I want to acknowledge that there are people who go to engineering school to learn to mix and master music. Outside of having recorded at a couple of said schools, I have no formal training. The methods I use to record are in no way the best way to record, but they ARE the best way for ME to record.
Can I provide a pointer or two to my fellow aspiring homerecording musicians? Yeah, I believe I can, and hope that anyone that stumbles across this and wonders, “How does KC record stuff?” finds this useful.
I feel like I’ve been on a bit of a journey over the last six years, and there’s a distinct difference between where I was when I started vs. where I am now.
Amps and Mics
The current setup records four simultaneous tracks in a wet/dry configuration. I utilize a Radial Twin City ABY and JHS Buffered Splitter pedals to do this.
- Everything runs into a Wampler Ego Compressor
- From there, the signal is run into the JHS Buffered Splitter
- One channel of the JHS Splitter runs to a Focusrite 18i20 Gen 3. I then use Amplitube 5 to adjust the signal as needed.
- The other channel runs out to a Radial Engineering Twin City ABY
- Radial Engineering Twin City
- B channel goes through my pedal chain and into a Fender Princeton Reverb
- The A channel goes direct to a Mesa Express 5:25
Wet Signal
- Fender Princeton Reverb + Cloudlifter CL-2
- Sennheiser e906
- Royer R10
Dry Signal
- Mesa Express 5:25 + Cloudlifter CL-1
- Shure SM57
- Dry Signal direct to Focusrite 18i20
These four channels utilize inputs 3-6 in a Focusrite 18i20 (gen III) USB-C audio interface.
The benefit to this setup is that my microphones are static, with the exception of the SM57 occasionally being bumped out of place, but it’s easy to set back where it goes.
Pedals
While I do have some pedals that do not leave my locally made SIG Custom 12×12 pedal board, almost every drive pedal is switched in and out on an as needed basis. A Wampler Ego Compressor is set before the signal is split into the wet/dry configuration. The wet pedal chain runs as follows:
- Drive
- Drive
- MXR Timmy
- Wampler Metaverse (BPM controlled via Disaster Area Effects Micro.Clock)
- TC Electronic T2
- CKLAB LSDelay
- TC Electronic Ditto X2
Acoustic
Bass
In 2017, a couple of friends of mine and I recorded 12 songs over the course of five days. Over that time, we spent between 35-40 hours, and some of that time was spent writing parts.
I’d done something similar back in 2011, but in the span of that week, I only managed to get three and a half songs recorded. It was a pretty frantic pace to get things done, but we managed to get MOST of it recorded, but it’s a testament to how we all worked together.
The Guitar Setup
We setup an Egnater Tweaker 15 head and cab on a tilting amp stand and used a Shure SM7b to mic it up close. Even at a low 15w, that Tweaker was quite loud, and we pushed the amp as
close to breakup as we could to get something we were happy with,
tone-wise.
Phase Issues
We stuck a Sterling Audio ST55 condenser mic about two feet away as a room mic. I’d used this mic for podcasting and really liked how my voice sounded on it, and I thought it’d be a good room mic. In practice, this should have added some a nice room reverb to the mix, but it ended up resulting in some serious phase issues that I was not experienced enough to easily fix.
What are phase issues? Imagine a sound wave a line that curves up and down like a wave. Sound takes time to reach the mic and even micro seconds of difference that results in a misalignment of multiple sound waves. When one wave is at a peak, the other wave is at a valley.
When this gets too far out of alignment, the sound waves start to cancel one another out. While this can be used for a cool effect, it has a very particular sound…one that doesn’t work when every track has this issue. I’d later discover that I could manually move tracks to help fix the issue, a very tedious process. I’d have rather just rerecorded everything than do that.
There’s a tool in most DAWs that helps alleviate this issue, but our phase issues were at a point where this simple fix didn’t do the trick, and actually made it sound worse.
Ultimately, my friends were still happy with what we got and, as six of the 12 songs were their songs, I acquiesced and didn’t rerecord everything.
The Vocals
We used that same SM7b for vocals and employed a device called a Cloudlifter CL-1, a mic booster that adds about 27db to the mic’s signal. The mic was a solid choice for the vocals, but an equally poor choice for the guitar.
The Room
We recorded in the spacious living room of the house, which had tile flooring and a tall ceiling. The living room was an open floor plan that spilled into the kitchen, the dining area (where we set the PC up), and the den. We used zero acoustic treatment. There were a couple of couches, but they represented a small percentage of space compared to everything else.
It wasn’t good, at least not in my opinion, and I’ve never been happy with the way almost every guitar part recorded, and that sentiment is what led me to start reevaluating how I recorded guitar.
The Happy Accident
It didn’t take long before we came across our first hiccup, though it was quickly resolved. After recording vocals for the first song, we switched the SM7b back to the guitar amp. I started playing guitar to get levels and my friends said, “Uh, we can’t get it to stop clipping”.
Turns out, we’d left the CL-1 plugged in, so even with the gain on the audio interface turned down all the way, we were adding that 27db to the already loud signal.
As we remedied our error, I thought, “Can I not use the CL-1 to boost the signal of an amp set to bedroom levels to artificially recreate the volume needed to record guitar?”
2018
2019
Some people use the short cut of taking the same track, copying it, and EQing it a little difference. However, since the underlying recording is still the same, in the hands of most bedroom producers, it just makes the part louder.
- Fender Princeton Reverb: CL-2
- Sennheiser e906
- MXR R144
- Fender Vibro Champ: CL-1
- Shure SM57
- Egnater Tweaker 15 head/cab: SS-1 (in-line version)
- Sennheiser e609
I then play around with the levels of the four signals until I get a tone I want. I’d pick two of the tones I liked the combination of and use the other two as supplemental tones. I eventually found the SM57 on the Vibro Champ was pretty bright and nasally, so it was rarely ever a featured amp on any track.
Since I’d use the same 4 mics on the same 3 amps, I’d make sure that the 2nd or 3rd guitars featured a different combination of tracks. That, coupled with different drive pedals and different guitars gave me a good bit of variety.
Replaced the MXR R144 with a Royer R10
Although I was pleased with the guitar tones I got through Volumes One and Two, I’d come to see the MXR R144 as a weak spot in my mic lineup and wanted to replace it. I really wanted a Royer 121 but those are extra expensive, so I opted for it’s cheaper brother, the R10. While the R144 had become a 100% supplemental mic, the R10 is one that I continue I always feature, sometimes as the sole lead mic.
I would finish recording Volume Three with the R10 taking over somewhere around “Translucent Subdivide”.
Goodbye Vibro Champ, welcome to the Mesa Express 5:25
For a long time, I’d wanted to own an amp and guitar from my birth year. I fulfilled that by owning the Vibro Champ, and while it’s a great bedroom amp, I was never happy with the way it recorded, at least with the way I record guitar. Perhaps I could bought a bigger enclosure to upgrade the 8″ speaker to a good 12″, but that would have added to the cost of the amp.
Some time after I wrapped Volume Three, I went through a pretty severe bout of burn out. During this time, I reevaluted every instrument, amp, and pedal I owned. I came to the conclusion that it was time to find the Vibro Champ a new home. I thought about letting my youngest take it over, but opted to buy her a Fender Champion 20, and opted to sell the Vibro Champ.
With the money I made from the sale, I was able to buy a Mesa Express 5:25. I am absolutely, 100% over the moon about that decision. If I’m being totally honest, I’m tempted to make the Express 5:25 my “main” amp over the Fender Princeton Reverb.
Hello Strymon Iridium, so long little Tweaker 15.
My ol’ reliable Tweaker 15 had already been demoted after I’d bought the Fender Princeton Reverb, but after a serviceable 13 years, I put it up for sale and used the proceeds to buy a Strymon Iridium pedal, which is an “amp in a pedal” that has controls similar to an amp, three different amp models: a Fender, Marshall, and Vox, and different speaker simulations for each model.
In doing this, I also gave myself a path to run my acoustic guitar through my effects chain without having to rely on mic’ing my amps too.
This actually worked out quite well because I’d also randomly stopped in a local pawn shop and picked up a set of Royer M5 small condenser mics for mic’ing my acoustic. These, and the Iridium, were first put to use in the single “Go On”.
No more massive pedal board
I purged a lot of pedals. While I still have a fair number of a pedals, I reduced my collection by half. I now have a single 12×12 board that has a few mainstays and swap the drive pedals out as needed. I did also sell all of my delay pedals and picked up a Wampler Metaverse.
I also run a wet/dry signal now using a Radial Twin City ABY pedal. The signal goes through an Wampler Ego Compressor and then splits as follows:
- the dry signal to the Mesa Express 5:25
- the wet signal goes through the remainder of the pedal board and gets split between the Fender Princeton Reverb and the Strymon Iridium