nter the Home Recording Bootcamp - Ronan’s intensive six days of living and breathing recording with him and a wide array of guests from star engineers like John Rodd to music recording gear manufacturers like Peter Montessi of A-Designs, and Dave Pearlman of Pearlman Mics. Five to six students max, starting at ten o’ clock in the morning and ending at seven or later usually in the evening. All recording, all the time! Here we go.

The first thing that has become so clear to me now is that recording and making records is an art as much as it is science. However, it is really simple, as Ronan mentioned. “85 per cent of what one needs to know about making records can be discussed in three minutes,” says Ronan. “It all starts with finding a sound worth recording, placing a microphone in front of where the sound comes out from (we’ll talk about recording “direct” – meaning without a mic – in the next part of the series), running the low level signal produced by the microphone through a mic cable into a mic preamp to get it up to line level (meaning the signal level the recorded can “understand” and work with), and then taking that into your recording medium – analog or digital (4-track, Pro-Tools, Logic, Sonar, etc.) Now the only things you need to do are figure out if you want the sound loud or quiet and if you want it to be coming out of the left, the right, or both speakers (we’re only going to mention standard stereo recording here, but pretty much the same applies for 5.1 surround recording). That’s it. Pretty simple, huh? There’s a lot of hype out there about complicated gear of all sorts that adds to the confusion and takes away from the simplicity of it. But again, it’s really simple! Inspiration, to expression through a song, to honing your skill as a musician, to the instrument you use, to the mic, through the cable, to the mic preamp, into the recording medium.

Having said that the next obvious question would be “well, how do I get that sound that’s in my head into the recorder then?” “First, listen and evaluate” says Ronan. “Put on your favorite CDs and LISTEN.” And make sure you throw away any preconceived notions about what something is supposed to sound. For example, vocals are supposed to be clean (no distortion), rock records should have a lot of low end (bass), etc. Ronan explains: “many of the records we grew up with and love might not be what you thought they were. For example, in Rod Stewart’s ‘Maggie May’ the vocal is distorted, and early Black Sabbath records have no low end!” Keep in mind always that the recording aesthetic changes, like the music changes. “A lot of the drum sounds are now replaced or ‘enhanced’ by samples, there’s very little reverb on guitars and vocals, tone/pitch correction of vocalists is almost standard (at least in popular music), and most pop records are compressed to the limit.” There’s no wrong or right really on how you approach recording. “Unless you really screw something up, like use a busted cable or a faulty piece of gear” says Ronan, “everything you do, like how far away you stand from the mic when singing or what mic you use, is a creative decision.”

Tune in next issue when we’ll discuss microphone and direct recording techniques for recording guitar, vocals, bass, keyboards, drums and percussion, and more.