Recording Basics

Week 2: Recording Basics -- Recording audio in your DAW including preparing the project, creating the track(s), setting the click and countoff, and recording efficiently.

Preparing for your recording session is a really important part of music production, as it can determine how good or bad your final product will be. One of the most important things is rehearsal: even with the most versatile sound processing tools, one does not simply make outstanding music tracks out of sloppy, inaccurate performances (at best it will sound like Rebecca Black's Friday, where one can hear signs of excessive editing all along).

When you feel that you are ready to start recording, you will want to set your DAW up appropriately. I will use Magix Samplitude hereinafter, but I'm sure that the same settings can be found in every contemporary Digital Audio Workstation (DAW).

Fig.1: the Digital Audio Workstation

A piece of good advice can be to name your projects in a way that you will be able to understand even months later. Giving names like "Project01" or "New Project" won't lead you anywhere when you'll try to find one of your old recordings half a year later. So I advise you to come up with something like "MyBand - NewSong 2014" or "2014-07-31 Jamming with Tom". You will also want to put all your projects in their own folder inside your projects folder (e.g. D:\Samplitude work\Coursera Example), so you will always know where you can find the audio files.

Fig.2: giving your project a name, setting sample rate and number of tracks

In Samplitude, you can start a new project under File / New Virtual Project (VIP). Here you will be asked to choose the number of tracks (you can always add new ones later, if necessary) and sampling rate. In most home studio applications 44100Hz or 48000Hz should be enough. You should choose the former if you're going to burn your recordings on CD, and you should choose the latter if you want to use your recordings in videos. It is also possible to change the sampling rate later, but since resampling is destructive you should avoid it if you can (although most of the times a proper conversion won't make any audible differences).

Fig.3: setting audio device, buffer size and word length

The next step is to check the options of your audio device. Under File / Program Preferences / System/Audio you can find Audio System Options. There you can set the driver system (preferably ASIO, if you have a decent sound card or audio interface), the buffer size and the device resolution (bit depth, word length). The smaller the buffer size is, the shorter the delay between the input and the output will be, so you'll be able to monitor your input from your DAW. However, if you experience popping or crackling sounds during the recording, you should raise the buffer size and consider hardware monitoring. The default word length of a project is 16bit, but if you have appropriate sound files or a capable audio interface, you should choose 24bit. It gives more resolution to your audio data, more headroom to your recordings, signal processing can be more precise, and in the end you can still export your project in 44100Hz/16bit for audio CDs and mp3 conversion (or you can leave it at 48000Hz/24bit for DVD applications etc.).

Fig.4: recording options

Under Play/Rec / Record Options you can set the recording format (Wave, uncompressed), word length of the sound recording, monitoring mode, name of takes etc. If you go back to System Options (or click the corresponding button on the main screen), you can find the click or metronome options. You'll want to set the metronome to be active while recording but inactive during playback, and setting one or two measures of precount can also be useful to catch the beat when the recording starts. You can set the click sounds here, and on the main screen you can set the Beats Per Minute (BPM) to set the tempo (default is 120) and the measures (bars) to be used (usually 4/4, but other ones like 3/4 or 12/8 also may be used).

Fig.5: metronome options

Finally, you should name your track you want to record to, set it to mono if you're using a single microphone or instruments like an electric guitar, or set it to stereo for a pair of microphones, a stereo mic or a stereo instrument (e.g. a synthetizer). Set your audio interface up (plug the cables in, switch phantom power on if necessary, set the gain), set the track in the DAW armed to record using the button with the red dot (next to the Solo and Mute buttons), and then you can start recording by pressing the Record button down below.

Fig.6: finally, ready for recording

One more thing: you should consider using a decent pair of headphones to monitor what you're recording and the backing tracks. This will elliminate feedback, the backing tracks won't be recorded again by the mic, and last but not least you will be able to live in peace with your neighbours :)

Microphone Basics

Week 1: Microphone Basics -- Type, Frequency Response, and Polar Pattern.

Microphones are transducers which convert acoustic energy into electric current. The sound source (e.g. a vocalist or an acoustic instrument) makes the air vibrate, and these waves of compressions and rarefactions propagate in the medium. When these waves reach our ear, we hear them as sound. A microphone works quite like a human ear: the sound waves pass through the grille and the windscreen of the mic (~outer ear); reach the membrane (~ear drum) and set it in motion (~middle ear); the motion of the membrane is converted into voltage/current variations (~inner ear) by a permanent magnet; these variations pass through the microphone cable (~nerves) and finally they are processed by the audio interface (~brain).

There are several types of microphones.

• Dynamic microphone is quite a solid type, as she can take the extreme conditions of being used on stage with ease. Should an exhibitionist vocalist grab her by the cable, swing her above his head, drop her accidentally, or even pour some beer on her, a dynamic mic may handle all this impoliteness well. Also, she provides a nice, warm sound suitable for vocals, as well as bass and middle oriented instruments. In other words, her frequency response isn't flat: she tends to emphasize frequencies between ~2kHz and ~8kHz, and suppress trebles above ~10kHz. Bass can also be suppressed a bit (below ~100Hz) -- however, it can be (over)compensated by the proximity effect.
• Condenser microphones are more suitable for use in professional and home studios, as they tend to have a more natural and crisp sound. This type is more demanding than a dynamic one, as she needs careful handling and also phantom power (48V) from the audio interface (or for some types, from a battery). Condenser microphones are more sensitive; with this type you can record more details of the sound environment, i.e. reverberations of the room, but background noises as well. She is better at recording sound sources with a lots of treble (percussions, cymbals, brass instruments, etc.) on stage, but she can be used to record vocals or acoustic guitars as well -- or almost everything in a studio. The frequency response of a condenser mic is pretty flat in general, so she "hears" bass and treble equally well, and there are hardly any colorations in the sound. This makes her recommended to studio quality recordings -- however, a dynamic mic of good quality can provide a more live or "hot" vocal sound.
• One can also meet ribbon microphones and piezo microphones, but they are far less widespread in studios or on stage. The former ones can be rather vulnerable but are said to sound great on vocals, while the latter ones are used mostly in mobile phones as they are small and cheap to produce, although their sound quality is questionable. However, piezo mics are used as contact microphones in acoustic guitars quite often, as they can take vibrations of solid bodies of instruments well.
• Fun fact: a dynamic microphone works just like a reversed speaker. If you sing loud enough into a speaker or a set of headphones, you might be able to record your voice with it when the system is assembled accordingly. This method is becoming more and more popular being used in front of kick drums, as a large speaker (woofer) can record bass well and suppress treble coming from the cymbals at the same time. (You can try this in small when connecting two pairs of earphones to a Y-adapter, wearing one pair and tapping the earpieces of the other (or simply letting them collide).) You can also listen to music via a dynamic mic, although there are way better methods to do this (and it can also be pretty dangerous for the mic).

Both the dynamic and condenser microphones can have different sensitivity in different directions. It means that a particular mic can "hear" perfectly in one direction and worse in another. This direction dependent sensitivity is plotted on the polar pattern (see the figure below), and this can define the possible applications of the microphone.

Fig.1: Polar Patterns in 2D
(source: https://jwoodardvt.wikispaces.com/file/view/polar_patterns.jpg/425698960/polar_patterns.jpg)

As you can see, there are circles, buns, upside down hearts, double buns, dragonflies or just funny blobs or spots on the figure. Actually, they represent how sensitive the microphone is in a particular direction, when the main axis of the mic is pointing upwards. The more the spot approaches the outer circle (dotted line), the more the microphone hears in that direction. Maybe the following figure can help a little:

Fig.2: Polar Patterns explained in 3D
Note: the labels "Cardioid" and "Supercardioid" had been switched accidentally!
(source: http://soundtech.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/mics-polar-patterns0101.png)

Microphones of different polar patterns can be used in different situations.

• An omnidirectional mic hears in every direction around herself, so she can be useful when recording the sound of the whole room, all the reverberation, or even several speakers or vocalists around the mic.
• A cardioid mic hears well from the front (on axis) but hears almost nothing from the back. She can be useful when one wants to record only a single vocalist or instrument and not the others (also not too much of the reverberation), and on stage the vocalist can turn the rear of the mic towards his stage monitor to prevent feedback. Proximity effect is also to be considered, as when a cardioid mic is close to a speaker or the vocalist's mouth, its bass sensitivity rises sharply, and one can use that to their advantage.
• Supercardioid and hypercardioid mics are quite the same as the cardioid ones, but they hear a bit more from the back.
• A bi-directional mic hears well from the front and from the back, but not from the sides.
• A shotgun microphone hears almost only on axis, so it can be useful to record a particular speaker or sound source from afar.

That's all for now, we will continue next week :)

Introduction

Hi there.

I am Boti from Budapest, Hungary and this is my first blog post about music production. All this is a part of the Peer Review Assignments in the course Introduction to Music Production on Coursera. I am currently trying to get prepared for a language exam in English, so I'll try and do my best here.