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[invisibl]

here's a trick called "jeeping" that i learned from a dub guy. split your bass from tape to a second track. filter everything out above 100 or so. find the lowest freq you can push ( 40-60 )
compress the shit out of new low track, and mix it with your original signal. it's pretty bad ass, and works great on a kick as well.



The BeeGees usually delayed the kick drum 3 milliseconds behind the downbeats on their dance hits. Also, the first Linn Drum machine had a built-in delay of 5 milliseconds for its kick drum sample.(Name Deleted)urged me to remember those two magic numbers for delaying kick drums: 3 and 5.



Low sub bass synth lines like in techno type tracks can be difficult to read on small speakers. If the normal compression or eq doesn't work try multing the bass to a second channel and adding lots of narrow q 300-900hz Eq. You may also want to filter out the info below that. Just add a touch of this in the mix. If this compromises the sound of the synth too much try adding another bass playing the same part one octave higher--just mix in a touch of this for clarity.



Sometimes run a track backwards through a compressor if the compressor artefacts are too annoying on starting transients, recopying it to another track.

It takes a couple runs to get it right, but if you zero in on it, you get unnoticeable compression. Well, you get dynamic compression without the nasty chopping at the beginnings of sounds or sucking in-between sounds



Placing any mic properly will usually result in better sound than even the best mic in the world if it's placed improperly.



...More to come
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[invisibl]

Mic the singer with a standard close voice miking technique and your favorite mic. Get a good sound, with a nice strong signal at the output of the preamp.

Then, place two more mics further back, one about 3 feet away (mic number 2), and the other about 5 feet away (mic number 3) These could also be a stereo pair, or further away, whatever.

Noise gate the output of the two distant mics. Mult the output of the main vocal mic, and use it as the key to the gates on the distant mics.

Set the thresholds of the noise gates such that when the singer starts to belt it out, mic number 2 fades in. Set the threshold of mic 3 such that when the singer REALLY belts it out, mic 3 comes in. Apply weird effects, delay, flange, verb, whatever to mics 2 and 3, and pan them hard left and right. Feed all of this back into the headphones of the singer as they track. Now when the singer really lays into the track, their vocal will open up into a stereo ensemble with some crazy results.

Now the singer can work the main mic live (this is the key) in such a way that he/she can have mics 2 and 3 come in on the chorus and get some pretty awesome effects in realtime.

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The "buried cowbell" trick on up tempo tracks is certainly a no-brainer, but a lot of people don't know about it, so bear with me if you do know about it:

After every thing is recorded, you go back and record a cowbell playing straight quarter notes on an open track. You tell the player to push the beat slightly, roll off the bottom end a bit, and recorded it.

During mixdown, you bring up the cowbell till you can hear it, add a touch of reverb, then lower the level to where it just about disappears completely. It adds a great touch of drive to the track, and groups are usually blown away when you hit the mute button on the cowbell track, and they hear the energy of the track drop way down. It sounds stupid and hokey, but it really works.

Another cool trick is for vocals on ballads; you have the singer cut a track of whispering the vocals in a monotone in time with the actual vocal, then you pull the level down to where it's almost inaudible; it makes the vocals sound very big.

Motivating musicians is a big problem in a studio, where they're so worried about playing perfectly, they lose the emotion. One thing that irks me are polite drummers. I usually tell drummers to imagine that the snare head they're hitting is just a cover and the real snare head is a 1/4" below that. Most of the time, it works.
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[invisibl]

Two Mic Phasing
Requires two mics. Put amp in middle of room, or a couple feet out from the wall. Use mic 1 to mic the speaker directly. Hang a relatively directional mic 2 from a stand or the ceiling over an amp that’s out in the room. While playing, swing the mic over the amp, either front to back, side to side, or (my favorite) in a circle above the amp. The phasing effect is often at a lower frequency than you can get from an effects box, and it doesn’t have the characteristic grainy electronic sound of a processor.
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Furnace Reverb
I’ve never been satisfied with electronic reverbs, particularly the ones I can afford for my own work. Using a PZM or omni mic in a stairwell works nicely, but recently I found that mic’ing a furnace register upstairs with performers downstairs gave a great ‘canned’ reverb sound that was really entertaining. Another recording involved a punk band in the basement, with a distant ambient PZM taped to the body of the furnace. I don’t recommend this latter method for anything other than a very overt effect.
When you run preamp hot you end up with a more compressed and perhaps more aggressive tone but it doesn't have the openess and the natural dynamics of the sound source. When you run a preamp cold (less preamp gain-more output fader level) it can become more open and alive but perhaps a little safe sounding. You have to use your ears because every preamp reacts differently depending on the input source as well as the microphone.
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[invisibl]

For anyone who will be recording soon and doesnt know of this link then go to

http://www.kset.org/music/pub/ChatWithHarvey.doc

and read this. It is VERY long but VERY informative!!

The original can be found at www.prosoundweb.com

peace
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[saratone]

I've played around with the mic ing technique you mentioned (Gated mics at vearying distantces....works well if you want to capture the natural reverb of a room as well....Brian Eno used that technique in recording one of Bowie's songs.

[invisibl]

[saratone]

you could be right....he did a lot of work with eno and bowie