littlesongs
Member
I recently joined UU because it was by all accounts an inclusive community that catered to all skill levels. In that spirit, I would like to try to rekindle some warm cooperative feelings and invite others to add their own concrete suggestions for people who are new to recording.
I have a lot of experience and a few ideas to share on the subject, but they are being humbly offered as "a way" to do it, not "the way" to do it.
Being someone on a shoestring, I personally value gear with excellent design, substantial build quality, and useful features that enhance my ability to capture sounds on a small budget. My suggestions here are focused on recording ukulele and vocals, but they can be applied to most any strummed, picked or plucked acoustic instrument with vocal accompaniment. It isn't all about the gear though. It's about the space you record in too.
Let's begin with the practically free stuff that anyone can try to improve their sound.
First of all, you might want to grab a pad and pencil for some quick notes. Now, go to the place in your house, apartment, office, or loft that you use for recording. Just stand quietly in the room for a minute or two and listen. How noisy is it? Do the floorboards creak? Can you hear the heating or air conditioning? Do buses and trains rumble past? Can you hear the din of construction, traffic, or industry? Is the sink in the other room dripping? Do sub-woofers in a nearby residence make the windows, paintings or knickknacks buzz? If you play sitting down, does your chair make noise? Can you hear the neighbors' television? Are these sounds found only in parts of the room? Do they only happen at certain times of day? Can you pinpoint where these sounds are loudest and softest?
This is part of what engineers refer to as the noise floor.
Your voice and ukulele will be competing and blending with all of those sounds in the environment. If you multi-track, those sounds will be multiplied with each additional track. The fewer tracks you have, the less noise you will have to deal with when you mix. While layers of distant trains or wind chimes might be atmospheric, a crowd of arguing couples, a thick slab of refrigerator hum, or the clanking cacophony of steam pipes might not work well with your material. Even the soothing sound of the ocean becomes white noise if it is layered on itself.
Now that you know what it is going on in the background, you will want to see how the space reacts to live sound. Stand in the middle of the room and clap your hands together loudly once. If it just sounds like a clap to you, clap once more and listen. Turn in a circle and clap a couple more times in each direction. Wander around and clap in different parts of the room. Does it just go "clap" and die out super quick? Or does it kind of sound like a clap with something like a "snapap" or "prrrang" or "klllung" tacked on the end? If it does, you have flutter echo. It is very common in rooms with parallel walls.
Volumes have been written and millions have been made on soundproofing, but some things are easy to fix well enough for home recording without remodeling or big investments. Down the road you may want to buy bass traps and whatnot, but a bit of simple DIY can get you started on the right track.
A squeaky chair should be swapped for something quiet. Hanging thick curtains over a window instead of blinds is a good idea. A heavy knit blanket or quilt works well to tame a bare wall. A silk tapestry can cut down the reflections from the ceiling. Putting an old towel under a throw rug helps mute a noisy section of floorboards. It can also work wonders if you are a chronic toe tapper. You can shut off the heat or AC, or simply close the floor vent and put a pile of laundry over it for dampening noises from the furnace or heat pump.
A big full bookcase absorbs sound reflections. It's even better if you have two bookcases facing each other on opposite sides of the room with the spines arranged unevenly on the shelves. Moving a couch or futon to break up parallel reflections can help too. Even a carpeted scratching post or big houseplants in the corners can be of use. Check your configurations as they evolve with the clap test. Use your ears and imagination. Experiment a bit, try playing your ukulele, sing at a comfortable volume, see what you think and adjust it some more. If particular frequencies or pitches jump out at you, they might be resonating in the room. You will need to try to dampen them as much as you can without going so far that it is out of balance with the rest of the sound spectrum. You do not need a perfectly "dead" room, just a room that sounds good with you and your uke in it. Unless you live in a concrete bunker or have really low ceilings, you should be able to make it work with some tinkering.
Does it sound pretty good in the room now? With a little bit of effort, you have already made a really nice place to write and rehearse. The space will be easier to fine tune once you have done some recording, but you have a good head start. Once you do begin tracking, it is a smart idea to take the first few rough songs you put together and listen to them on headphones in another quiet part of the house. You should be able to get a good idea of what sort of remaining artifacts are being added by the room and be able to pick out any noises that might be bleeding into the recording. It will never be perfect, but you can rearrange things enough to make it decent.
The other part of what engineers refer to as the noise floor comes from the signal path.
Before I suggest any financial investments, I want to share a caveat: No matter how new you are to recording, it is never too early to buy decent gear. It is much easier to learn with good tools. Like investing in a genuine Hawaiian ukulele, buying a nice microphone or a clean preamp is miles better than accumulating a variety of exasperating cheap stuff that sounds bad, breaks easily and costs just as much money in the long run. Frustration is the sworn enemy of creativity.
Good gear will be useful and valuable no matter how big or fancy your set-up becomes. It is also much more likely to retain that usefulness and value when you sell or trade it. With the recent economic downturn and digital transition, there are bargains to be found right now. Especially if you think outside the big box stores. Used professional equipment can be an incredible value. Radio & television stations, commercial recording facilities and film production houses often liquidate things that are great for home or small project studios.
(continued in next post)
I have a lot of experience and a few ideas to share on the subject, but they are being humbly offered as "a way" to do it, not "the way" to do it.
Being someone on a shoestring, I personally value gear with excellent design, substantial build quality, and useful features that enhance my ability to capture sounds on a small budget. My suggestions here are focused on recording ukulele and vocals, but they can be applied to most any strummed, picked or plucked acoustic instrument with vocal accompaniment. It isn't all about the gear though. It's about the space you record in too.
Let's begin with the practically free stuff that anyone can try to improve their sound.
First of all, you might want to grab a pad and pencil for some quick notes. Now, go to the place in your house, apartment, office, or loft that you use for recording. Just stand quietly in the room for a minute or two and listen. How noisy is it? Do the floorboards creak? Can you hear the heating or air conditioning? Do buses and trains rumble past? Can you hear the din of construction, traffic, or industry? Is the sink in the other room dripping? Do sub-woofers in a nearby residence make the windows, paintings or knickknacks buzz? If you play sitting down, does your chair make noise? Can you hear the neighbors' television? Are these sounds found only in parts of the room? Do they only happen at certain times of day? Can you pinpoint where these sounds are loudest and softest?
This is part of what engineers refer to as the noise floor.
Your voice and ukulele will be competing and blending with all of those sounds in the environment. If you multi-track, those sounds will be multiplied with each additional track. The fewer tracks you have, the less noise you will have to deal with when you mix. While layers of distant trains or wind chimes might be atmospheric, a crowd of arguing couples, a thick slab of refrigerator hum, or the clanking cacophony of steam pipes might not work well with your material. Even the soothing sound of the ocean becomes white noise if it is layered on itself.
Now that you know what it is going on in the background, you will want to see how the space reacts to live sound. Stand in the middle of the room and clap your hands together loudly once. If it just sounds like a clap to you, clap once more and listen. Turn in a circle and clap a couple more times in each direction. Wander around and clap in different parts of the room. Does it just go "clap" and die out super quick? Or does it kind of sound like a clap with something like a "snapap" or "prrrang" or "klllung" tacked on the end? If it does, you have flutter echo. It is very common in rooms with parallel walls.
Volumes have been written and millions have been made on soundproofing, but some things are easy to fix well enough for home recording without remodeling or big investments. Down the road you may want to buy bass traps and whatnot, but a bit of simple DIY can get you started on the right track.
A squeaky chair should be swapped for something quiet. Hanging thick curtains over a window instead of blinds is a good idea. A heavy knit blanket or quilt works well to tame a bare wall. A silk tapestry can cut down the reflections from the ceiling. Putting an old towel under a throw rug helps mute a noisy section of floorboards. It can also work wonders if you are a chronic toe tapper. You can shut off the heat or AC, or simply close the floor vent and put a pile of laundry over it for dampening noises from the furnace or heat pump.
A big full bookcase absorbs sound reflections. It's even better if you have two bookcases facing each other on opposite sides of the room with the spines arranged unevenly on the shelves. Moving a couch or futon to break up parallel reflections can help too. Even a carpeted scratching post or big houseplants in the corners can be of use. Check your configurations as they evolve with the clap test. Use your ears and imagination. Experiment a bit, try playing your ukulele, sing at a comfortable volume, see what you think and adjust it some more. If particular frequencies or pitches jump out at you, they might be resonating in the room. You will need to try to dampen them as much as you can without going so far that it is out of balance with the rest of the sound spectrum. You do not need a perfectly "dead" room, just a room that sounds good with you and your uke in it. Unless you live in a concrete bunker or have really low ceilings, you should be able to make it work with some tinkering.
Does it sound pretty good in the room now? With a little bit of effort, you have already made a really nice place to write and rehearse. The space will be easier to fine tune once you have done some recording, but you have a good head start. Once you do begin tracking, it is a smart idea to take the first few rough songs you put together and listen to them on headphones in another quiet part of the house. You should be able to get a good idea of what sort of remaining artifacts are being added by the room and be able to pick out any noises that might be bleeding into the recording. It will never be perfect, but you can rearrange things enough to make it decent.
The other part of what engineers refer to as the noise floor comes from the signal path.
Before I suggest any financial investments, I want to share a caveat: No matter how new you are to recording, it is never too early to buy decent gear. It is much easier to learn with good tools. Like investing in a genuine Hawaiian ukulele, buying a nice microphone or a clean preamp is miles better than accumulating a variety of exasperating cheap stuff that sounds bad, breaks easily and costs just as much money in the long run. Frustration is the sworn enemy of creativity.
Good gear will be useful and valuable no matter how big or fancy your set-up becomes. It is also much more likely to retain that usefulness and value when you sell or trade it. With the recent economic downturn and digital transition, there are bargains to be found right now. Especially if you think outside the big box stores. Used professional equipment can be an incredible value. Radio & television stations, commercial recording facilities and film production houses often liquidate things that are great for home or small project studios.
(continued in next post)
