Glynn Davies has been a keen guitarist for the last 16 years, during which time he's played in lots of bands you've never heard of. He lives by the sea in the south of England.
Welcome to the fourth and final part of my series of tutorials on recording your first song. I’ve introduced a lot of terms, ideas and techniques with the hope of giving you the background to tackle your first attempts at recording and to inspiring you to read and learn more.
Now it’s time to put the theory into practice by taking a simple set of musical ideas, growing them, and building up a final track.
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We’re going to look at some techniques you can use to add interest and variety to your track, and tidy up the rough edges. With all of the following techniques, it’s impractical to show you precise instructions on how to achieve each technique in your DAW, but all are basic facilities that any modern DAW will have: all you need to do is delve into the manual or, better yet, play with the buttons and find out.
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Welcome to the second part of my series covering all you need to know to start recording your first song.
Last time around, we spent some time thinking about the reasons and methods behind home recording and looked at some bare rudiments or writing and arrangement. This month, we’re going to dive right in and run through some of the core techniques and methods that you’ll rely on in your productions.
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There are lots of reasons why people want to record music at home. Maybe you want to show off your musical vision to your band mates or show off your skills to potential band mates. On the other hand, maybe you just always fancied realising your own version of your favourite song, or just want some backing tracks to hone your improvisation skills over.
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Plenty of experienced and capable performers, no strangers to the studio, still get the jitters when it comes time to record. For the relative novice, perhaps working with limited equipment in less than ideal spaces, any problems arising from the pressure of recording are compounded by the technical challenges.
In this article, I’m going to offer you some simple tips that can help you to improve your recorded performances and make your life easier when it comes time to edit and mix your songs.
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Getting and keeping your guitar in tune is so rudimentary that it barely merits talking about, right? Well, I’m not so sure. Despite, or maybe even because, of easy access to digital tuners, it seems that an awful lot of guitar players haven’t quite got to grips with it. I can’t count the number of local bands and YouTube guitar show-and-tell videos I’ve seen featuring horribly out of tune guitars. I’ve even jammed with other musicians and had to point out that they’re out of tune, and once even had to physically tune their instrument for them!
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One of the most frequently given pieces of engineering advice is something along the lines of "never fix something in the mix if you have the opportunity to get it right at the very beginning". Put another way, it’s usually unwise to rely on EQ and other post-processing to get the sound you want. This is great advice, and wherever possible I like to mimic "real world" recording processes when I’m working digitally. To that end, paradoxically, I think it’s often necessary to disregard, or at least re-interpret, that advice.
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If you’re in the business of writing music that’s intended to be performed by other musicians, then you’re also in the business of teaching others to perform what you write. Even if you want your parts to be interpreted and improvised, being able to communicate what you’ve written in a clear and accessible way is essential to the creative process and ensuring the integrity of what you write.
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This is going to sound like one of those iffy adverts you see hawking $25 sets of “learn while you sleep” CDs that promise “absolute mastery” of music in weeks without so much as lifting a plectrum or hitting a key, but it’s not like that. Honestly. Ready? Here it is:
You can improve your skills on your instrument just by thinking about it.
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When recording song demos at home, I find often find myself wanting to add a flavour of the textures and excitement of a live performance, looking for some way to smooth the transition between dramatic dynamic shifts, or just hankering for some crazy noises to add some interest.
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