I was reading the "The three most important elements of mixing - Compression, EQ and Reverb. Yes?" thread. There was something about "good" tracks not needing much if any compression, EQ or reverb. Did I also read that a "good" track required very good equipment?

So what are the elements of a "good" track? What does one aim for when tracking?

Thanks         

The 3 important things.  More important than gear.

Performance.

Performance.

Performance.



You may be able to redeem a good performance made on average gear, but no amount of gear will make a duff performance sound good.

I knew this one was coming up next ;)

I was actually planning to start the same thread up also, as we appear to be all reaching a consensus on the mixing side of things over on the other thread.

Will post some opinions when I have some free time!

And I think the third thread in the series should be "appropriate composition and arranging techniques". That pretty much covers everything, albeit in the wrong order...


To start things off, I think there are two main considerations - getting a nice SOUND of the instrument and getting it to fit appropriately in the mix. The order of importance varies as to which instruments take precedence over one or the other in this regard. Eg, normally a vocal part you want to get the sound right, and fit the other instruments around it, maintaining as much of the sound you want as possible, but the vocal is the key. Other music, a guitar sound might be the important one and you fit everything else around it.

Matt...don't look now but .... it is already up

trimph1


Matt...don't look now but .... it is already up

Maybe the first one was supposed to be this one...or is that the third one.

D'oh...

However I went about I'd rather end up with this....

http://forum.cakewalk.com/tm.aspx?m=2581851

Than the beautifully recorded sound of me trying to extract my fingers from between the strings and pickguard....

There's only really one rule to good tracking, it would seem to me, which is that it sounds appropriate for the need. There's not really any way to formulize that necessarily. What's appropriate for the need might in some cases sound pretty crappy in isolation, certainly sub-optimal in a lot of cases compared to what you would do if you were just recording that one track. Depends on what you are trying to achieve.

Ultimately, everything fitting together in a nice way sonically means that everything has to be frequency restricted in some way or another, unless you are recording a solo instrument. Once more than one thing is happening, you have to constrict the frequencies of the things happening so that they don't step on each other at worst, and at best combine in a pleasing way.

You can do that with your fingers while playing (how you pick/hit/pluck/etc... and where you pick/hit/pluck/etc...), with pedals, amps, guitars, EQ pedals, wah-wah pedals, mic position relative to the source, amp EQ, guitar pickup settings, filter settings, drum and drum head selection, and outboard EQ on the way in. All those things (and way more I'm sure) are available to constrain the frequency content of a track in various ways so that each part ends up with the frequency real estate it needs for the track. You can use those thing sin combination to chip away at the low end, high end, and middle as required, to box it in to where you want it.

You can step back from that another step and reduce the need for those things by an arrangement that minimizes the coincidence of potentially conflicting instruments playing at the same time.  And, as mentioned above, some instruments will likely always be the 'featured' indstruments and they get to win where conflict exists. And some instruments may be way in the background and be very frequency constricted. Or some extremely high passed guitar may be balanced against a bass so that it sounds nice together, whereas it would be tinny by itself. All that kind of stuff.
 

I'm going to elucidate a little on the performance aspect as it may have sounded glib but if I do have an area of expertise then this is it, far more than mixing which is a fairly recent departure that I've taken up since I haven't been able to play for the last few years.

Playing in a recording environment for the last 35 years if nothing else has brought me into close contact with many legends of the British recording scene, and there is a reason that certain studio musicians become legendary and yet often remain relatively unknown as far as being 'out there' public performers, basically it is because playing live and recording are two completely different animals.  It's the main reason why you'll have seen an acts album liner notes over the years showing different personnel to the ones they tour with.

So how and why do these same people get called in for session after session and appear on hit record after hit record with careers often spanning several decades?  These then are a few of my thoughts on the reasons why that is.

Economy, is a really big factor, these people will get the work because it makes financial sense to get something in the can in a matter of hours rather than days.  They don't confuse a recording studio with a rehearsal room.  If you are thinking of recording something don't even think about it unless you can play your part, in the bath, hanging upside down from the ceiling backwards or whatever, this isn't such a key thing for the self-recordist as you can hit record and rehearse and you may pick up something good along the way but I still think it is a good idea to 'work up' for a 'proper' take, just imagining you are paying $500 an hour for the priviledge of being recorded should sharpen you up.  If it is a band scenario then everyone has to take it to the extreme, make sure everyone can play their part without needing the rest of the band present (they might have to do just that).

Just as a studio isn't a rehearsal room it isn't a stage either, while your drummer may sound fantastic on stage demonstrating all his best fills in EVERY song, when recording very often less is more, make sure everything that's played NEEDS to be there.   Repeated breaks throughout a song that is recorded for posterity often sound boring after one or two plays so be strategic with any fills and frills and save them for where a set-peice bit of virtuosity actually does something for the structure of the peice as a whole.  It's true for all players not just the drummer anything that isn't supporting the structure is usually better left out, then if you do want to feature an impressive solo everyone will notice.

Another thing to remember if you have the slightest feeling you've fluffed a take, YOU HAVE!  I used to waste hours going back and forth from kit to control room to listen to the last take to see if I'd 'got away with it'.  The good take is the one you had 100% confidence in when you laid it down.  Accept no substitute!  Remember if there is a flub, a hesitation, a slight deviation it's been captured forever, just do it again and get it right this time.  If you can't get it right it's either because, going back to the other points, you didn't rehearse it enough or you are trying to pull off something that maybe not required.

So a few things there from the FWIW dept.  for anyone interested.

after you've done enough recording, you'll get to a point where you already know the answer to your question.


ultimately, you want the 'transcendent' performance.

but good tracks, means one thing to an artist, another to an engineer.
 
 
the best deal of all, is to get both..
a great capture, of a great performance.


usually, that means many many rehearsals, many many takes, before you get the one thats 'perfect' on both sides of the fence.


when you can listen to a track, and go 'whoa'.......then you're there.

but good tracks, means one thing to an artist, another to an engineer.

Yeah, and if he didn't get it when you gave it, give him something else as well...

that's right!

always have 'plan B.'