When recording, reaching for the EQ knob should rarely be something that you find yourself doing. In fact, EQ should really be thought of as a last resort, only using it as a tool to shape particularly difficult recording scenarios.

EQ is an often overused piece of gear in the studio. In my assisting days I was often told to patch up an EQ simply as a matter of common procedure. I also worked on a handful of sessions where the engineer showed up early and began EQ’ing before any musicians even arrived to play a note!

Now generally speaking, there really is no right or wrong way to go about recording. Recording music is truly an art form, and just like any art is highly subjective. However, there are many scientific guidelines that if used as a base point will help you achieve above average results.

It’s also worth noting that there are a lot of talented engineers who purposefully record using EQ so that they don’t have to use it as much during mixing. This is a very efficient, logical and wise approach. But equally logical is the notion that it’s just best to simplify. Recording with an EQ inserted is an approach that should be reserved for those who have a lot of experience in the field of recording. You could also make the argument that using EQ as an effect is a valid technique to employ when expressing your artistic voice, but this is a special case–not the normal set of studio circumstances.

The most effective way to get a great tone out of any instrument you record really comes down to three main steps:

1. Find the best place in the room for the instrument
   The way a room interacts with musical instruments dictates to a large degree the way it sounds. The farther away from the sound source the mic is placed, the more the room becomes a factor in the recorded sound. Before recording, spend some time having someone play the instrument in different places within the room. Trust your ears the most. Once you find the best position in the room, designate that place for that instrument and repeat the process for the next instrument. Make sure you allot an appropriate amount of time for this process in your recording sessions, because this process can take a while.

2. Find the sweet spot–the optimal place to position the mic
   After you have found the position where the instrument sounds best in the room, you need to find the position where the mic will sound best on the instrument. This process has two halves: a) using your ears in the room to find the initial position for the mic b) fine tuning that position by listening through the speakers in the control room. When recording very loud instruments such as electric guitars or a drum kit, it may not be possible to stand in the room and listen because of the high volume. If you find this to be true, then you may have to just go with the “b half” of this exercise. Also very important is to always wear earplugs when making adjustments in the recording space! Your most valuable recording asset are the pieces of equipment attached to the sides of your head. Protect your hearing at all costs. Otherwise you risk flushing your career down the tubes. Once you have found the instrument’s sweet spot you can move on to the third step in this process.

3. Choose the right microphone/mic pre combination
   The last step in the process is to select the correct mic/pre combination. Honestly, to fully discuss mic/pre selection would require an entire blog post itself, and perhaps I will explore this topic in a future post. But for now, you just want to find the right match that seems to bring the most life to the tone of the instrument you are recording. In a perfect world we would all have any microphone and preamp at our disposal at any given time. If you happen to be in this situation you are a very lucky person, and probably should not be wasting your time reading this blog. For the rest of us reality is a different truth. Spend some time experimenting with the mics and pres that you do have available to you to find a combination that seems to fit best. If your situation is anything similar to mine, then you only have about three choices. Just do your best.

If you find that you are still not achieving the sound you want out of an instrument after going through this process, it is still best to adjust an element of one or all of the steps before inserting an EQ. Resist the urge to use EQ as a crutch. EQ should be used when you have no other options left to help you craft your sound, or if you are going for a specific effect, which as we said before is a special case. EQ should be used lightly and as a tool. If you do find that you need to adjust the sound by inserting an EQ, do so very judiciously. Leave room to do most of your EQ’ing during the mixing stage.

I hope you have found this article helpful. If you feel that I have overlooked something, or have any other tips on getting a great tone without the use of EQ, please leave your tips in the comments. Additionally, if you have any questions or would like to see an article on a specific topic relating to the music recording and/or production process feel free to leave a comment below, telling me what topics you would like to see explored on producer notes. If you would like to keep your suggestions private, you can email me at stinson[AT]producernotes[DOT]com

Good luck finding that tone you are looking for…

The following is a post that was originally published on 6/2/08. Due to a data loss issue producer notes suffered on 6/2/08, I am republishing it today. It is the last of four posts that will be republished in an attempt to retain the integrity of producer notes.

I’m back from a two week leave from Producer Notes. My time away from here allowed me to relive a bit of pressure that built up as a result of my ongoing balancing act between my freelance production/engineering career, and the operations of my startup. I was able to do quite a bit of Radical Notion business planning, and pickup several recording sessions as well. I got a whole lot of work done, but it’s definitely not complete. I will likely have to take another leave before the summer is out. Thanks for your loyal readership, and for staying subscribed throughout this process. Now on to today’s post…

Recording should be a creative process. The technical aspect of it should be pretty much invisible. In order for that to happen, you need everything to run as smooth as possible. Nothing derails your creativity quicker than constant technical hiccups. This week I put together 5 tips that will help things feel smoother and more creative when recording your own band, or recording for someone else. This list is meant to be 5 individual tips, not a step-by-step process.

1) Plan your setup beforehand
Planning out your setup should be done at least the day before you intend to record. Determine whether you will record everyone at once, or if you will be building the recording part by part. Figure out the best use of the recording space, and the best place for each instrument within that space. After you know where you want to put the instruments you need to decide what mics and gear to use. Then patch it all up and get it ready.

2) Test your setup beforehand
Once all the equipment is setup, go through and test each input to make sure you are getting a clean signal from the mic, through any gear, to the DAW and to the headphones. An easy way to do this is simply to have a band-mate go around and talk into each mic while wearing headphones. The last thing you want is to sit down the day you are supposed to record, and realize that you are not getting any signal into your DAW. Save yourself from a massive panic attack. Test your setup the day before you record.

3) Record to an external hard drive.
Your internal system hard drive is not meant for recording! It is meant to run the operating system and other various applications that you use on a day-to-day basis, such as your DAW software. Do yourself a huge favor and buy an external hard drive. Keep your session document and audio files in a folder on this external drive. Name the folder the same name as the song. Most DAW software will take care of this folder creation/naming for you. But allocate your recordings to this new drive! Having an external hard drive also makes things more convenient when recording at several different locations. If you are taking the project to a place that has the same DAW software as you, you can bring your drive and everything should open up perfectly on the other system (this is not always true, unfortunately).

4) Simplify
You want to always keep the shortest path to the DAW. Don’t put every compressor, EQ, reverb, delay, time displacement discombobulating logarithmic refracting unit known to man in your signal chain. Refrain from over calculating things. Having more gear in the signal chain means having more things to worry about (and more noise). Leave the EQ’ing, compressing and audio time travel for the mixing stage.

5) Keep things consistent
There is no use in changing something just because. Find your basic setup, and keep it the same through the recording process. This way you eliminate the possibility of confusing anyone (or yourself) and causing a technical mess. If your setup is working fine the way it is, then there is no sense in changing what’s working.

I hope you can find a few of these tips useful. Perhaps you already knew some of them. When writing this post I thought of well over 5 tips, so I plan on making this a recurring post. If you didn’t find anything useful this time, maybe you will next time. In the meantime feel free to leave comments with your own tips. Or you could send me your tips via email at stinson[AT]producernotes[DOT]com. I might include them in a future post. Hope your recordings are full of creativity…

The following post was originally published on 5/5/08. Due to a data loss issue producer notes suffered on 6/2/08, I am republishing it today. It is the second of four posts that will be republished in an attempt to retain the integrity of producer notes.

eSession is a service that someone told me about around a year ago. I forgot all about it until it resurfaced somewhere else just recently. It’s a pretty cool idea of connecting music makers together via web based tools to collaborate on recordings. The community ranges from amateurs who make music in their spare time, to music industry professionals looking to make their next record. It costs nothing to join, but the use of the resources (various tools, community connections, disk space, etc) cost on a pay-per-use basis.

There are two ways to sign up: 1) as an eMember 2) as an eTalent member. An eMember is the standard signup method. An eTalent member is a musician or engineer who has at least 15 verifiable major label credits. The only difference between an eMember and an eTalent member is that eTalent members are publicly visible professional accounts. eMembers are not publicly visible unless someone does a search.

Please do not take this post as an official review, as I have not tried out eSession yet. The service simply piqued my interest because it’s a pretty cool idea, and it is free to join. But I am probably going to set up an account to get a better feel for how it works.

As the internet develops, the music making world continues to become an online collaboration. eSession seems to be a useful tool as studios and musicians continue to connect and collaborate with one another globally via the web.

What do you think? Is there anyone who is already using eSession? Visit the link and then come back and leave comments with your thoughts. [www.esession.com]

A few of my friends have been trying this little trick for recording electric guitars: They have been putting the amps in the car. My friend Andy Hunt told me about it [www.myspace.com/andyhunt]. He said a friend of his had to do this out of necessity. I then told another friend about it, J.D. Tiner, who tried it out too [www.glassonionrecordingstudio.com]. This trick seems to be a really good make-shift iso booth if you have no options, but need separation. It’s quick, simple and does not cost anything (assuming you already own a car). In a time where we are seeing an increasing number of home recordings with a DIY approach, this is a trick worth putting to use.

Rigging It Up
To get started you need to park your car close to your recording space. You are going to have three relatively long cable runs-a power cable, a mic cable, and a guitar cable. You might have the luxury of an outside electrical outlet near your studio door that you can use to cut down the length of your power cable. But the mic cable is going to have to be long enough that it can reach the mic pre, and the guitar cable is going to have to be long enough to reach the amp.

If you don’t have one long mic cable, you can just connect several together to make one quickly. The guitar cable can be extended by using two guitar cables and a direct box. Take the first cable and go from the guitar to the DI. Use the “pass thru” jack on the direct box to connect the second run of cable to the amp. I recommend using a passive DI, such as the Radial JDI [www.radialeng.com/di-jdi.htm].

The amp can be set up pretty much anywhere in the car. If you have an SUV, I suggest putting the amp in the back cargo area. Experiment with folding the back seats down to see how it changes the sound. If you drive a compact car or sedan, I suggest putting the amp in the back seat. You can also experiment here by putting the amp in the trunk, and then folding the back seats down. Using a smaller car is a little bit trickier because the tighter space will make it harder to find a stable place to set the amp. If you are using a tube amp in a small car, you want to make sure that you don’t lean the hot components of the amp up against a seat. This could prohibit the amp from venting heat properly, which could then damage the amp, or worse, start a fire.

While on the subject of precautions, it’s important to note weather conditions. Think twice before you attempt this trick if it is bitter cold or brutally hot outside. You are going to be putting your precious expensive equipment inside a car with no ventilation for hours. And absolutely DO NOT try this if it is raining or snowing. Taking advantage of a garage or carport can save you here. Use good judgement when setting this up. If you have any doubts, you probably just shouldn’t do it (don’t say I didn’t warn you).

The last step to setting up this recording trick is dealing with the cables. The best way to handle this is to crack a window and run the cables through. Then take some towels and seal up the gap. When micing up the amp, there are a variety of choices you can make. The most simple approach is to use the tried and true 57 close up on the speaker.

The car as an effect
Don’t be afraid to get creative. Feel free to use the car trick as a way to get a unique sound for the guitar tracks. Experiment with more than one mic if you have the resources to do so. Get crazy with the mic placement. Try different areas of the car, and different mics/polar patterns. Maybe a ribbon mic near the windshield, or an omni mic near the driver’s position. Perhaps even try recording a different instrument altogether, like bass or background vocals. The latter will be particularly tricky, because you will have to run long cables for the headphone system.

In Practice
Let me know how this turns out for you. I would love to hear examples of this trick put to use. Post comments about your experience with links to your recordings. Good luck! Hope you have fun with this one.

Photo by: J.D. Tiner. Please note: The above suggestion and link to the Radial DI box is NOT a paid ad. I simply think these are great DI boxes.