Recording
I've written a draft of a recording log for "He Never Knew" which you can currently hear at our page on garageband.com. In spite of what I say at the end of this log, I'm not completely happy with the final mix of the song, and I've received some nice suggestions from people on garageband, so I wouldn't say that this version is necessarily the "definitive" version, but it's probably not going to change too much in the near future.
I'm going to publish this log in installments, so come back for more.
Part 1
I thought it might be interesting document my recording sessions as I attempt to make the definitive version of "He Never Knew", which I refer to here as "Danny Never Knew" until I decide to change the name of the song.
By way of introduction, this recording log will probably be of interest mainly to people who want to record at home and spend very little money. Just to give you an idea of what my situation is exactly, we live in a two bedroom apartment. One of the bedrooms houses the computer and recording equipment. And here's the list of equipment I use on a regular basis and how much it cost me:
Hardware
- Processor: Pentium II running at 266 Mhz
- RAM: 64 MB SDRAM
- Hard Disk: 10 GB Seagate 7200 RPM
- Motherboard: 100 Mhz (I think. I can't remember the units used for measuring the speed of a motherboard. I bought it in 1998, if that helps.)
- Sound Card: Sound Plaster PCI 128 (I used to have a no-name sound card that stopped working when I upgraded to Windows ME)
Software
- Windows ME
- Cakewalk Pro Audio 7.0 ($280)
- MusicMatch 6.0 (for mp3 and wma encoding) (Free)
Musical Hardware
- Fender Deluxe Powerhouse Stratocaster-made in Mexico
- Ovation Custom Balladeer (vintage 1988)
- Peavey Bass that I bought for $60 including the case
- Egg shakers
- Roland TR-626 Rhythm Composer (vintage 1988)
- Fender 85 watt combo amp
Recording Hardware
- Dynavoice N/Dyn dynamic cardioid microphone ($200)
- Audio Technica Condenser Mic ($350)
- Alesis Compressor ($120)
- ART Tube mic preamp ($99)
I spent about $2000 on the computer back in 1998, plus about $280 for Cakewalk Pro Audio 7. I use the computer for more than just recording so I wouldn't really figure that in to the price of the recording setup.
I only think of the investment in terms of the equipment and software devoted to recording, because I had the instruments anyway. With that in mind I spent about $1000 on equipment and software devoted to recording. I don't have a decent sound card, and no mixer, so I don't have a professional setup, but I've been satisfied with the results. Everything on this site except for Laughing at the Blue Sky was recorded using the above setup.
Now, back to the song.
I already have a version of the song, and I remember that when I recorded it, I was so proud of it. I didn't have a CD burner yet, so I hooked up my tape deck to the computer and recorded it onto a tape that I then proceeded to play in a neighbor's car, expecting him to be very impressed by it. He wasn't particularly impressed with it. And Linda and my brother both said that they felt like the magic of the song was missing in that version. They had only heard it with a single guitar and voice, and they weren't into the drums and bass and electric guitar, or the maybe it was the arrangement...anyway, I figure that they just weren't used to it the way I had recorded it.
I started reworking it now that I've got a better mic and a compressor and a decent electric guitar, and my wife heard it and said that she didn't like it as much as the other version. I said, you mean that you want it to be just a guitar and voice, and she said "No, the way you recorded it before." Times change, right? Whatever she's used to is the right way. I'm the same way; I think many of us are.
When I started this session, I was intent on simply rerecording the same arrangement I had already done, just using better equipment to get a better sound out of the arrangement, but I can't seem to hang onto that idea. I've already started adding on additional guitar fills, and I know that I'm going to want to spend a decent amount of time on the drums to get them to not sound like a drum machine. And I don't like the old bass line so much...so there's goes my resolution to not spend too much time on this.
Why, you ask, do I care if I spend too much time on this baby? Don't I want to spend as much time as it takes to make it good, whether that's a month, two months...?
The thing is, my wife's pregnant with our first child, and I have this song and one more to record before I'm happy with the number of songs I've got recorded for this album I'm working on, tentatively titled "Even Though Street", which is the name of the street I live on, believe it or not. Actually, that's a translation of the name of the street I live on. It's actually "Af Al Pi Chen", which is Hebrew for "Even Though".
Anyway, my wife is pregnant with our first child, and we live in a rather small apartment. Two bedrooms, a kitchen and a living room. Right now, the second bedroom is the computer room and spare bedroom. When I record with my condenser mic, it's so sensitive that I can't record in the same room as the computer because it picks up the fan of the computer and sounds really shitty. So luckily, I've also got a 20-foot cable, so I can stand in another room with the mic. However, because of the lousy acoustics of Israeli apartments-they're made of concrete, so the sound bounces around like a racquetball-I can't stand in the living room to record because the echo that the mic picks up will sound horrid, so I stand in the little 3 X 6 foot hallway right outside the computer room. I have to shut the bathroom door, which is on one side of the hallway, and the bedroom door on the other side, and I have to unplug the refrigerator and close all the windows and hope that a bus doesn't go by because the mic picks up the hum of the fridge, the sound of wind and outside voices and the rumble of the bus. As soon as there's a gorgeous little baby around, I'm not going to be able to get the silence that I need in the apartment, so unless I can get my wife to take the baby away for a couple of hours at a time, and/or until we move into a larger space in which can have a separate room for a studio and for the computer, it's not going to be easy to get some productive recording done. Not to mention that I'll be too tired. Since she's been pregnant, all I hear from anyone I meet who is a parent is "Sleep now!" No one talks about how wonderful it is to have kids; how they make you smile and how much you love them...everyone says, "Sleep now!" So I'm anticipating that I'll be a bit tired and hard pressed to find time to record later.
SO, I started recording Danny a few weeks ago. The first part was easy. I set up the mic and the compressor (I'll insert the exact settings I used later. If you're interested, check back soon!) and I set up a bass drum track to act as a metronome. I've got my Roland Rhythm composer from 1987 or '88 plugged into the computer with a MIDI cable, so I can use its sounds, which are probably a bit better than the ones native on my SoundBlaster, which I still haven't figured out how to use. So I figured out the tempo and setup a bass drum track, and then I laid out a guide track with just me singing along with my acoustic guitar to have something to play along with as I lay down individual instruments. What's really annoying is that I found that the with this sound card, or with my new OS, Win ME, I don't know which is at fault, at around 40 seconds into recording a track, it goes wacky for about 10 seconds or so, losing time and bits here and there so it sounds as if I'm pressing the fast forward button on a CD player, and after that it's fine. Therefore, I set up the start of the song to be about 50 seconds into the track, and I press record and start playing 50 seconds later. Then I laid down an acoustic guitar track, which is the basis for the rest of the song. Then I recorded the lead vocal several times in a row, just in case I don't get a perfect take, which I always do. And I was right to do so, because I never succeed in singing a single take perfectly all the way through. So I cut and pasted the different vocal takes together into a single trach that sounded pretty good. I have to admit, though, that with this song, I didn't have to do that too much...just on the second verse and the end of the bridge. I'll have to rerecord the second verse, though, anyway.
To be continued...
Come back next week for part 2
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