The basics of home recording

This article about home recording will show you:

• How good balancing works: volume and panning
• How to use a compressor in home recording
• How to use an equalizer to improve details in home recording

Good home recording starts with good balancing: volume and panning

Balancing is what most outsiders associate with mixing: to harmonise the volume of individual tracks, i.e. bass, bass variation in the chorus, different guitars, vocals, snare and so on.
Now we could write, whatever sounds good is good balancing. But that would not be very helpful. Of course, sound is very subjective, as Magnus from lala studios told us in his article about the cooperation of musicians and sound engineers. We want to share our experience with you anyway.

Step 1: volume level - which tracks need more power?

Keep in mind that so far you only have the pure recording. There are no digital effects, no equalizer yet. That will be added after we have balanced all instruments. Other effects or plug-ins will be added even later. For now, we concentrate on balancing.

After having recorded all instruments, you should first listen to all unprocessed tracks simultaneously, i.e. 'one above the other', then listen to all of them individually. Decide which elements you want in the foreground. Often the drums, especially the kick drum, are drowned out at first. So pull up the volume and listen again. Start with the kick drum (some call it 'bass drum') and other percussion elements and add the complete instrumental track later. That way, you will gradually get a feeling for how to 'lure out' instruments and elements that are important to you.

The balancing will never be quite finished. It is vital that it forms the foundation right from the start. However, especially if you use effects later on, you will probably need to readjust the balancing.

Step 2: panning - which track can be heard from which stereo side?

Until now we have thought very much 'in mono'. The great thing about stereo sound, however, is that different sounds come from different directions, thus creating a room-filling sound.

With panning, we separate individual audio tracks spatially from each other. We assign the individual instruments a place in the sound pattern.

Two different crash cymbals could serve as an example. Both are rather heavy on the high frequencies. So we could move one 40% to the left and one 40% to the right in the DAW. You can follow these general rules:

• Basically, let yourself be guided by the structure of the drum kit. Put the kick drum and snare in the middle, different cymbals and toms slightly to the sides. Use two rhythm guitar tracks and move those 100% to the left and right in the DAW.
• Put an electric rhythm guitar on the left and an accompanying piano or keyboard to the right or the other way round, as long as they are separated spatially.
• Split the background vocals: the vocalist with the bass voice is placed in the middle, 2 higher background vocals are moved 100% to the left and right, a midrange background singer is duplicated and placed at 40% to the left and right. In the studio, you have maximum freedom: grab the lead singer and let them also record some higher background vocals, with which they accompany themselves in the hook. Or you could record gang vocals with the whole band, which you duplicate and put left and right.
• It has proved successful to distribute higher frequencies further outwards and keep lower frequencies in the middle.

Compressors make your mix more dynamic and enjoyable

Take a look at an audio track. You see the wave form with both high and low deflections in various degrees. Very sharp deflections can be unpleasantly loud. A compressor compresses the track: it 'scrunches' the high and low deflections in the amplitude. The audio signal in the audio track therefore becomes denser, compressed.

Compressors make an audio track more consistent.

However, this also reduces the dynamics of the track, because the compressor removes particularly high amplitude deflections. So if you compress too much, you get a dull, 'dead' mix.

These are the main applications for compressors in home recording: bass, vocals, drums

The main purpose of compressors is to ensure that an interference-free, clear signal flows from the instrument into the DAW. The compressor prevents from the very beginning that the audio track will be recorded with too high deflections (amplitudes). Hence, the compressor is important because it immediately cancels out unwanted signal fluctuations, e.g. in passages that are conspicuously prominent or where very loud, unwanted signal peaks would lead to clipping without the compressor.

Bass guitars

Unless the bass player is remarkably good and experienced, they will produce unwanted noise with the pick or fingers at the pickups. This makes the tracks in the DAW very heterogeneous and difficult to edit. Unwanted interferences might cause clipping directly during recording. And if clippings occur as early as recording, you will hardly be able to remove these errors from your bass mix.

Vocals

The problem is basically the same as with the bass: only exceptionally practised singers are able to prevent 'outliers' in the dynamics. Compressors make the vocals more intelligible and vibrant.
Sometimes even a dynamic microphone will help. Incidentally, most advice on the Internet will tell you otherwise. A dynamic microphone might produce more homogeneous tracks than a condenser microphone, because it picks up a little less detail (mostly in the treble). Some condenser mics, on the other hand, pick up much more of the vocal dynamics. However, this is not always desired. It might take you a while to find the perfect microphone for singing. Our tip: simply sample several microphones also for home recording. Voices are so unique that it is often more effective to simply try out the different microphones than just to read about them.

Top microphone for the snare

Top microphone in this case means the microphone that records above (on top of) the snare, usually on a tripod. For the snare, you can smooth out the noise of the sticks a little with a compressor if you desire a clearer snare sound. That is why a compressor is recommended particularly for the microphone above the snare.

Equalizing is the easiest way to improve results in home recording mixes

With an equalizer you are able to fine-tune your tracks on frequency level. You can, for example, emphasize especially the lower midrange without generally boosting all frequencies in the midrange. This would happen if you would just turn up the midrange. Listen to your tracks at around 85 dB. On that level, it is easiest for the human hearing to register all frequencies.

If panning defines the width of the mix, equalizing determines the 'flying height' of each element in the mix by emphasizing or attenuating certain frequency ranges.

The frequency spectrum of equalizing

You want to support the bass range with your equalizer? But where does it start, where does it end? Magnus from lala studios groups frequencies like this:

If you fancy more home recording wisdom now, feel free to browse our magazine. Do you commit one of the standard recording sins? Is there a non-specific humming in your setup? Or do you need inspiration for the right mics? Then we will be happy to help you in our magazine.

Photos ©The Hirsch Effekt