaker... because whatever was in the right had complementary tone, fullness, timbre, etc. The overall mix was very carefully balanced. The more important advantage, however, is that by recording two instruments of different timbre to the same track, you increase the flexibility of this mix for later (See Curtis Settino's "Four Track School, part two" in Tape Op #7). If bass guitar and snare drum are mixed to the same track intended for the left side, and you need to hear more of the bass in the final mix, then you can turn up the low end on the EQ of that track. This will effectively turn up the bass, but not the snare. But if your bass guitar is on the same track with your kick drum, then altering the bass will have an effect on the kick as well. This is bad. For good measure, make sure you have only one representative from each frequency range (low, mid, and high) on each side of your bounce mix.
3. Over-dubs.
Once you have made your hard-pan mix to 2 tracks, record the left and right outputs from the DAT player or 2 Track to tracks 7 and 8 of your eight track. Now, call me wasteful, but I don't like to record over the raw track reels, or the DAT/2 Track mixes. This way if there is ever the need to go back to any of those stages, you can. Instead, I say at this point suck it up and start a new reel of tape.
Overdubs are simple. At this stage, all you have to do is record whatever else it is that you want. Just make sure, as with all tracks, that the levels are as high as your machine can handle (at which point, I say you punch them a bit higher). At any rate, now you have six more tracks to work with. You could do a three part harmony, another guitar and a keyboard, and still have a track left for something else.
Fig. B. My typical hard-pan bounce mix:
Track #: List of instruments Pan to DAT
on that track: (Left or Right)
1 Snare drum + Rack tom L
2 Kick drum + Floor tom R
3 Overhead/Room Middle
4 Bass guitar L
5 Guitar R
4. Tips for mixing.
Mixing in a bounce mix situation is much easier, I think, than the typical mixing scenario. The reason being that the drums (the most difficult to get sounds for) are already finished. You do have some flexibility for the instruments contained in those bounce mix tracks on 7 and 8.
- If you want to hear more kick, turn up the low end on the track it is on. If your board has parametrics, you can get even closer and more specific to the actual frequencies that the kick drum is occupying.
- If the snare is a bit buried, adjust the mids on its respective track.
- If the cymbals are sizzling through as a result of time overheads, cut back on some high end.
Experiment with the degree to which you pan the bounce-mix tracks. I highly suggest making a mix or two where you hard-pan them. To check how well balanced the overall mix is, listen to one speaker at a time during the play back. To some extent, each side should sound completely different, while the two together should create a much larger picture.
One Last Note: I know of one glitch in this system right off the bat, and that is in the separation of the drums. I have the Rack Tom in the left drum mix (with the snare) and the Floor Tom in the Right (with the kick drum). By this you have the image of snare and hi-hat + Rack Tom on the left, where they are if you are a right-handed drummer, and the Floor Tom and ride cymbal on the right. This goes against the principle of keeping instruments of like timbre separated, since the relative timbre of Snare and Rack Tom are somewhat close, but worse-yet, the Floor Tom and the Kick are often very similar. Because of this, any EQ adjustments made to alter the Kick Drum in either the bounce-mix or the final mix stages are going to result in affecting the Floor Tom as well. Just be extra careful to get a proper balance between the drums that are sharing tracks. This is a great starting point, though. Please write with comments on this method and any of its pros and cons as you discover them. Good luck.
