production value

[~Quixote Chapter]

I think some of the problems with the quality of production in underground synthpop is due to the poor recording equipment being used. I just picked up Digidesign's mbox which has focusrite pre's. I noticed an instant improvement in clarity, and these are just mid-range pre's. So I say don't skimp on your preamps. Spend a little less on the latest V.A. and a bit more on your signal chain/computer interface. And if your not using a computer to record your tracks, for Pete's sake, start using one a.s.a.p!

-Kevin

[~intro]

On the subject of mics and pres... Recording's Dec 2002 issue has started a three part article (until Feb 2003) covering microphones and preamps. I've already read the Dec issue, and there are some very interesting bits in there I didn't know.

As for pres, every producer interview I read, they rant about preamps. It's a big thing.

Production overall, I'm hardly an expert in it. But in listening to my demos from August and then from December, I can hear a drastic difference in the quality. A few things I've done to improve this:

I've spent several hundred dollars rewiring the studio with higher grade cables.

I've eliminated the console wherever possible in the recording chain. A lot of indie musicians (myself included) use a console for routing, but this is just another step in a signal chain that needs to be as short as possible.

Following the above, I've removed the console completely when recording vocals. I go from mic to preamp and straight into my Echo Gina. I'd like to switch to an MOTU 828 in the near future (the bit depth and sampling rates are higher, and the added inputs will allow me to permanently wire my most used synths directly into the interface), and also get a higher quality preamp with built in compression. I've kinda got my heart set on the Avalon Vacuum Tube 737sp, but it's $2,000. I could get that if I weren't in need of a new audio interface. I'm gonna do a bit of shopping, see if I can find a deal, or I'll just compromise on something cheaper.

I've begun to study more successful genres of music. Specifically, I listen to the dance music station here in Dallas, and I pick apart the arrangements and production of the songs I hear. I take mental notes as I listen and drive. And I've learned a lot. I do the same with any CDs I get. I hit the dance section at Tower every few weeks, check out everything on the listening stations, find stuff that has production values I like and buy it.

And I read a lot. I've been reading books left and right on record production. I've improved my mixing abilities quite a bit. If anyone would like some suggested reading, I'd be more than happy to post a short list.

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

[~pop]

Production is just a meat!!!! We all still lack good songwriting!!!!
We all need to write BETTER VOCAL MELODIES.
Listen to Big Black. All done on cheap Korg drum machine on 8tk tape, SM58 mic, and stomp pedals. That's it.

[~Quixote Chapter]

Production is important pop. When I pen my next killer vocal melody, I want it to sound crystalline clear.

-Kevin

[~pop]

Good PRE & MICs elimate post eqing....
If you know how to eq, you can work with anything.
Many people don't know how to eq and place the frequencies
in wrong areas in the mix. Pre & MIC don't write music for you. They elimate lots of extra work during post production phase.

Thievery Corporation actually uses cheap sound blaster card
with Sonar. His focus in writing is vocal melody. Production is important, but it can't fix poor writing and lousy recorded performances.
http://www.cakewalk.com/Artist/Williams.asp

Some music are production focus. My music (grep and pswk) are production driven. I am not too keen on using music melody all the time. Some musical direction, production is not placed in high importance. I actually like some Electroclash. Productions are lousy, but groove sounds very clear in the mix.

[~arronc]

Erm : for the the first time in a long time I kind of agree with POP.

Songwriting is more important than production, and I would rather a good song then fantastic production anyday. Otherwise I would listen to immaculatly produced britney spears and holly vallence.

It also occurs to me that audio quality (preamps, cabling etc) are not really the same as production, that would be engineering.

I actually find the music across the synthpop scene to be of very good quality, the downside being totally the vocals.

We find the vocals the hardest to get right (although now we think we are pretty much there) because of some very difficult problems to get round.

1) Singing volume

It is difficult to find a time of day to sing loadly enough to the music without upsetting people in a domestic environment. Many systhpop tracks suffer because instead of a soaring powerful vocal, its a mubbling half spoken thing.

8inf solution : Take the day off work and sing load and shout into the mike when everyone is at work.

2) Cannot find an acoustically dead environment in a domestic setting.

We started off with dynimic mics, which wernt too problimatic apart from the frequency respone. As they had no high end, and unidirectional response, apart from sounding dull, the recording was OK.

When we moved to large diaphram capictor mics, they were so sensivity they picked up all the room acoustics, from all directions, and it sounded nasty, but had a good frequency response.

8inf solutions :

1) Record with a good dynamic mic, and use mic modeliing to get back upper frequency response.

2) put a duvet over your singers head

3) Rent a cheap studio, dont use their rubbish mixers, just bring a laptop and a mic and use their acoustic environment.

[~Kirlian Blue]

I dont think Synthpop is the Prob .....I can think of one EBM act everyone loves but have the production quality of a 4 yr old a Bon Tempi and a 4 Track fostex cassete recorder..(A british ebm act) yet everyone still buys it..so whats the prob.l I think spray have brilliant production on there MATERIAL and it is on the same level of Quality as Covenant or APOP!
Neuropa Mortality has that rich live un-produced feel to it there is technolgy used there but they are happy giveing you the warm analouge feeling which is not so produced rather than a flat digitaly produced sound!

Some band like a live raw feel until you go out and try tuneing a few old Rolands and Korgs you wont realise half the Production Techniques which are actually used................... Its something like Im doing learning as I go along and that is with a TOP 40 uk producer who has written 4 no1 Dance Singles..whos first punk single goyt him in the UK Top10 back in 1977..even hes still learning ..... I just think if a songs got a low quality production but is brilliant neverless ill happily listen to it and buy it....

Kirlian B....

[~NullDevice]

Originally posted by arronc
Songwriting is more important than production, and I would rather a good song then fantastic production anyday. Otherwise I would listen to immaculatly produced britney spears and holly vallence.


But if you got a good song, hey, why not produce it well? :)


It also occurs to me that audio quality (preamps, cabling etc) are not really the same as production, that would be engineering.


Oh, cool, a man who knows his terms. Of course "production" and "production values" are not the same thing either so ti gets really messy, semantically. So for argument's sake we'll just use everything interchangeably.


I actually find the music across the synthpop scene to be of very good quality, the downside being totally the vocals.


Not at all surprising, since vocals are always hard to record, no matter who you are. You can run a synth into a line-in and not worry too much about background noise, poor acoustics, etc. But with a voice the complexity and care required is a few orders of magnitude higher.



1) Singing volume

It is difficult to find a time of day to sing loadly enough to the music without upsetting people in a domestic environment. Many systhpop tracks suffer because instead of a soaring powerful vocal, its a mubbling half spoken thing.


This is an amazingly important point. Even if you've got a good mic and pres, if you're not clear in your singing, you won't be clear in your recording. It's amazing to me how much my vocals improved when I moved to a place where I could record without disturbing the neighbors.

Granted, you don't always want to shout - subtlety is just as important as power, but you need room for some range.


8inf solution : Take the day off work and sing load and shout into the mike when everyone is at work.


Null Device solution: move into a place with a basement. :)



2) Cannot find an acoustically dead environment in a domestic setting.



Almost impossible, since in our genre there're very few opportunites to record in a different environment from your computer, fans, speakers, etc.

I remember in my old bedroom studio, the combined noise of the fans, computers, drives, etc was loud enough to be picked up on the mic. AND it made the place like an oven.



1) Record with a good dynamic mic, and use mic modeliing to get back upper frequency response.

2) put a duvet over your singers head


This gets you that heat problem, especially in the summer. And a lot of singers have issues with having a blanket over thier head.

A solution that's worked well for me, and fairly cheaply, is to deaden the environment non-destructively. You can get large quantities of eggcrate foam - albeit not the fance-schamncy acoustic kind - for very little money from places like FoamOrder.com. Get a few square feet of that, tack it to the walls when you're recording, suddenly it's a lot quieter. And then you can take it down when you're done.

[~arronc]

I know what you mean about the computers and noise, and heat.

The best solution I have at the moment is to turn it all off, and to vocal and acoustic recording direct into a sampler, which is much quiter.

I have also been toying with using windows terminal services on a portable over 802.11 and having all the "heavy" computer equipment in another room. Not actually tryed it yet, but it looks feasable !

I actually do have have portable foam and cusions for acoustic dampening, but the duvet works best.

Some singers like you say dont like it, but in the winter in London/IOM it is freezing cold, and I often wish there was a good reason for me to get under one too ! ;)

[~digitalia]

usually, i favour good song writing over production quality, but i have to agree that some stuff can just be hard to listen to, especially on headphones. and usually it's simple things like not using good mics and pres.

regarding the mic & pre situation concerning cost: this is where renting is a good idea. a $2000 Avalon pre should only cost a hundred or so to rent for a few weeks, and decent mics are getting cheaper - i am particulary impressed with the Studio Projects C1 mic, less than $500 and holds it's own against a Neumann U87.

another production flaw that is just starting to irk me (and the average listener wouldnt have a problem with) is artists doing EVERYTHING on the computer. when you use soft synths and soft samplers all in one program, be it Logic, Reason or Fruity Loops, AND mixing down within that program, the sound gets kinda flat with little personality. having one piece of hardware, synth sampler or fx, can make alot of difference. as does coming from a multiple output soundcard into another device for mix down.

for the longest time i just wanted a soundcard with multiple INS, didnt care about OUTS. when i got one that is 4in/6out (Aardvark LX6) i tried sending the drums thru a stereo out seperate from the rest of the mix. the difference really took me by surprise. now i really want is to get to a decent studio with a decent mixer and a multi-out soundcard to do the down mix of my tracks. as much as i love the Logic, the mixing engine isnt as sweet as going thru a Mackie console.

as for soft synths, some are AMAZING, but when you use all Reaktors Absynths and ES2s on a track, it sounds abit flat. one of the equations in the forumula is again the soundcard. when you use a piece of Roland hardware, it has one type of AD converter, Yamaha another type, Emu, Korg, Access, Waldorf... you get the point. a variety of hardware adds variety to the sound.

damn, didnt mean to write that much, sorry guys...
(i werk at a pro audio geek shop, so im bombarded with this stuff all day....)

cheers,
d

[~arronc]

Hi, without being too geeky, I also noticed the problem you are referening to in the software only envirnment, and have been experimenting.

I do a lot of stuff with both hardware and software, and also noted the same results.

Rather than it being about a/d converters and mixing algorithms (which do matter, but I dont beleive are primary factors in this case ), I think that the issue is that all the signal is locked to a sample accurate synchronisation, and the lack of phase shifting makes the resulting mix very unnatural sounding. Improving the clock source helps things (ie i tried using a worse clock on mine and it increased the problem)

Mastering a completely phase coherent signal is also a nightmare, espcially if you have been overdoing the quantize (all the trasients in the same point with the same sample accurate lock ? oops)

I am still experimenting of ways to fix this, and I will post again when i have some more results !

[~intro]

I'd love to rent an Avalon pre instead of buying one. But I haven't a clue where to rent one from. Hadn't even thought of that. Maybe I should check with some local stores to see what I can find.

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

[~pop]

It is all the about eqing. Not all eq are made same. Also, don't use the same stock eqs and compressors all the time. Combine different eqs. Try TC, WAVES, and free vst eqs. I record everything on 16bit 44khz, but I mix down to 24bit 96Khz.
I fold over back 16bit with pro dithering programs.
Problem with many softsynths are mid sounds off to me.
You really to reeq all the softsynths tracks.
Also, get some decent semipro monitors.
I tired of musicians with tons of gears, but they still
use headphones to mix.
Talk about shooting yourself on the foot.

Vocal recording tip.
Try recording your vocal with multiple mics
at same time. Nobody believes in this theory.
You will be suprised which mics will stand out more
in the track.

[~arronc]

Funny thing Ive just noticed : because we are all so full of ourselves, we have all just made a series of technical posts trying to help some imaginary person, but i cant find anyone actually asking for any help in the thread. LOL

I myself feel pretty embarassed !

[~intro]

I think we were just sharing general ideas that have helped us out.

I agree with you pop that one shouldn't use the same EQ and compressor and all. However, I figured using the comp and pre of the Avalon and bypassing the EQ would be alright. I use the Waves EQ plugs, as well as the built-in Cubase SX EQs for my stuff.

Agreed on the headphones to mix. I know a few people who do that as well, and I'm shocked by it. I use a pair of Alesis M1MKII Actives, and they're great, although a little weak in the low end. Another thing that bothers me is that some high end sounds will sound fine on them, but on any other stereo, the highs can be harsh. I'm wondering if I should maybe sell these and switch to another monitor setup.

EQing and effecting soft synths is a must. I also run them through PSP VintageWarmer. I haven't done as much EQing as I should, mainly because I've been cranking away at demo recordings, but in the final production it's on my (amazingly long) list of things to keep in mind.

The vocal thing... it's funny you mention recording with two mics. Last night I was reading a bit about mic placement, and pondering my issues with my mic setup (I've got a Shure SM58 that has the low-mid boost I like, but I don't dig the overall sound, and an AKG C2000B that has the clarity I like, but without the low-mid boost that gives it such warmth), and I decided I was going to try to record with both at the same time and somehow put them together. So I'm glad that works for you.

But I'm curious about how you mix the two channels. Do you just try to eliminate all frequencies but the ones you want out of each mic? Or do you just layer them on top of each other and hope for the best?

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

[~pop]

I didn't meant mix them together. Some songs, I end up keeping SM58 instead of MK-319, C-1, & cad e200.
Mixing different overtone of same track can work.
Sometimes, phasing is an issue. It depends on the mic spec of c2000b. I don't own one. Different frequency mics will sit together without that harsh low mid tone doubling effect. You can always pan them slightly away from each other to split the frequencies.. That mudiness might work well as thick backup vocals.
It all depends on the rest of the tracks. It might sit on different places. You are better of picking one or more mics, overdub, and layer tracks. Key is experimenting, so you want the original to be dry and clean as possible. Thanks to DAW, we can make multiple copies of the original. Just play with various things until something catches your ears.

By the way, Antares mic modeler is TOTAL CRAP. I can't believe people praise that software. It sounds nothing like the real thing. If original frequencies are missing while recording, you can't do anything about it. Anyway, learn to trust your ears and monitors.
If you got the money, get HR824. I use Event 20/20. I am not happy with them, but it works for me. HR824 is studio standard now, but your monitors are fine. I mixed down with them and got good results too.... Your ears and monitors have to work together nicely.... Key is never overwork your ears.... Your ears will send wrong information to your brain.

[~gordonctrl]

Originally posted by arronc
Funny thing Ive just noticed : because we are all so full of ourselves, we have all just made a series of technical posts trying to help some imaginary person, but i cant find anyone actually asking for any help in the thread. LOL

I myself feel pretty embarassed !


lmao.

don't feel embarassed, I am sitting over here on the sidelines not posting a thing because I do everything all JackA** style when it comes to recording and production. I guess i subsribe to the "happy accident" school of production. remember, screw up big enough so people think it is supposed to be in the mix (-:

brad
who used a mic from radioshack on his cd

[~MidiRipper]

Originally posted by gordonctrl

brad
who used a mic from radioshack on his cd

Very very cool indeed!

'Ripper

[~intro]

Which CD was this? LT or CTRL?

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

[~digitalia]

arronc: interesting theory about phase-shift, i havent even begun trying to comprehend that. but i do agree that new digital stuff, although it is clearer and in theory "better, truer" sounding, i dont think our ears are used to it, even the average listener can tell something is not quite the same... we are accustomed to analog (living in an analog world and all)

pop: agreed about the monitors. i got some Tannoy System 600As about a year ago and althought they cost more than i had ever spent on anything in my studio at that point, they have been worth every penny.
re: EQing... well, i'd say the less you need to EQ, the better (but then listen to my mixes, maybe i just need more help using EQ). and yes, some do sound lots better than others. my fave is the Waves Rennaisance EQ, kinda adds some analog warmth when you boost it.

intro: any pro-audio music shop should have some decent mic pre to rent - where do you live?

one more thing on monitoring - do everything in your power to reference a rough mix on other systems, whether it be another studio or a freakin car stereo. you get an idea of how it translates on speakers besides your own that way...

cheers,
d

[~intro]

I live in Dallas, Tx, and I'm kinda clueless on where to go. All I know of in the area is Guitar Center and Mars Music, and Mars just shut their doors. I asked on a Dallas musicians' mailing list (all genres) about it, and they're clueless as well. No one has a clue where to rent gear.

And yeah, always listen to your mixes on other sources. I do that a lot. My home stereo, my discman, my car, etc.

-Mark
www.djintrovert.com

[~digitalia]

damn, i heard the pro-audio gear biz is doing ¤¤¤¤ty in the US, worse than here in Canada. if you lived in Toronto, i could set you up, sorry bro...

[~NullDevice]

I've discovered that the powered event 20/20's are significantly better than the passives. They benefit from having a matched amp.

Best monitors I've heard live were a pair of Genelec 1030's. Sweet.

Still a good idea to listen to everything on crap systems too. You'll see that just about every major studio has a pair of yamaha NS-10 nearfields in the booth - awful, awful speakers, but if you want to approximate what it's gunna sound like in some guy's car, a pair of crappy speakers is the way to go. :)