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As a studio engineer/producer if you don’t know something about click tracks you darn well should.

Nearly every band/musician (apart from those who really know their s###) will fight you tooth and nail… cos they want to record “live” (whatever that really means in a studio setting) and would prefer their drummer’s meandering sense of rhythm (seeing it as glamourously creative and spontaneous rather than is often the case downright meandering) as opposed to the discipline of playing against and recording over a click track; but if your goal is a truly polished end product then I advise you (& then it is for you to advise them) to think again!!!

So for each and every recording you make (with very, very few exceptions) go to Track (assuming you are working within Protools) and select Create Click Track; then you’ll have to think about the song’s tempo and meter (e.g. 92 bpm 2/4) but believe me this will, with some practice, come quicker than you think.

Set up some foldback headphones for your drummer and then in most instances (after laying down a guide/scratch guitar +/- vocal track) get your drums down, switch your session to “grid” (as opposed to “slip”) mode and your songs template will be ready.

From there… bass… guitar… keys… horns… vocals/BVs etc. and so on and very soon you’ll be one step nearer that studio sound you’ve heard a thousand times over yet never been able to achieve.

musicians struggling send ‘em off to: http://www.metronomeonline.com

limited click sounds try adding Xpand: http://tinyurl.com/bbftl5

In the old days (good or bad it’s all a matter of perspective) in addition to the house monitors (which would always include (and somebody please tell me why!!!) the inevitable Yamaha NS 10s) we would run any final mixes through a small set of radio speakers… why you may ask… well cos it was, and to a certain extent is, a place where a great deal of music is still consumed.

But nowadays there is a new standard (or to be more precise format) the MP3 and it’s why at #dbstudios we always “switch” all our final mixes at some stage into MP3 format and have a good listen… initially on our Harman/Kardon Sound Sticks II and then via i-tunes on our coveted nanochromatic using the standard suppy earphones, cos that is how the vast majority of music, at least for now is consumed.

You know it makes sense

#dbstudios is getting ready to welcome Anna Hughes’s Tricycle to the studio… and believe me if you haven’t heard of them yet… you’ll be downloading them to your sweaty little i-pods as fast as your firewire will allow before the summer’s over.

Comprised of Anna Hughes on bass and vocals (see ’nuff said) Gilbert Kuppusami on djembe & vocals (no stranger to #dbstudios having been involved with a host of projects including the Jimi Graham trio and most recently Lions of Puxi) and Gauthier Roubichou on all things vocal & percussion (also of Lions of Puxi) these cats are taking Shanghai by storm.

A heady Sade-esque (and I don’t use UK’s greatest soul voice of the 80′s name lightly) Latin American influenced djembe driven cocktail these guys in the right hands (and that would me!!!) could really go far… watch this space for updates.

When recording more is often less… in that you can decide not to use a track at the mixdown stage but you can’t (other than by digitally cloning) whip up a track out of thin air if it wasn’t recorded… well at the recording stage.

So that’s why at dbstudios you’ll often see us multi-miking in situations where many engineers may save themselves time and energy by using just one source microphone. Above is the way we miked Sam Hooper’s Fender Deluxe Reverb for his rhythm tracks.

An M-Audio Luna over the cone edge (which we later digitally cloned and panned to -33 and a Shure 57 which we later dropped through an Eleven LE vintage amp simulator and panned to +33). The resultant clean, rich, warm sound can be heard on Sam’s forthcoming album recorded at #dbstudios where the “only limit is your imagination”.

Studios are highly software driven these days and defined by the interfaces: Protools/Logic/Reason/Ableton etc. and the plug-ins (equivalent to the hardware racks we used to slaver over in analogue studios) they support; but there is still no substitute for good old fashioned bits of kit and dbstudios is no exception; so thought we’d shoot you a shot or two of our China built UFO in-house jazz drum kit that has been played and much appreciated by lots of Shanghai’s top drummers… Ronnie… Gilbert… Yam… Yan and this weekend Sam Hooper’s Akiro.

PS a big thanks going out to Yam who helped me reskin it this week… cos it sounds just the business… at dbstudios where the “only limit is your imagination”.

PPS you fancy yourself as the next Ringo Starr then come learn with dbstudio’s resident drummer Ronnie Williams: 

www.myspace.com/ronniewilliamsdrums
einnorsdrums@yahoo.com

Any studio buffs will have heard the term but in case you’re not sure we can glean the following from Wikipedia…

A sound baffle is a construction or device which reduces the strength (level) of airborne. Sound baffles are a fundamental tool of noise mitigation, the practice of minimizing noise pollution or reverberation. An important type of sound baffle is the noise barrier constructed along highways to reduce sound levels at properties in the vicinity. Sound baffles are also applied to walls and ceilings in building interiors to absorb sound energy and thus lessen reverberation.

But used incorrectly they can produce more problems than they “mitigate” and if you’re interested be sure to explore…

http://tinyurl.com/cacvg3