November Birthdays 
Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing good! Thought I’d start a post to document what I’m up to at the moment in case anyone’s interested, has any advice, or if anyone else is in the same boat with trying to make music from their bedroom.
Just a heads up, these will probably be long posts. I’ll try and do a TLDR at the bottom of each post. I’ve put certain sections in bold in case you want to skip to a certain part.
A bit of background: I’m in a garage punk band called Harsh Buzz, but with the pandemic, we’ve decided to wind things down a bit until things calm down for various reasons. I’ve been into surf music for years and always had a few riffs kicking around that never fit in with HB, so with the band winding down, I decided to buy myself an interface and a couple of mics to see if I can put some riffs to use instead of them collecting dust.
Gear I’m using:
Guitar/pedals: my two main guitars are a Japanese Fender Strat that’s about 35 years old, the other is a new MIM Fender Player Mustang with P90’s. My usual signal chain is guitar > tuner > mini shaker vibrato > fuzz > tube screamer > clean boost > NUX atlantic reverb/delay > TC electronic flashback 2 > Behringer vintage delay (always on slapback) > Fender/Boss spring reverb (always on, because obviously) - all the delays/reverbs are used in slightly different ways. The NUX has a tap tempo delay and a hold/freeze function on the reverb. The flashback 2 is for oscillation and trails (the smash function is awesome). The fuzz gets kicked on before the tube screamer if I need a beefy dirty lead. At the moment I’m not planning on using the fuzz, tube screamer or boost, and probably using less of the delay. When recording I’m thinking my signal chain will be vibrato > compressor > vintage delay > fender/boss reverb into my Fender Sidekick 25 (it’s a beast of an amp for what it is). The amp does have a reverb tank, though it’s faulty, hence the reverb pedal.
Interface/microphones: I got myself the Behringer UMC202HD bundle that came with a condenser microphone and some headphones. The interface is great. Really simple. The microphone seems fine, the headphones not so much. If you’re shopping around for a bunde, I wouldn’t bother with one that has these headphones. They’re fine if you need them, but pretty uncomfortable. Maybe I just have a wide head. I’ve also got a Stagg SM57 knock off which was £18. Does what it says on the tin and is an incredible microphone for the cost.
DAW: I have no producing/engineering experience. I’ve recorded with bands before, but never been the one doing the recording, so I started with Garageband to try and get my head around it. I’ve started a Logic Pro X free trial and I’m gradually getting there with it making sense. I have 68 days left on the free trial, so I’m gonna try my best to record a five track EP that isn’t terrible and see how we go…
Current workflow/process: as I live in a block of flats with flatmates and neighbours everywhere, I’m waiting to pick my moment to record guitars. No one wants to hear janky guitars for hours on end, so at the moment I’m plugging straight into the interface that goes into the DAW and using one of the logic pro presets; Surfin’ in Spring. It’s not awful, but doesn’t really have that “feel” that I’m going for, but it’ll do for now while I’m building out the songs, making arrangements etc. The plan is to get all my ducks in a row with the drums, bass, any organ or piano I want to add, then record all of the guitar in one day using the same set up, mic placement and conditions so that I’m getting consistency throughout all of the recording.
I digress. Workflow wise, I record scratch guitar to a metronome, then program drums using logic’s step sequencer. The so-cal kit seems most fitting for what I’m trying to do, so that’s the sound I go for. More on drums later. Once I’ve got the drums how I like them, I record another guitar take that’s a bit less of a “scratch” take. Then I move on to bass guitar (DI’d) and I start trying to build out my arrangement.
The main thing I’ve learned so far is that less is more. This is surf music we’re talking about after all. For some reason I keep thinking I need to add layer upon layer upon layer, when really it just sounds muddy and is frustrating on the ears.
I’ve doubled tracked my guitar in one of the songs below, and it just isn’t really the sound that I need. I need to keep telling myself to strip it back and keep it simple.
Less: link
More: link
Unnecessarily doubled guitar (around 00:50 onwards): link
Tests I’m going to be doing: with that said, what’s the best way to record guitar? I’m going to try a couple of different methods and see which works best.
Method one: dynamic microphone only.
Method two: dynamic microphone + condenser microphone as a room mic (maybe 6-8 feet back)
Method three: dynamic microphone on amp, but running a split clean signal into the interface so that I’ve got a totally clean take that lines up with my wet signal should I need it.
Method four: dynamic microphone on the front of the amp, condenser microphone pointing at the open back of the amp.
My gut says that method one is the best way to go, but this is an exploration after all, and I don’t know what I don’t know or how things work until I’ve tried them out. Sure I definitely want the best surf sound I can get, but I also want to learn and understand why things work, or why they don’t work.
Drums: as mentioned above, I live in a flat with flatmates, in London, so having a drum kit just isn’t practical. Also with this method, I want it to be as convenient and cost effective as possible. I could go to a recording studio for a day, or hire a session drummer, but that costs money that I don’t have at the moment, so I’m programming drums in Logic for the time being.
To do this I use the step sequencer to create a drum beat that I can drag and drop into my session. Once I’ve done this, I convert it to midi so that I can tweak fills, velocity etc. I used to play drums, so I’ve got a good idea of how the velocity changes depending on the beat being played and how to make them feel more “human” - one sneaky trick I realised I could do was have a four count on sticks at the beginning of a song. Why would programmed drums have a four count? You don’t need them? Why indeed - it’s there to sell the effect, and it works like a charm. I’m proud to say that it’s gotten past a couple of producer friends of mine. One four-count at the beginning of one song and no one will question the drums for the rest of the EP/album.
Once I’ve got the drums arranged and tweaked in a way I like, I pull the bass drum and snare on to a separate track so that I can EQ them separately. I’ll maybe put a bit of compression and/or reverb on them to give it a bit of an airy, roomy kind of feel. In an ideal world I’d record drums myself, but it’s just not practical at the moment, especially with half finished songs.
Plans for mixing: not 100% sure how to approach this if I’m honest. Throughout the five songs, I’m planning on having pretty much the same instruments: 2 guitars, 1 bass, drum kit, some organ/theremin. At the moment I think the plan is to mix/master one song, then use that session as a mixed template, importing the guitars, bass, drums etc into an already mixed project and tweaking as I need to. In the back of my mind I feel like this is an idea that will probably come back and bite me in the butt, but I don’t trust myself to be consistent across five tracks when mixing them from scratch.
If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading! I’ll do my best to keep this updated as I go.
TLDR: punk band = quiet. Bought interface + mics. No recording experience. Trying to record a surf EP by myself in my room on a time limit. Ahhhhhhhhhhh.
NTE/REEF.
ps. I'll try and include some photos/videos in my next post - but my pedalboard isn't put together at the moment.
—Last Trout on the Left out now: https://linktr.ee/radioactiveelectriceelfactory
Last edited: Feb 10, 2022 04:05:24
