BiggerBetterBackbeat Studios » recording

Bad Stuff is Good Stuff – Recording Marcel Pereira

admin — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 05:13:44 +0000

Sometimes people would ask why I set up a recording studio. I do not really have a clear answer, but I know i really like recording original stuff. Every once in a while, a good original song “comes” along and I will get really excited about it.Recorded “Bad Stuff Got You Good” by Marcel Pereira recently. I remember I was setting up the mics when Marcel and Anthony started warming up by playing the song. “Nice song,” I thought to myself. But I wasn’t sure if it was a cover or original at that point. Run a quick google on the hook line lyrics and it brought me to Marcel’s website. That’s when I learnt about the story behind the song and Marcel’s little project of writing a song every week. (Check out more at Marcel’s One Song A Week website)Anyway, a little bit on the recording process. The vocals and guitars were to be tracked at the same time. During the miking process, we have to take into consideration the relative amount of bleed of the guitars into the vocal mic, as well as ensure the mic do not block their faces in the video =P.There’s no right or wrong in terms of miking. One traditional approach include using a figure-8 pattern to minimise the bleed from the guitars. In this case, we used a Rode NT1A for Marcel’s vocals. Marcel’s had a good tone projection and the Rode NT1A (in the position as shown in the viedo) was able to reject the guitar bleed quite well (incredible!). For Anthony, who was doing the backup vocals, we used a Blue Baby Bottle to capture a bit more of the air as well as guitar so that it blends well into the whole space of the sound.Marcel is submitting this song for the Noise Singapore competition. We did a little quick mixdown after the session, nothing too extensive. What you hear from the video is basically like 80% how they sounded in the room during tracking. I always believe the essence of a good song is in the song itself and a good recording begins from having a good room to track in. No amount of post-mixing can make bad stuff pass off as good stuff.In this case though, we got the “Bad Stuff” sounding really good…Bad Stuff Got You Good by Marcel Lee PereiraRain clouds comin’ in too fastA shroud of sadness that never restsFind a shelter on your windswept wayWinter’s troubles fade in MayPut love and hope on your speed dialThey’re trying to get to you, my childLike birds of spring singing at your doorLet them in, don’t cry no moreCHORUSOh… when the bad stuff got you goodNever worryMore than you shouldGod won’t give you what you can’t takeWon’t break the promises he’s madeWhen all else fails you’ve got me, don’t forgetI’ll do my best to pick up the slackCHORUSOh… when the bad stuff got you goodNever worryMore than you shouldBRIDGEDon’t sweat the small stuffDon’t sweat the small stuffLike you haven’t got enoughTo care aboutSo smile for me and steal my breath awayYou’re amazing and I want you to stayWe can face each day as it comesWhat good is life without the sunCHORUSOh… when the bad stuff got you goodNever worryMore than you should

Izotope Nectar Review – Is Nectar really that bad?

admin — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 11:34:05 +0000

Is Izotope Nectar that bad?

Just installed the 10-day trial version of the Izotope Nectar Plugin and jumped right in to use it immediately during a recording session. Usually I wouldnt do that (i mean, what if it crashed your system, right?) but Izotope is a name I have come to trust. It didnt take much for their promo video here to make me buy in all the “hype” …

And so during the recording session, I slapped it on to the vocal buss while tracking. There was no visible latency introduced. Really near-zero. What I really liked was the ease at which you can dial in a preset and, with some tweaking, get a comfortable reverb mix with all the right vibes. (There’s a doubler effect which you can use even during tracking).

Usually, I track vocals through a LA2A or 1176 with a light touch of reverb. But with Izotope, it gives me a very useful and fast option to audition different colors of compression/eq/reverb “strips” and pick one that’s right for the job on hand.

As engineers or producers, sometimes we are so trained or used to hearing the final mix in our mind based on the dry vocal takes during tracking, but for the singers or voice talents, they can only hear something pretty dry in their cans due to our judicious usage of plugins at tracking stage to minimise latency. But with Izotope Nectar, you can generously afford to let your talent hear something close to how you envisioned their voice would be mixed and processed at the tracking stage. I think that would help ease or coax the talent in delivering better performances as well.

This is my first impression of Izotope Nectar. 8/10 (havent tried the pitch correction though). Interestingly, I’ve come to realise that Izotope Nectar is being slammed in quite a number of forums. One even labelled it as the worst plugin ever by Izotope.

Presently, I actually already own quite a library of Universal Audio compressor/eq/verb/channel strip plug-ins that I’ve been using quite a lot on my usual voiceover, singing or band projects. But Izotope Nectar being a 11-in-1 vocal processing plugin with such simplicity in usage seems capable of speeding up my workflow in certain vocal projects (voiceovers, karaoke singing). It worked for me the first time “right out of the box” and I would love to try out the breath control option next on voiceovers.

Buy iZotope Nectar Complete Vocal Suite at the introductory offer price if you love it

Blue Baby Bottle Mic review (My Baby’s Coming Home)

admin — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 12:30:24 +0000

baby-blue-bottle-mic

I owned a Baby Blue Bottle mic before, very briefly, before it was damaged in a fire accident, during which I lost all mics (of course and a whole lot of other stuff). Interestingly, when I rebuild my mic cabinet, I didnt opt to replace the Baby Blue Bottle. I thought it was a mic that I could probably live without.

During that few months that I had it, it was used quite a fair bit on acoustic guitars and vocals actually. A very cool looking mic, nonetheless, but it wasnt a mic that would readily capture people’s attention and “wah”s right away…

Two years on, after numerous projects involving acoustic guitars, I dug out my old projects recorded using the Baby Blue Bottle and begun to appreciate the value of a Baby Blue Bottle. Some people call it a “dark” mic, as opposed to being “bright”. “Bright” stuff tends to impress people instantly, but, really, in the context of a mix, the “understatedness” of so-called darker acoustic helps gel a mix better than a bright one would.

Plus it works quite as well on certain vocals. Check out the sample clip of Smash Inc’s Neverland in the previous post. The vocals was tracked with a Baby Blue.

In any case, the Baby Blue bottle always looks to cute to resist. Hence, when the Baby Blue Bottle mic had a special price reduction recently at some US store, I decided it was time to restore it to my mic cabinet… My goto mic for acoustic guitar from now on…

Blue Baby Bottle Guitar Sample by backbeat

Live Multitrack Recording by Equinox

admin — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:11:56 +0000

The band, Equinox, from NTU Hall 16 was recently at Backbeat Studios doing a multitrack recording for Play-On Band competition. Thanks to them, here’s a video of the whole process. We managed to get quite a good separation of the individual instruments due to some careful positioning, as also because the band did quite a good job of controlling the overall dynamics… pardon the mono sound quality from Youtube though… the original video is too big to upload

They are in the finals, I heard… Congrats!

Mac or PC (for music recording)?

admin — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 15:54:48 +0000

Mac or PC for recording

so should you get a Mac or PC?

if you are first starting out on setting up your gear for recording, you probably have asked yourself this age-old question…

check out what Greg Price said recently… “There are two prerequisites to becoming a great audio engineer,” said Price. “First, you have to play an instrument and second, you have to use a Mac.” (see full article here)

musicians will swear by a Mac for doing anything and everything music. if you had watched coyote ugly, you would know what i mean. i thought i should get a mac too after watching that movie…

but “sadly”, the first time i tried recording on a Mac, it crashed. and who said Mac doesn’t crash? it’s a myth! and it should make you wonder seriously if the myth that Mac is better for music can “hold up” just as well…

actually, first of all, i think it depends on which platform you started out and grew out with. when i had to get my first computer, Mac was in the fruity iMac era. PC was also cheaper and more compatible with more applications (and games!!) then. so i started out with a PC, experimented recording and mixing with some early version of Cubase.

fruity iMacs…, that was ten years back. during the last decade, with the whole new branding of Apple, it’s just so cool to own a Mac isnt it? but is it better than a PC?

Price-wise,… we have this perception that PC gives you more power for the same buck. actually, if you did your homework right and compare the prices and capabilities, it’s more worthwhile getting Apple MacBook or Apple MacBook Promacbook pro than a PC laptop. And Garageband comes free to record your demos…

of cos, Garageband would not be sufficient if you needed more serious recording and mixing work done. you will need the quadcore Mac Pro. that’s where the price factor is skewed towards buying a PC. Between a PC desktop and a Mac Pro, the price difference is almost 1 is to 2. (and i’m comparing a PC desktop with 23″ LCD with a Mac Pro without display).

can you do what logic can do on a Mac using a PC? sure you can! Cubase 4 is pretty cool (err. if the bugs are fixed). Pro Tools is available in PC too. and for audio wave editing, i personally believe Adobe Audition is the best audio editing solution around and it’s only available in PC…. so Mac isnt necessary better than PC, right?

here’s the caveat: i’ve been a PC guy all this while, but i got myself a Mac and a new PC this year. after using both with a variety of applications… now, my christmas wishlist for 2008 is:

8-core Apple Mac Pro (with 30′ cinematic display)
Adobe releases Mac version for Audition

why? PC gets slower and more unstable somehow the more you use it (you get full of rubbish in your registry, while Mac is relatively more efficient in handling applications. there’s just so much hardware conflict in PCs these days that seriously the amount of time wasted troubleshooting it makes the extra amount you foot for a Mac Pro seems dirt cheap. imagine buying a car that suddenly stalls when you are into 4th gear, and you are late for your most important date…

so if you are getting your first comp now for making your own music, consider a Mac if you want peace of mind. bear in mind that, yes, Mac will crash, but not as often as a PC. but of cos, your music would not sound better on a Mac than on a PC.

one thing to note though, some hardware aren’t working too well with Leopard… so i’m hoping everything gets fixed by Christmas.. who know, i may have the lead on Mas Selamat by then to have enough money to fulfil my wishlist… and have plenty leftover… ha! (no, mas selamat is not dead!)