Polycentric, Inc.

Learn how to record music!  and maybe listen to some of mine, too?

[polycentricinc]

Making guitars sound good.

There’s a few things that aren’t easy to notice, but are done on all recorded songs. 

Here’s the three most important rules of making guitars sound good:

1. Hard Panning - This means that you need two distinct guitar recordings to make a good rhythm track. (or lead, it sounds great too.)  What I do, since I don’t have a real amp, is record the guitar part two times, played separately to a click track.  If you have an amp and two microphones (matching or not), you put them both on the speaker in slightly different places, and record two mono tracks from that.  Then take these two guitars tracks and pan one completely left, and one completely right.  This is how ALL rock guitars are done, ALL OF THEM.  NO EXCEPTION.

2. Click track - I already showed you how to make one.  The reason is essential.  This is one of the biggest differences between professional sounding music and bad recordings.  Timing is the basis of all music.  If you can’t play in time, you must learn how to fake it.  If you send your music to anyone, even friends, they will probably not want to listen to it if it isn’t in time.  It’s tedious, but absolutely essential.

3. Volume! - I can tell you this AND I can provide examples and proof and everything, but you’ll ignore me.  The fact is, guitars don’t have to be very loud.  Especially distorted guitars.  But you’re going to do it anyway, just like the Foo Fighters.

Volume priority for rock music: (Loudest to quietest)

kick/snare drum vocals bass guitar guitar toms keyboards/others cymbals

That isn’t absolute, but it’s a good guideline.  Reason is, guitars and cymbals cut through, they always do, no need for crazy volume.  Bass drums get drowned out in mixes, so prioritize it.  It must have presence.  I prefer bass louder than guitar for the same reason, bass doesn’t always cut through.

[polycentricinc]

Garageband Lesson 4

So, you’ve got a master track all ready.  Let’s make some midi tracks and make some sound.

Switch back to the software instrument editor, or just press [command+option+N] to create a new track.  I know you already have a midi grand piano there, but make a new track anyway.  It will give you this pop-up: 

Choose software instrument for now.  We’ll cover real instruments in a bit.  So, it basically makes another grand piano track.  Make sure the second piano is selected, and click the browse tab, so you have the list highlighted here:

Choose drum kits and then choose either hip hop, pop, or techno kit.  Doesn’t matter yet.  We’re making a click track, because rhythm is usually the easiest part to make first.  Click the edit tab, and activate the compressor.  It needs a little adjustment:

Pretty much like it looks there.  The threshold needs to be fairly high, ratio all the way right, attack all the way left, and gain around +1.0.  This is just to boost the “click”.  You can turn it up or down as needed from here too.  (Use the Gain control.)

So, now that you have a drum kit selected and ready, [command+click] anywhere in this highlighted area:

It will create a region for placing midi events.  Double click this region to bring up the midi editor:

I have mine set to the score editor already.  In order to make a click track, you just have to place very low F#’s in this region and then loop it.  You can set the editor to use quarter notes, but it’s not necessary.  Mostly because drum events have their own duration and aren’t set by the midi note durations.  So, place 4 quarter notes at the low F#, like this:

Once that’s done, you want to loop that for a while.  So go to the region:

If you go to the top right of that region, the cursor turns to the looping tool.  Click and drag that right for as long as you want.  If you move down slightly, to the bottom right of that region, you can click and drag to make the region longer, without looping it.  If you click in the middle, where the cursor is normal, it will move the whole region.  Notice I moved the region before looping it to give some empty space in the beginning of the track, this is always useful.

Once the click track is setup, and looped, you will want to either play or hum along or something to get your tempo.  Adjust it here, make sure you’re in the master tab:

This doesn’t have the be done now, but if you’re recording real instruments, the tempo can’t be adjusted after you have recorded, so it’s important to get it right.

You can either program some midi for that grand piano or begin recording a real instrument at this point.  I will move to real instruments, so make a new track. [command+option+n]

Choose real instrument.  Never choose electric guitar, even if you use one.

Once the track is created, you need to connect something to it.  So plug in your USB audio interface if you haven’t already.  It will usually auto-detect and switch to your interface automatically, but if it doesn’t, or if you want to check, click Garageband from the menu bar and click preferences, the click the second tab, Audio/Midi:

Make sure the Audio Output and Audio Input both say whatever your interface’s name is.  System setting is default, and I don’t have my interface plugged in at the moment, but once that’s set, exit the menu.

Now, go up to Track on the menu bar:

Choose the one hightlighted there, “Enable Multitrack Recording”, this allows for arming more than one track at a time.  Also select “Show Monitoring for Real Instrument Tracks”.  This just makes life a little easier.

Next, you need to make sure your interface is ready to go.  It has it’s own controls and volumes, all of which is analog, so adjust it actively and make sure you read your manual to know what it can do.  Then make sure you are on the right interface track here:

Change the input source if it’s not correct, depending on how many channels your interface has, and which one you’re using, this takes a second.  You can also control the monitor signal here, if you want.  This simply allows you to hear or not hear what you are doing through your headphones or speakers.  It can cause feedback, so I prefer to leave them off unless I’m using headphones and actively recording.

Next take a look at the track:

Along the bottom of that, from left to right, we have the arm track control, the track mute control, the track solo control, and the monitor control toggle. 

Arm track - this “arms” the track, it’s usually toggled automatically as you switch tracks, but if you are multi-track recording, then you must setup your inputs and arm tracks manually.  I will go into detail on that in the drum recording lesson.

Track mute - this mutes the track.  All other tracks will play.

Track Solo - this mutes all other tracks.  only the Solo’d track will play.

Monitor control - this is a shortcut, simply turns the monitor on or off.

So, plug in your instrument into your interface, check the GB input, turn the monitor on and you should be getting sound through GB.  The track meters should be working, make sure they don’t peak constantly.

This is a guitar recording track I made:

The track “no effects” (default name) is setup to record guitar.  Multi-track recording is not enabled here, ignore that.  But notice the plug-ins.  If you set the compressor up like the click track, it will be fine for recording.  The next plugin you want is Amp Simulation, this is a digital guitar amp processor:

There’s a lot of options here, for models, I find they all have their uses, and all can sound pretty good.  I like the American Bright Gain model for one guitar, while I use the British High Gain model for my other guitar.

Once the volumes are decent, you can play with these settings until it sounds good to your ears.  The final fine tuning will come later, when you’re mixing the song, so just make it sound good for now.

Then, add reverb:

Here’s a subjective statement:  everything sounds better with reverb.  Even reverb sounds better with more reverb.  But don’t get carried away, it’s too easy to just make everything sound spacey.  So setup the reverb similar to the setup above, don’t go over 25% on the time, and don’t go above 35% on the reverb volume, and basically always turn the original volume up all the way.  The color control is a nice feature here, it allows you to control the frequencies of the reverb signal.  Leave it neutral for now, but don’t forget to check back later and have fun with this.

Finally, EQ.  Just use a preset patch called “Improve Guitars”.  It’s a decent baseline.

Your guitar (or other instrument) should sound pretty good now, your tempo should be set, and you should be ready to record something.  Pressing the ‘R’ key starts recording.  

Here’s a few nice keyboard shortcuts for recording:

R                      - starts recording Spacebar        - stops recording, pauses playback, resumes playback Command+D  - duplicates a track Command+C  - copy a region or track Command+V   - paste Command+Z   - undo Command+U   - turns GB’s built in metronome on or off Command+G   - turns automatic grid-alignment on and off

Next lesson will be making some drums.  But I’m going to write a brief thing on arranging recording rock guitars.

[polycentricinc]

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[polycentricinc]

Garageband Lesson 3

The Short One.

We need to talk about peripherals real quick.  If you’re serious about making music, then you need to have an accurate way to listen to it.  This means a good set of headphones or speakers.  The idea is to have no amps or eq in this signal, just honest sound.

I use Sony MDR-7506 Dynamic Studio Headphones.  They were about $100 but I’ve had them for almost 8 years and never had a problem...except when I lost them, bought a new pair and then found my old ones...haha.  I also have a small Sony stereo surround amp powering a set of Magnapan speakers.  I use both about equally when mixing.  Headphones are almost essential to record instruments.

Which means, if you don’t intend to use anything but midi, you have it easy.  You don’t need headphones, microphones, instruments, or any of that. 

But if you want to use real instruments, you need a way to do that.  The best way is your instrument into a nice preamp, into an audio interface of some kind, into your computer.  But most people can’t pull that off immediately.  So, solution 1:

This thing is reasonably cheap, and converts an XLR (microphone cable) into a headphone jack.  These are designed to plug microphones into video cameras, but will work to plug a mic into most computers. (not mine though).  This relies on your sound card to convert the signal to digital, which isn’t ideal.

Solution 2:

This is how I get my signals.  It’s an Akai EIE pro.  It’s 24 bit, has 4 channels and can accept other audio interfaces to have even more channels.  But my first interface was a 16 bit single channel one from M-Audio, and it was perfect for a long time.  There’s tons of options for these things, so shop around.

Recording drums will be it’s own lesson.  So here’s the rundown for the rest of the band:

1. Electric guitars - can be done direct into GB, by simulating amplifiers to great effect.  That’s in fact how I record guitar. 

2. Acoustic guitars - can be done direct into GB as well, but don’t do it.  Acoustic guitars sound terrible unless Mic’d.  or if you spent $1500+ on certain Taylor guitars.

3. Bass guitars - Great when done direct into GB.  The very low frequencies are hard to catch with a mic, so it’s better to put bass direct into GB and use virtual amps. 

4. Microphones - one microphone, the Shure SM57, can do a great job recording all the above instruments.  Which is my next point:

Buy an SM57.  This is one of the most durable practical mics you can own.  They do vocals well (males especially), they do electric guitar amps well (arguably the best), they do acoustic guitars well (mic the sound hole, near the neck), and when combined with a direct signal, they do bass guitars well too (especially slap bass).   They also do brass and woodwind instruments well, and hi hats and ride cymbals, and toms and snare drums, etc.

I think that covers it.  Next lesson will be going from silence to noise in GB.

[polycentricinc]

Garageband Lesson 2

Plugins+the master track

I’ll talk about the functions of a few plugins, and then show you how to setup a basic master track for a new song.

Plugins/effects: 1. Compression - used to control volume.  It works by “squeezing” the signal when it gets too loud, and adding dynamic gain when the signal is too quiet.  It works by setting an gain amount and a threshold, and setting the duration of the effect’s grab (attack) and release on each note. The idea is to use compression to control your overall volume, especially spikes and quiet parts.  However, too much compression leads to a flat, one-dynamic kind of sound.  Use the attack and release to allow slight fluctuations while still maintaining control.

2. Reverb - used to add presence.  It literally creates or samples reverberations, ideally sounding realistic in the process.  It can really do so many things that it’s hard to describe.  But if you stood in a cathedral and yelled, that would create great reverb. For mixing, reverb is pretty simple: almost everything sounds better with a little reverb.  Don’t go overboard though, it’s easy to do.  The problem is, that reverb takes up a lot of space in the mix, so unless it’s what you are trying to do, don’t use a lot.

3. Delay/Echo - used to create repeated notes or beats without automation.  It’s very fun and easy to use to great effect, however if you want to use delay right it must be very subtle.  Now a lot of techno and rock songs use delay obviously, and do just fine.  but I like to use it to thicken up cymbal hits and snare drums.  It’s also used on vocals, almost always.

4. Equalization - eq for short, it’s used to cut or boost frequencies.  There’s many debates on eq usage.  I prefer to cut offending frequencies, rather than boost pleasant ones.  Some people only do it that way.  Some people only use eq to create odd texture layers. There are some guidelines though.  This chart shows some of them:

Courtesy of http://digitalprosound.digitalmedianet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=8953

Fullness, fatness, clang, ring...very technical terms there, but you get the idea: EQ is a fickle thing.

Ok, ready to apply some of this?  Here’s the master track in GB:

The highlighted spots show how to access the master track.  I’ll show you how I setup a new master track for a song.

Once you’re there (above) first click the picture on the left side of the echo plugin, and lower the volume to about 50%, then click the picture for the reverb plugin and do the same.  Also change the “reverb color” to the middle...0%.  Next, click the blank plugin spot near where it says master effects and choose AUMultibandCompressor from the list.  Then go to the next one down, eq and click the picture to edit it.  Simply check the analyzer box in the bottom right of that window for now. Now click the picture to edit the multiband comp:

If you click where it says “Details” it expands to show all the controls.  Go ahead and set the pre-gain somewhere between +12 and +15 dB and the post gain around -4.00.  This will prevent any sound from being too loud initially, which can cause distortion, or even damage to your speakers/hearing.  Leave the attack and release alone for now. Just as a note, there’s several points where you can EQ your mix, this is one of them, but IMO the worst place to apply it, so only use the EQ in this compressor as a last resort.

Next, the 4 compressor bands:

They’re labeled band 1-4, and have their corresponding frequencies above them.  The highlighted points can be dragged left and right to change their range, and each band can be selected to adjust it.  Extremely useful, but don’t mess with that yet.

Next, the threshold and headroom.

These two points control the heart of the compressor.  if you lower the threshold (down+left on the line), it will add more compression to that band, and thus quiet it.  For now, go through all 4 bands and raise the threshold to between -5 and 0dB, leave the headroom alone.  This gives you a nice balanced place to start making music.

Finally, for reference, this is where you change the song’s key/tempo/time signature:

While you are here, go ahead and click “Save Master” below that stuff and save your master as whatever you want.  When you make a new session, you can just click your preset from this list and have a master track all setup and ready to go.

One small thing:

The ruler in this poorly highlighted area is the song’s measures, or time, depending on the view you set using the meta “LCD” display at the bottom.  But scroll right and this area ends abruptly with a purple marker which indicates the end of your project.  Click and drag that arrow way to the right to give yourself room to work.

[polycentricinc]

Garageband Lesson 1

Basics.

If you’ve used GB before, then you can skip this, but it’s nice to review and make sure you know what/where everything is.

So, open GB.  It will ask to create a new song or open an existing one, choose new project and it will prompt you:

Name the song whatever you want.  Don’t worry about tags or anything else.  The tempo can be set if you know the bpm, but it’s not important yet.  I also leave the time signature and key where they are.  If you place midi events manually, like I do, it doesn’t make too much difference.  And all of that can be changed later. So, create the session.

It should look just like this:

The layout:

1. Tracks will stack on the left.  You can have a lot, not sure how many. 2. Editing of recorded or sampled audio happens to the right of the tracks, sampled or recorded material will appear as either purple or orange regions, and midi will appear green, or sometimes orange, under certain conditions...don’t worry about that now. 3.The keyboard appears automatically (command+K to hide/show it).  you can switch it to a musical typing mode, but it’s not terribly functional. 

Going to more detail:

From the left to right: 1.  This “LCD” display shows either time, measures, a tuner, or the project details (key, tempo, etc.)  Click the music note displayed to change it’s function. 2. There’s two buttons to the right of the screen, the first one activates the looper.  It adds a bar to the top of the screen that can be set to loop regions of your song.  A useful feature.  Next is the Metronome.  It’s not very loud, so not very useful, IMO.  I prefer to make a “click” track so I can control the volume (more on this later.) 3. Then we have the stereo meters and a master volume slider.  These are important, but not yet.

This button adds a new track.  You can use real instruments or midi instruments, I forgot the third choice, I think it lets you simulate guitar amps...but it’s terrible, don’t use it.  The button to the right of the new track button opens the detailed waveform editor, seen here:

This is the waveform/midi editor.  You can also plug a midi controller into GB, but it’s not necessary.  This editor has two views, I prefer the score editor, personally.  If you want to use the piano roll editor, go ahead, it’s very easy, but I won’t be covering how it works.  More info on this later.

These 5 buttons are moderately useful, though keyboard shortcuts replace them all.  From the left, it’s rewind and fast-forward.  Then Back to zero (beginning of session) which is also the stop button when listening back.  Next is play, then record.  Instead, use these shortcuts: 1. Spacebar is pause/play by default, very useful. 2. The R key begins recording 3. Enter/return key goes to the beginning of the project.

Here we have samples.  They are included with GB and you can totally make a song by just dragging these out and layering them.  But that’s not very original.  You can also drag and drop files into GB.

This is where your iTunes music appears.  If you bounce (mix down/send to iTunes) a session it will appear here, as will any other music you have in iTunes.  This is a great feature, but we’ll cover it more later.

This is the track presets/editor.  You can choose patches from these lists, and apply them to midi or real instruments and get a baseline of what effects to use or how to use them.  It’s nice at first, but I will teach you about effects in detail in a future lesson.

Same area shown here, but if you click the edit tab shown here, it takes you to the bread and butter of sound editing: plugins.  The top one is the midi instrument generator, there’s a lot of them in GB.  (good ones even!)  The there’s a compressor, and an equalizer at the bottom.  Then there’s 4 blank spaces for whatever plugins you want.  GB has pretty good plugins, but a lot of companies offer cheap or even free ones.  GB uses Audio Unit or AU type plugins, if you decide to search for any.  However, you can get away with using GB ones for a while.  Also, at the bottom are the master echo and reverb plugins.  They are nice, but use them very, very sparingly.  It’s better to make custom FX settings for each instrument, instead of drenching them all with the same reverb/echo.

Finally, these are the controls for the master track.  Same choice to browse or edit.  It’s nice to save patches/presets for the master track, but they should be used as a starting point.  Basically, every track goes through here.  These plugins will effect all your tracks.  From the top, here’s where you control the master echo and reverb settings.  Then there’s a blank spot for a plugin of your choice, I recommend the AU Multi-band Compressor, i’ll go into that more in another lesson.  Next is an equalizer and the master compressor.  This eq is the same as any other ones you use in GB, but this compressor only uses presets, which I don’t like.  That’s why I use the Multi-band compressor instead.  Last is the Ducker, this is used to lower the session’s volume to allow for talk-over type recording.  I think...I don’t use the ducker ever.

I didn’t cover a couple of little things, they should be covered in the next couple lessons.

[polycentricinc]

Garageband Lessons

If you happen to have a Mac, it comes with a powerful audio recording and editing program called Garageband.  I prefer the ‘09 version to the brand new one, but that’s because they changed everything, and I haven’t figured out the new version yet.  They did seem to remove features which I use a lot, and focus more on simpler dialog recording, but oh well.  Basically, the old version was a copy of pro tools, the new version is a copy of Logic Pro. 

The reasons I use Garageband are that it’s included with apple computers, so I don’t have to purchase my DAW separately, which is nice.  And honestly, it’s a very good program, if you know how to use it.

So, I aim to teach you how to make music with Garageband, either from midi or live recordings, during the course of however many lessons I decide to give.

First things: 1. if you’ve never recorded anything before, that’s ok.  2. it doesn’t matter what program you use, as long as it sounds good. 3. Almost no one is good at playing instruments anymore, it’s sad, but true.  So, if you aren’t very good, or don’t know how to play anything, that’s fine.  You can totally be Skrillex without playing a damn instrument ever. 4. this is true for everything: you can always learn more.