Art vs. Engineering

Hi Thomas,

This is a really good question. I believe I answered this before on another forum....I tried to search for it so I could just copy and paste, but I can't seem to find it. Oh wait, I know where it is! It will be a long read of course...but I promise you it will be worth it and may help you out. :) This comes from a thread where someone asked about the bipolar effects of being an engineer vs. a musician. I've added to it and fixed it to suit your particular needs. :)

There are 4 things that go with the start of a recording for me.

1. Have a nice template that is already set up for you. All soundcard ins and outs, track names, busses etc. Even if you don't use some of the stuff, it's there if you need it and there are less things that need to be created and set up that take you out of your zone.

2. The sound selection

3. The tracking procedure

4. The musician and performance

3 of these things need to be there at once for *me* at all times or I'm lost. I've done it so often you just fall into it from repetition really.

Sound selection: When I'm working on sounds, all I think about here is how good the sound is that I'll be working with. Nothing else is going through my mind at this stage of the game. Sometimes I won't even concentrate much on the sound selection at this point because let's face it, if this is the first time I am trying to perform this idea, I'm probably going to need to just create a scratch track of it as a pre-pro idea and let it sink it. Of course you don't have this luxury when recording others...lol...but for yourself, the only clock you watch is the one that says "bed time!" So don't be too hard on yourself with a new idea. Relax and just print the idea if it's a new one. If it's not and this is an actual take, then of course you really hit the sound selection until you feel it's where it needs to be.

Tracking procedure: When I'm tracking, I'm tracking. I know the ARM button needs to be pressed or I already have it pressed and activated because when I was doing my sound selection, I was also checking the levels into my DAW. So ARM is already lit up for me. I do not try to mix or produce the music at this point nor do I think about it and get too far ahead of myself. I want the best capture and performance possible. Never try to mix or produce yourself at this stage of the game and keep a clear head concentrating on the tracking part. Of course if the sound is getting on your nerves, you want to stop right here and get a good sound first. LOL! But in all honesty, the way you set up your room for recording that guitar is how you have to set up your mind to work as one with the sound man in you, the tracking guy and the musician guy part of you. I know...easier said than done. but like I said, it's all repetition really and you just go on auto-pilot after a while. Just do it in steps like I do here if you can. Even if you find you need to write things down to stay focused. Nothing wrong with being human.

The musician: after I've tracked the part, I go into musician mode and evaluate whether the performance and musicality was good or bad. I don't let this hinder me as I'm tracking nor do I stop recording because I made a mistake unless it's a huge mistake or early enough in the tune to where I can just start over again. But I never worry about mistakes because I can always punch them in, ya know? When this is all done and to my liking, then I throw on another hat.

*Side note* Mixing and producing: I don't even go here until I like the sound of what I tracked as well as the performance. Now, there are cases to where we may sometimes create a blue print on how things should go. You know, you have a song idea and you try to sort of produce the sound as you track etc. I try not to do this yet and here's why...

Like I mentioned in the early part of my tracking comment, if I have never tried to record this song before, I use my first few takes as pre-production and may just stop right here and evaluate what I've done and experiment with other instruments or vocal harmonies etc just to see if there is something workable going on. If I played a cool guitar riff that is one of those "oh wow, this soo rocks!" kind of riffs and I can't come up with a melody for it, this is probably not a riff I would use HERE. So I like to let things sink in a bit unless of course I have this song mapped out in my mind already and know for sure it's going to work.
 
But even there...have you ever heard the sound of excellence in your head, printed it and cringed because it didn't sound right? LOL! I've had my share of throw-aways, that's for sure! Sure, this can be a bit more time consuming, but it can really help sculpt ideas if this is a fresh song idea. But a test run is always a good thing. This way when you start to mix and produce a bit, if you don't like what you hear, you reprint it with a different sound or performance and it's usually much easier because you've been down this road already.

So im my opinion, when you track, you track without losing focus on THAT part of the procedure. When you are satisfied with what you have, then you move onto the next phase of the game. I find that one of the biggest hinderances for people is when they start to mix or produce before they have finished the tracking. Or, sometimes they don't put enough thought into the sound selection or tracking performance and are left attempting to polish a turd. This is usually a huge time waster...but in other situations, can bring forth some pretty cool things that happen by accident. It's really a tough thing to get a grasp on though. There are so many variables in this field, it's too easy to move on too fast, forget something or just sort of get yourself stuck in a loop and stare into space. LOL!

But the object is to just be so in your world that it all sort of happens and you're no longer thinking about it really. For example, when I play live and sing lead vocals and guitar at the same time, it's not just something I do. I have to practice the guitar parts to the point of no longer thinking about them. THEN I can work on the singing aspect and all I have to worry about is being in key and remembering the lyrics. But it's hard for me to just do it. The same with moving around on stage like a lunatic. If you don't know what you're supposed to play that well, if you try to move or put on a show, chances are you're gonna blow it.

So that's pretty much how I handle this stuff, After you do it for a while, you just fall into your own little system and you find that you're no longer thinking about things the way you might have been a year ago. It all comes together in time....you'll see.  But you definitely have to stay focused and try not to do too many things at once. It will pull you right out of the mood. Also try not to be too critical. Sometimes an idea just needs to be tracked and logged so it sinks in.

And last but not least, not all song ideas turn into songs. They may at some point become "parts of songs". Every thing you record should be logged and saved in a folder with a little text file about it if possible. This way, when you write other songs, you have folders full of ideas that just may work in the new song. The only bad idea is the idea that isn't tracked or logged. You never know what you may be faced with. Some of the weirdest ideas I ever printed didn't make the grade for my own music. But low and behold, they worked perfectly in other peoples music...so you just never know.

The day you do too much and add stress into your recording realm is the day it becomes less fun. The key is to keep things fresh while always feeling some sense of accomplishment. Even if you just end up with a steady drum machine type beat and a guitar riff. At the end of the day, you can't get blood from a stone. I can't sit here right now and tell you "I'm going to write a song Thomas!" I can tell you "I'm going to work on a few ideas" but unless the full inspiration is there, I'm better off going for a ride in my car or playing Xbox 360 or messing with photography or something. So just enjoy it, always track "something" and never try to get too far ahead of yourself.

One last thing....sometimes it's really cool to mess with sound selection for long periods of time while logging your results. I've spent loads of time doing this sort of lab work. Like you did with the Dream Theater cover...keep doing stuff like that while logging the sounds youc ome up with. This is very inspiring and also challenging in a good way. Even if you don't play the cover songs exactly, challenge yourself to create the sounds associated with them. It's much less stressful to record a cover that is already written than it is to write something from the ground up. :)

Just as an example of what I'm talking about, I was talking to one of my friends about stereo guitar recording, effects and how to handle them. He uses chorus in a lot of his tones and struggled with how to make a chorus'd sound stay out of the mud zone. At the time, I had been working on sounds for Living Color's "Cult of Personality" for a demo my band was doing. This was the perfect chance to try and teach this guy a little about this as Vernon from LC uses quite a bit of chorus in his sound. So stuff like this can be helpful especially when inspiration hits you, and you want to reach for a sound that you know works. I do stuff like this all the time. We learn from our inspirations and sometimes just messing with tones is enough for me to feel I've accomplished something. The object in all of this though, is to always stay focused on each thing you work on to where you feel some sort of accomplishment at the end. Hope this helps, good luck brother. :)

-Danny

It is interesting how the genre can have a major impact on this too. It is very obvious for example the way Danny works is very different to me.

I produce a lot of music that is synth based for example and I can afford the luxury of wearing the composer hat initially and not get into any engineering much at all. For me this stage is much more about the music. Sure the sound selection is important but only to some extent. I do get some rough balances but that is about as far as it goes. If you get bogged down in engineering at this stage your creative composing flow will simply stop. Ideas are very delicate and can be likened to a very thin piece of cotton holding up something slightly heavy. One slip and its gone. I get all the music right first. It does take a little discipline, I don't have to be away from the computer to do this. But saying that I also can get ideas completely away from the studio and then I vocalise them and sing them etc into my phone. I will beat box the grooves etc. I might hear multiple parts in my head and vocalise all the parts one after the other.

Then I come back, transfer those rough recordings into the DAW. For multiple parts that have been vocalised serially, I put those onto sep tracks on top of each other so I can start to hear it all at once. Then I go about rebuilding the ideas using the instruments.

Once the music is settled I wear the engineer hat, go back to sound selection in more detail, print things to audio, play live drums if necessary, overdub other things, balance and use effects etc ie do the mix. Sometimes the music may get changed along the way too but not much usually. 

Lately I have been getting into the vocalisation thing in a big way. I am starting to think that if you cannot vocalise or sing your ideas then how can you get them out? eg the way George Benson can sing along with his solos as well as Keith Jarrett etc. I read somewhere that David Gilmour sings the guitar solos first then he learns to play the solos in unison with his singing.

Don't forget these are left brain (engineering) right brain (creative) things and you can keep them separate or work back and forth between the two. One can inspire the other quite easily.  

I think oil painting is engineering.

I know that sculpting in cast bronze is.





I've never bothered trying to separate engineering and art... they have always gone hand in hand.


My personal goal is to have all the techie stuff happen fast and easy due to familiarity with the craft while the artsy stuff is happening up in a happy place up in my noggin... a place that is protected from all the distraction the techie stuff thinking generates.



best regards,
mike

And last but not least, not all song ideas turn into songs. They may at some point become "parts of songs". Every thing you record should be logged and saved in a folder with a little text file about it if possible. This way, when you write other songs, you have folders full of ideas that just may work in the new song. The only bad idea is the idea that isn't tracked or logged. You never know what you may be faced with. Some of the weirdest ideas I ever printed didn't make the grade for my own music. But low and behold, they worked perfectly in other peoples music...so you just never know.

Hi Danny-


Thanks again for the words of wisdom! The paragraph I quoted really hits home for me. I refer to it as my collection of Mr. Potatohead parts. But as we were discussing offline, I generally am lacking a potato for them!


Hi Linear- I oftentimes use the recorder on my phone when ideas strike me and "sing" (if you can call it that) them to create a palette to use later.


Thanks to all for your ideas. I'll spend the next four days changing up the routine a bit. I'll try to focus on laying down scratch tracks only as a sketch for an idea that is in my head. I suppose if I have structure in place, I can then shift to sound-selection and performance detail. The hard part will be to control the inner ADHD that will make we want to start tweaking the mix concurrently.


Thanks again everyone!

I think it's all tied together in the home studio.....after all, one person generally wears all the hats.

So I start with the end in mind. When tracking, I'm thinking how I would like the track to sound in the final mix and do what I think is needed at the tracking stage to facilitate that down the road. 

Mostly that consists of getting good audio levels into the track and not much more than that. With guitar.... yeah I want the sound to be right to start with since I'm not using sims..... what I got is what I get. 

Once tracking is done, it's then a matter of the mixing and engineering and production all wrapped into one big ball. 

I have scrapped everything on occasion and started again since it was not happening like I thought it should.  No fear. 

It is easy to get sidetracked and chasing rabbit trails if you are not careful. When I find myself getting too focused on something that should rightly come later in the process..... I have learned to let it be and move on the the important things that need doing at the stage I happen to be on. It's easy to waste hours doing something that will likely have to be redone later anyway... so prioritize. 

Ah ... diligent song-writers and producers respond sympathetically and differently; +1 all.

I'm re-working a piece that makes me cry ("My Kite is Gone").  But emo (passion) works for me.  An emo may quirk, complain, believe, forgive, love, grind-an-axe, sing, cry, etc. ... pro or non-pro ... neurotic or sane.

For my vocals to get real, they must be DEEP emo and spiritual ... never some mushy copycat of xmas commercials.

Hook lyrics seem stronger with deep emo and spiritual convictions first and foremost  The same is true with portrait painting and communication per se.

.... engineering becomes automatic after that.  JMO/IMHO.

Thanks Danny.

As to how/why it's used... Here's a novel - sorry about that, bro. :)

First, I must say the import functionality is very comprehensive - it can optionally import pretty much everything including Global Tracks (that is, your markers, tempo/tempo changes, meter/meter changes and all) plus midi, audio + associated channel settings, automation and all. 

As I mentioned, for me it is handy because I do rely on versioning a lot. Not only versioning of the same arrangement, but I often have as much as 5 or 6 possible arrangements of the same song idea.

To illustrate that, say that I'm working on a funky mix and a rock mix, in parallel. The rock mix is going good but the chorus could do w/ a touch of funk and a hint of that wild midi clavinet part from the funk arrangement would be just perfect. That one hasn't been bounced to audio, but, if I did my homework, I probably saved that sweet sounding clavinet as a channel strip template and all I need to do is to load that strip and play the part again. Meh...

I don't know about you, but I can (and do) save lots of channel strip templates, the ones I need systematically seem to be the ones I overlooked, because I was just rehearsing a temporary part or groovin' away, you know... On top of that, I'm not sure I'll actually be able to top my previous performance and/or I don't have time to slip back into recording mode - or whatever lame reason I have... Quick solution: partial import feature. 

A couple of clicks and that midi part and its settings are extracted from the funk project and merged into the current one. 

Next, and that one is a matter of personal workflow, so it may or may not apply. I'm done recording and arranging, I've bounced everything and I am getting ready to mix. Personally, I like to start afresh and create a new project, with only the relevant audio, and maybe a couple of alternate tracks, just in case. 

First use of the selective import feature - importing all the tempo and meter info as well as the markers. Obviously, you could accomplish the same thing by just deleting everything except that info in your project and saving it as a new project to rebuild your song. I just like the convenience of being able to re-create a project from scratch w/ only one or two clicks.

As I'm working on the mix, I suddenly realize that the song could be a bit more exciting if only the drums were just a tiny bit busier towards the end of the last verse, to build up a bit before the finale. Or that the snare sound just won't work as optimally as I expected, or that I'd like to keep only the left hand pattern on the piano part for the break and kill the melody. 

Of course, I could re-open a previous version of the project, tweak there and re-export. Or I could use the selective import to add just what's needed in the current project, w/ the added benefit of being able to audition the changes against my current mix. Maybe muting all the melody wasn't such a great idea after all - I could use a couple of the more significant 16th notes here and there...

Another more obvious use, one which fortunately I haven't had to use - should a project ever get corrupted, selective import allows you to rebuild it entirely and to salvage a whole lot more than you would normally be able to retrieve in other DAWs - not just audio but markers, automation, midi, plug-ins, etc. 

Overall, it just makes it so that, no matter if you prefer to bounce things early on for whatever reason and/or constantly tidy things up as you go, you can have all the advantage of file versioning w/o actually having to re-open those old versions.

Aw, man - I'd just finished a little video to show you what I meant. lol

Oh well, at least I've learned how to use that Quick Time screen capture thingie. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr8fN2MCMvU

Rain


Aw, man - I'd just finished a little video to show you what I meant. lol

Oh well, at least I've learned how to use that Quick Time screen capture thingie. ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cr8fN2MCMvU

That is a very cool feature. Thanks for sharing. You sound waaayyyy different to how I imagined you would, not in a bad way or anything, just kinda like reading the book and then seeing the film and realising that you've been mispronouncing someone's name in your head all the time you were reading it if that makes sense. Usually I like the book better, but in this case I think I prefer the film ! ;)

 Hey Thomas,

 I fully understand where you are coming from in that first post. It was an interesting read to see how some of the others work through a project. Great ideas and different perspectives.

 In the past I tended to get bogged down with the selection process, whether that be sounds,midi drum patterns or trying to properly select a particular channel setting for my track or tracks.

  What has worked well for me is to occasionally take a few hours here and there to go through drum sounds track settings and those tons and tons of synth sounds to make a note of what I like, what I might use and what I will discard for my purposes. I will give myself  tech training time so that whan I decide to record I have a few things I understand pretty well ready to use. The longer you are into recording/playing/mixing the easier this whole process becomes,especially in familiarity with the technology and how it works.

 On the artistic end of things I have a simple setup at home. Even though I have an interface with a lot of input channels on it I simply have a mixer going into two of my favorite channels and into Sonar. Within 5 minutes or less I can have tracks armed and on the ready for anything I throw at it. I have all of my guitars and keys right there ready to go. Sometimes I might be playing something I have rehearsed that I'm playing live the next day and I simply hit record and track my performances. Unfortunately a lot of it is copyrighted material so I tend to mostly track only my original stuff usually.

 Being confirmed ADD I NEED to have it simple in the beginning.

 So I have what I would call a simple hardware template tied into a simple software template. I don't tend to get too far into templates because I don't want my stuff to all have the same qualities. I might have a few track templates that work well with certain instruments I regularly use.I don't tend to make dense mixes usually so there is no need for me to have a 60 track Kontakt mix templated. Just what works well for me.

  Once I have a pretty decent mix in the box then I'll put on my engineer hat and dedicate some time to the mixing end.

 Like others have said if the whole thing starts to stink, I'll simply throw it out or save it so it can take up space on my HDD. ( I almost never go back to an old mix I have discarded).

The problem is that people don't record music anymore like they used to. In the day, when there was an actual band involved plus an engineer, they could just sit there and play and work on the song and the engineer could tweak mic placement, EQ, comp, etc... The engineer could get it as close to what it should really sound like as was practical (time permitting), and could work on the band to get rid of frequency conflicts, and so forth.

After that, they could then take a break and then come back and record, and it's all there, the art and the engineering. Not that there wouldn't likely be stuff still to do, overdubs over the basic tracks and all that, but much of the sonics could be worked out before record is ever hit.

If you are recording yourself, all that goes out the window. You can't sit there and play four or five instruments at once to see how they are going to fit together. But, it's also, IMO, lazy and ultimately sub-optimal not to figure out what you want to do before you start doing it. Otherwise it's just wanking and the results show in most self-recorded content. Not that once in a while you can't just sort of muddle out something nice from scratch. But that's going to be the huge exception, not the rule.

It seems to me that the only way around this connundrum is to do a sequence of demos of the song before you do the real thing. Even back in the day, when all of the above benefits were there, people often did that. Just get the idea down really roughly with voice and guitar or voice and piano. Make sure it works as a song even in that rough form. 

Then start adding parts on that, without any real concern for performance, just for composition. Abuse it as required to sort of shake it into a useful configuration and work on possible part changes and such. Don't get caught up in engineering, just write the song. Cut and paste like crazy, whatever it takes because it's songwriting and composition, not recording.

Then do another one where you take it up a notch in terms of sonics and performance. Where it's really a rough demo of the song. Live with that a while and come back to it and listen to it after a bit of time away from it, and think of ways it could be improved. Tweak EQ and compression and automation and such to get the feel and blend the way you think it should be. Listen for frequency conflicts and how you could change the parts slightly to avoid them (instead of just fixing it in the mix.) Listen to how this or that part might play around this one other, or this is getting in the way of the vocal, etc...

At that point, you now know how every part should sound, what every part should be, how the parts can interact in nice ways and so forth. At least you know that FAR more than you would have had you just sat down and started screwing around. You can then set up to get the sound you want without having to guess, and you can play the parts and know that they are going to fit. And you can PLAY the dynamics, not put it in artificially at the end with automation. So you can concentrate on both sonics and performance because you've done the preparatory work, and you aren't trying to figure out what you are doing, you are doing what you know you want to do. Importantly, you can also use that rough demo as a backing track to lay down the first couple parts of the final take, since they are always problematic having to be played in a vacuum.


That, to me, is the answer, but few self-recorders probably ever do it, me included most of the time. It's so much easier to just sit down and wank really, because time is limited. Whereas sitting there for days with an acoustic and working out chord changes and melodies, and then doing multiple demos is a lot of actual work.
 
But, if you look at the truely great albums, it's doubtful that one single song on any of them was made by just sitting down and screwing around. They will almost by definition have been slaved over, with multiple rough demos (at least of the sections) having been done, and with hours and hours of work on composition and tone before any recording was done.   And you'll end up with a far better, far more organic, or varied, interesting, emotional, and rich song in the end if you do, IMO.
 

Yeh, if you have a band, then nothing I just said above is relevant. My whole post is about the self-recorder, who doesn't have a band and therefore they can't sit there and work out the parts interactively. If you have musicians standing there you can quickly make adjustments and find nicer parts. If you are a self recorder, you have to start putting down parts long before you can hear it as a whole, and that makes all the difference. Working out the song in a sequence of incremental steps is the self-recorder's version of having a band.

BTW, I have that documentary. It's called Bring on the Night. It's quite good. I like the versions of the songs (which became the Dream of the Blue Turtles album) better than the actual album, because I'd watched the documentary many times before I heard the album. As with Lanois' Black Dub stuff, I came to prefer the sparser, less produced versions.

It's pretty useless to do that. Everyone knows that it's not what it sounds like, it's what it sounds like in the mix. What you are doing is the worst case scenario of solo processing, in that you aren't even waiting until the mix to solo. Unless you are very experienced and know for a fact that you want a particular sound, which might not sound particularly good at all by itself, then it's really a waste of time to work like that. If you have at least the basic backing tracks in a rough form, you can work out the EQ and compression and dynamics and use those as a guide for a subsequent effort.

You can always do an iterative demo if that's more comfortable, where you never really start over again but just cycle around, re-recording parts and improving them as you go, but always with the overall song behind you for inspiration and to help you get the natural dynamics (and to make the instruments serve the vocals.)

If you teach yourself to listen as you play, you can do a LOT of mixing with your fingers, by finding the parts and tones that blend with the other instruments. It's hard if you can't isolate yourself from the source enough, which is a common issue for us self-recorders in small spaces. Sometimes you have to extrapolate from what you are hearing in the air to what you know is being captured.