The Secret To A Perfect Recording
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- čas přidán 10. 11. 2023
- I've been recording music for the better part of two decades. As with any recording artist, I've picked up a lot of tricks over the years in an effort to make my recordings more "perfect". But at some point I began to feel that all this tricks- the quantization, auto tuning, slicing, and flexing were actually taking away from my music. In this video, we explore what makes a recording good, and the answer is surprisingly unintuitive.
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This channel is about to blow up, I believe. It's too good to be this obscure for long. Good job, mate.
I appreciate it, I hope the algorithm blesses me soon!
This ties in to the idea that you can spend too much time on a particular idea or song. not sure who said it, but i once heard a quotation from an artist who described art as "working on something until you like it, and then stopping." Sometimes, the hard part is knowing when to stop!
I can't tell you how many times I've recorded a quick demo late at night, and then spent the entire next day recording the song, only to find I actually like the demo recording more. There's something about the rough and raw first version that is magical.
@@songsbyspencerhit music history is littered with rough demos making the radio airways as opposed to the polished refined “better produced” recordings.
Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You”. Kim Carnes’ “Betty Davis Eyes”.
The Kings Men’s “Louie Louie” and many more. Thanks for the video, great content.
Yep agree completely with this.
My own recordings I’ll get the drum track down, switch the click off and play to the rhythm.
Vocals….I reaaalllly hate using melodyne but if 90 per cent of the performance is great then I can live with sliding the other 10 per cent around.
When I record other people I always provide a ‘less produced’ and a ‘more produced’ version to the clients. For no other reason really than to show just how much life you can actually strip out of a song by ‘perfecting’ it.
Great channel by the way, been a subscriber for a year or so now. You’re doing great man
Thanks so much for the support, Richard! I really do appreciate it. It's true, people don't realize how much soul you lose when you "perfect" a recording.
@@songsbyspencer No trouble mate, I’m the same as you multi instrumentalist, songwriter and it’s top to see you out here doing it and not only that, you seem like a thoroughly good bloke.
I came to a place where i decided to track drums to a click and have the drums as tight as possible. I don't quantize, I record the parts until they are really tight. I use them as the base for everything else and don't use a click for any other tracks. I've found that going this route gives me great timing but still gives me vibe as I layer parts on it. It strikes a balance between tight and vibey that seems to work for me.
Great video as usual!
That's the way to do it. Play it until you get it right, don't cheat with the computer!
The comparison between your two versions is brilliant. It’s a perfect demonstration of what many of us older musicians mean when we gripe about modern music. Incidentally, this is also why I prefer old country blues to the later electric blues with drums. Those players swing the tempo all over the place and it keeps you on the edge of your seat. In Japan, the aesthetic concept that you demonstrate in this video is called “wabi-sabi” which roughly means “flawed beauty”.
Yes - it's the intentionality that is key here! My early recordings also sounded amateur AF, and I've also stumbled over the "produce it till it's milked dry of anything worth listening to..." phenomenon. These days, I don't use broad brush quantise on my drums; I just tidy up the main bits that are obviously 'too sloppy'. I use a lower factor of Q as well; almost never 100%. I want it to sound 'more in time', not 'perfectly in time.' Same goes for bass and guitar. A touch here and there to tidy up the most obviously bad bits, but leave most of the looseness in there. It's me playing - I'm not perfect, however much I strive to be. (To be fair, I don't strive THAT hard...) My main vocal I'll pay a bit more attention to. But if I find I'm editing almost every phrase, I bin it and re-sing. Backing vocals I rarely edit at all - I like doing multi-layered vocals so the pitches even themselves out... My notion is to capture "the best I am capable of doing at that time", not some mythical "best" that's not related to me...
You nailed it. The mindset of recording something to the best of your ability is what it's all about.
You should edit your background vocals' timing to make them in sync with the lead vocal. Otherwise the recording will sound like a mess
Keep at it Spencer, you are an inspiration!
Thank you! Will do!
Thanks, I'm glad I found your channel. Lots of interesting content to ponder. I am about to record my first record at home. I'm sure I will be referring back to your videos a lot for inspiration while I try to learn. Thank you again. 👍
you can do it!
This is the channel I hope has uploaded something every time I open CZcams. Absolutely loving your videos and jams!
This really means a lot. I appreciate the support more than you could ever know!
So good. Your ideas, commentary, song writing, composition, and humility. You are inspiring to complete projects. Thankyou for every upload.
Thank you so much for watching!
You're knocking on that green door down the end of the hall with the sign "Outsider Music" clearly marked on that door. Imperfection is what makes that music so interesting.
Great video! As usual!
If you have an electronic drum kit you should have a midi out on the brain that you can plug into your DAW. This would capture each individual hit as you play it.
Took me ages to figure out that quantizing midi drums took the life out of the song. This is such a good video on humanity in music
This is especially true with Midi Drums!
Always when I see you have a new video I grab a coffee, get comfortable and watch and listen cautiously. You never disappoint.
You're the best!
This is honestly a fantastic video! I'm all about making sure my productions sound decent and presentable, but I'm NOT going to overdo things.
I'll make sure all of my parts are well practiced before I record them, but I'm not going to quantize every single note/chord I play on guitar, bass, mandolin. However, I've been praised by local musician friends of mine (who seen me play) by how "tight" and "in time" I played with my drummer and band, and that I "never strayed away from the groove." Learned from one of my teachers to "ALWAYS know where beat 1 of the measure is." When I record, I'll program a metronome with varying tempo changes (slower verses, faster choruses, etc) and play along to that as a guide before I send it out to an amazing drummer to track on. There are some subtle discrepancies in timing, but as soon as I adjust those parts, the feel and groove are immediately lost.
As for vocals? My singing has improved a LOT over the years, and I'll supply backing vocals on songs I write along with others. When I track, I'll do a scratch vocal to get perfectly in tuned and overly autotuned to provide a guideline for my actual vocals. The only time I'll adjust pitch is when the some of the notes are just a hair out of pitch to make them clash with the harmony.
Definitely learned over the years that perfection is not key, and there's no sense in chasing it and overproducing EVERYTHING (just like that noticeable autotune I've heard, and you mentioned, on the newer Blink 182 album). All I expect are the parts to be done well and meet what I picture for the final product.
My thoughts exactly. I've seen a lot of musicians in the studio get a take that's "good enough" and then they use the technology to fix their lousy playing. Now to be clear, I don't have anything against quantizing, flexing, and autotune, because they are all fantastic tools. But I think people use them as a crutch rather than to fix the occasional hiccup, which is why a lot of music today sounds so robotic and soulless.
@@songsbyspencer That's EXACTLY how I view it. If there's a guitar part that's slightly, yet noticeably off, or a vocal that's noticeably off, but the rest of that performance is stellar, I'll tweak it.
I'm not about to spend an hour or more of my time fixing someone's sloppy, underperformed, poor take because THEY weren't prepared and think it's "good enough."
@@songsbyspencerand also due to f**king overcompression! Just slammed in the mix bus to make everything so loud to hurt your hears and so dynamically stale I want to throw my phone out of the window
A powerful message. Well said Spencer.
I use EZdrummer for my drums, and record guitar and bass that I play. On occasion, I may touch up very small sections here and there if the timing is off. Otherwise, if it is really out, I just re-record. I also like to record guitars wet (I kind of imagine I’m recording to tape and have to get the sound how I intend it when tracking)…I feel it helps to the intentional quality I am seeking.
I don’t sing, but I do work with singers and I use their vocals as they give them to me.
love it dude. this video was needed
How dare you making me think on a sunday morning?
Great video man, so glad I came across your channel a while ago. Keep it up! 🤘
The brain should never take a holiday! Thanks for the support dude!
Absolutely nailed it mate.
On par, brilliant commentary. Imperfectly perfect is the key 🤩
Really cool channel, man. So glad CZcams suggested you. Looks like the perfect place for amateur musicians. Fun stuff. Thanks for sharing.
Years ago my band was recording an EP. The singer put down a vocal track and we pitch corrected it. In the moment we all thought it sounded amazing because it was perfect. The following at the studio we were wrapping up the track and we re-heard the vocals with fresh ears and immediately realized how robotic it made her performance. Immediately took all pitch correction out. It has to feel real.
If I had a dollar for every time I thought something was good, only to be disappointed when I heard it the next day- I'd have like $436.
Great video! Many thanks for sharing your knowledge
Glad you enjoyed it!
I CANNOT BELIEVE YOU ONLY HAVE 7K SUBS CMON ALGORITHM GIVE THIS MAN HIS DUES
COME ON CZcams HELP YA BOY OUT!
Perhaps your best video Spencer. amazing.
I appreciate that! I like the video essay format that I tried in this one. I'm definitely going to incorporate that much more in the future.
Sonic footprint!!! FINALLY someone speaking a language i can understand. Thank you!!!
I've been tooling around with that thought in my head for ages. Thinking, why should my finished product need to sound extra crisp, clear & refined just because society & time would dictate so? If i want the music to have that old-fashined analog recorded sound, i should be able to do that without being critiqued for it not sounding modern.
I agree. I like rough recordings just as much as clean recordings. It just depends on what best serves the song and artist.
You are a great musician and content creator. I love your videos.
I appreciate that!
Makes perfect sense :)
Thank you for sharing this. Im trying to write a clever message but cant find the words. So thank you again
You are so welcome!
There's something to say about focusing on the song and not production. I feel like a lot of people over produce because the songs fall on the mediocre side. I feel like that it's much more prevalent these days when a person can write something and record it instantly. If you take time and write a kickass song, it's going to be a kickass song even if it's a little off tempo or if it's clearly recorded on a crappy old cassette recorder.
100%
My favourite production is The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed Album. It's amazing when you get to hear the isolated tracks how they almost sound like your mates messing around on instruments. It's many miles from perfect. But the final result is magic.
The Rollings Stones are the perfect example. Their recordings are super raw and rough but that's why they're so good. Sounds like a bunch of buddies just jamming, not worrying about how perfect they play.
so true!
You did not come up this weekend till today, Glad you're still smashing it Spencer.
Version 2 sounded cleaner but modern boring clinical Britney Spears no groove no swing..
It's hard as a solo dude to sound like a band...Prince, McCartney Wolfgang Van Halen and Todd Rundgren do well to name a few.
So your first one sounded better, instruments bleeding into and out of the groove ( spilling in and out of the pulse) more like a real band...as you rewind and layer.
I generally only quantize the Kick .
You've smashed it and inspired again Spencer.
The support means so much! Thank you
@@songsbyspencer You have the abilty to layer the instruments as a solo artist and sound like a band.
Wolfgang does it well...as well.
100 percent agree. I try to get everything as close to perfect as I can while playing but unless something is really off I leave it. It's true it does add character and realness. Is something feels like it's going to bother me every time I hear my song I fix that otherwise I'm okay with slight mistakes. The thing is most people wouldn't even hear the things I hear anyway because I'm so close to the song.
Inspirational.
Great video 💙 I always found it interesting how the tempo in the song In the Aeroplane Over the Sea speeds up just a little bit with each verse.
Which is interesting because every music teacher will tell you that speeding up is the number one sin in music!
@@songsbyspencer right?? I guess in this case it's done consistently, i.e. it only happens with each new (main) verse and the degree of change seems to be pretty much consistent as well rather than all over the place. But to me maybe the weirdest thing about it all is that he seems to not do this speeding up when he plays the song live, ha!
Completely agree! Music must have soul. No drum machines & no auto tune
Soul is what makes music good. I'm not fully against drum machines and Autotune because they are phenomenal tools. I just think they should be used with taste and not be used as a crutch!
I call all that the difference between human and mechanical performances. When performing "Live" even using some tools to help, what is played is what you get. In studio that dynamic is degraded by the machines perfection. Like almost everything in life, compromise (in between) generally is always the best. Stay safe.
Thanks for adressing this topic. I'm somewhere in between. I don't correct everything, I think more about the emotion during recording. I love metal music but these days, many albums are too perfect :(
I feel like the overly perfect sound is probably the most extreme in modern metal music. It's so to the grid, it doesn't have much character.
A great video!! I do find it hard to tell where the line is between tidying up a track and over producing (not that I am anything more than an enthusiastic amateur!!)
I do to believe it or not. I have to force myself to not tidy everything up. I'm so accustomed to trying to make things perfect (I'm a bit of a perfectionist), so to not just goes against my natural instinct. It's really weird because the music I like to listen to the most is rough around the edges, but forcing myself to do it has been a challenge.
This is why I still record to tape on a Tascam 388. No computer to get in the way, No sweetening up the song with multiple plugins. Just record and mix in the 388 that's it. Although....I am thinking of incorporating a DAW sometime in the near future.
I love using a computer but since I started on the computer, I had to to learn to not overuse it. If you're coming from an Analog setup, I feel like you'd appreciate the tools a computer provides without going overboard.
The thing I don't like about tape is you have a 24 track limit (at least as far as I'm concerned). I love having many layers in my songs (sometimes I have more than 24 layers just counting the vocals 😂😂)
great points about the production on the Blink album. I love blink and I really like the album. but the mixing has no dynamics and the drums sound like a computer played them, not to mention they are mixed on top of everything else.
The new heaven and hell album from Sum 41 has some incredible mixing on it.
Are any of your songs published anywhere, like to Bandcamp or a separate channel? I liked what I heard of your outro, but I can't find any links to the full thing, which confuses me bit as I assumed it was supposed to be an advert for your music. Great video, btw!
I appreciate the support! I'm currently working on getting my music onto all the streaming platforms. When it happens I will announce it on the channel and on my socials. I realize it's strange that it's not out there but it will be soon!
@@songsbyspencerLooking forward to it 👍🏻
👌
Jim Croce albums were recorded before we had these wonderful tuning machines, and when you listen RAELLY close...you can hear it's a bit out of tune sometimes. Still some of the greatest songs ever.
Jim Croce is one of my favorite artists of all time. He and Maury really had something special and everything he released was fantastic. He wrote about what he saw and what he lived. "New York's Not My Home' is a prime example. He lived in New York for a year and hated it. Then he wrote an amazing song about it. It's tragic how his story ended but his music is timeless!
Bingo!
come on algo give this channel some love
TRUTH
American Idiot is also theeee perfect example of this phenomenon. Also… The White Stripes!
Yes I love The White Stripes! So raw, so perfectly imperfect!
EQ it to rid the mid mud, and slap a DONE! sticker on it.
The desire to do the "perfect" recording can lead to not doing any recordings any more, because of the fear not to be perfect.
This is especially true in the modern world of social media. Everything nowadays is too perfect- I crave the imperfections!
72 seasons suffers from being over produced. ST.Anger suffers from being under produced.
This sounds better than both.
Neutral Milk Hotel is a rough recording? Try to withstand "Grazhdanskaya Oborona" then)))
It's certainly one of the roughest acclaimed and commercially successful albums I've heard. But like I said, I love it because of it, rather than in spite of it. It actually reminds me of the best band you could ever see at a Renaissance Fair.
Man I love your videos but I think that you missed the point a bit on this topic. Editing should not be about taking a bad performance and make it acceptable, it should be about taking a good performance and enhance it. Editing is a must if you wanna do competing sounding records. Obviously it has to be done with taste, without sacrificing the humanity of the recordings: that's what was done in American Idiot (that's one of my favorite records of all time), in which for example the drums were quantized a bit to make them sound professional but leaving some fills untouched. I think you're a brilliant guy, so please don't make it seem that editing is something that always sacrifices the human element; leave these boomer discussions to Rick Beato.
Let me clarify, I have nothing against using tools and technology and editing in a recording. As you know, If you were to only use raw performances without editing/processing, the recording would never be good. It takes compressors, EQ, panning, reverb, and a lot of other tools to edit the tracks into something enjoyable to listen to. These tools are a must and I use them on every recording.
For the tools that manipulate a performance, such as quantizing, flexing, and autotune- I think are great! I just think they're abused to the point where artists don't put as much effort into their performances as they should. Of course, you can fix a lousy performance in the software, but it's always better to practice and get the best possible take that you're capable of. My philosophy is to get the best possible recording I can, and then if I have to use a tool to fix the occasional performance hiccup I will.
@@songsbyspencerok completely agree with you! Glad to see it's not a random boomer's video saying "autotune quantizing and even sample replacement suck".
Dude, you use to sing your personal feelings... Why you feel lonely? I see the ring on your finger...
I'm in a good place! I really do appreciate you looking out. The day I wrote this song I was just feeling the blues, so I just went with it. Like everybody I have my ups and downs, but overall I'm very pleased with everything in my life.
And I will do a metal song one of these days! It's on my list!
@@songsbyspencer Thank you buddy 😀