Cheap & Weird Gear

(Be sure to click the play button above and listen to some samples of my production work  as you read through the blog below. Production work consists of that  from both me and from my production partnership Watson & Nash.  For more info visit: http://www.shaywatson.com )

No matter how cheap your gear is, you can still get a great sound. Well, that’s true to a degree. Rather, no matter how cheap your gear is, you can trick 80-90% of your listeners into believing you tracked your music in a ‘pro-studio’. You can get great sounding records with minimal and sometimes very dated gear…but with limitations.

A lot of recording musicians run out and purchase expensive mics, pre-amps, compressors, etc. thinking it’s going to solve all their sound problems. (When I refer to more expensive mics I’m referring to $2,000 + or Pre-amps/compressor that run $2,000+). Over the years I’ve seen friends and clients drop thousands on mics and pre-s thinking that it would greatly improve the quality of their vocals and thus greatly improve the quality of their tracks. …Home recording folks, you are probably expecting me to say that dropping the G’s doesn’t improve the sound. If so, you’ be wrong. It DOES improve the sound. …but here’s the question: Does expensive mics and pre-amps improve the overall quality of the song (track) and the listener’s desire to hear the song? Not really…well, maybe to elitist audiophiles.  Ask yourself, does the general and even trained listener, in most cases, even hear the difference?

A few weeks ago, I had a client that purchased a couple $1,200-1,500 mics along with a pre that ran around $1,400. The client and I (at no extra cost to the client) decided to recut some earlier vocal passes, which were recorded on a less expensive mic and pre, using the new gear. Once I comp-ed my client’s new vocal passes (recorded on the more expensive mic and pre) I pulled them up in Pro-Tools alongside the old vocal tracks (Recorded on a $300 mic/$100-200 pre). The newly tracked vocals, on the more expensive mics and pre amps did, in fact, sound better.  There was less ‘graininess’ in the raw track and the passes on the more expensive gear was more detailed and possessed a certain clarity.  This is not to say that the vocal tracked on the less expensive gear was bad.  It just involved a lot more post recording work (eq-ing) to get it on par with the later vocals.  After importing the new vocal tracks and pulling them up against the originals, I then began to eq the original  tracks using the new vocals as a reference. After around 30 minutes, through eq-ing with various plug-ins, I had the old and new vocals sounding somewhat close clarity-wise.  The graininess was still slightly present at the top end and the eq-ed vox sounded a little thinner but not enough to effect the overall recording once the musical tracks were added back in.   True, a pro audiophile would know the difference but the average listener and even most trained musicians would not be able to tell the difference (with the instrument tracks playing in the background). The old vocal track needed more work, so I kept tinkering with it.  Eventually I got the vocals so close that differences between the passes could only be detected by the discriminating ear at in the upper range of the vocal.  Again, the upper range didn’t sound bad just a little thinner.  The various passes were so close that I tried a little experiment. I edited a few parts of the old vocal in with the new vocal, blending them to the point that the blended lines could not be easily identified, if at all, by the average listener. I let a couple people listen to the blended vocals (mixed in with the track) to see if they could pick out the edits. No one picked out the edits.

Here’s another example:

A few years ago I was producing a project for a popular label artist (I’ll spare the artist’s name here in respect to confidentiality…however if you look back over my client roster of the past 12 years this would have been about 6-8 years ago). The artist had just finished up touring his latest radio release from his former record and was anxious to release some fresh, new ‘organic’ material. We holed up in my house for a couple months, originally with the intention of first writing the record, running the songs by A&R, tracking a couple songs and then getting a budget to record the rest in a major studio later. It became evident early on that this was not the artist’s intention. The artist rather us write and record simultaneously at my small home studio. At the time my gear was more limited.  If I was working on a big project, I’d just rent a studio for the week and pay the players, however, this was not the direction the artist and I were heading with this ‘organic-out of the box’ project. The artist’s sentiments, not my sentiments, (I loved the artist’s previous record) went something like this:

“My last record was a finely crafted slick polished turd. I don’t care what the label guy says…My fans want something real. They don’t give a crap if the banjo was tracked with a Neumann-This or that or a freakin’ Folder’s coffee can! Let’s just give them something clean and raw and great!!!”  (me paraphrasing the artist’s sentiments)

I’d tracked the shoe-string/live from the living room way before on earlier Ten Mile Drive recordings but was very nervous about tracking this way for a label project.  Since I used my house more for writing and programming keyboard/synth parts and loops, my true audio gear (mics, etc. was limited). On hand I had a few cheap, less than $500 mics, a cheap DBX Pre-amp Compressor, my workstation, a couple good active monitors, a bunch of blankets to sound proof certain rooms (Including mine and my wife’s master bedroom), a big open living room with hardwood floors, a couple hallways with fairly good acoustics and a few great ears.

I was somewhat apprehensive about our set up but I did believe strongly in my ability to ‘hear’ what needed to be in the track and what did not need to be in the track. To be honest, I was a fan of the artist that I was working with and respected his musicianship. I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to produce his next label project and I also didn’t want him viewing me as ‘one of them/the A&R/the suits’, so I made it work. At one point I had the artist tracking guitars in a back bedroom, a latin percussionist with congas, bongos and timbales in my hardwood living room and a bass player tracking in my programming room (which also served as the control room). My aim was to listen and get each instrument sounding clear and as close to exactly what you’d hear live as possible. I allowed room noise in the perc tracks but deadened the room for the guitars. The process, however is not the point of my example. The end result is.

The end result: After quite a bit of raw, guerilla-style home recording we walked into a multi-million dollar facility to do a few small overdubs and have the tracks mixed & mastered. Once the mix engineer pulled the tracks up, the engineer, studio assistant and owner all asked where we recorded the tracks. Why? Because, in their words, the tracks sounded so clear, detailed and amazing! They all absolutely loved what we’d given them. I shot a knowing “don’t you dare tell them how we tracked this thing” glance at the artist. Best to let them think we spent a pretty penny.

Honestly, it’s great when you can afford great gear (and know how to use it) because it makes your job much easier but, as you can see from the above examples, you don’t have to have it to get quality. It comes down to your ears and your vision for the ‘sound’ you are going for…and a great mix engineer:)

Below are a few vocal samples through different mic-mic pre/comp chains: