Not a 'Rockumentary' at all, but sort of my "Productiomentary'

darius

< Long post alert > and < not much guitar in post alert >

Grab a brew.

For you studio recording liking types

My lockdown home recording progress and experience.

A 'Rockumentary', if you will.

Whilst still working from home full time, me and my teenage daughter challenged ourselves to get some home recordings done, her to practice her singing, me on guitar and production. The plan was to cover songs that were just acoustic guitar and female vocal. She chose the songs, I learned the guitar parts, we pick the key and go for it.

I thought it would be good to share the tracks and you hear the progression. The changes are very obvious to me when i listen to the tracks, i’m wondering how obvious it is to others. I've learned a lot but I'm more pleased that if daughter ever goes into a studio in the future, she'll be familiar with the process and it won't faze her. She never once got 'Recording Take' pressure problems. I found it difficult to produce my own self, guitar takes were never quite good enough even though they were fine.

Biggest learning surprise = the track most liked by family and friends is the one I was least happy with the production quality of.

Not a surprise at all = Any gear will do. Performance is where its at.

Here’s a link to soundcloud with the five tracks (so far) of The Home Sessions.
Comments welcome (I think!).
Why not pretend its an Anderton’s blindfold test, have a listen before reading the production info below.

LINK



The songs and the production gear and new techniques that were added at that time:

Song1 - No Time To Die (Bllie Eilish)
Song2 - Selfish (Madison Beer)
Garageband08
Portable SD recorder
Record monitoring to an offline bounce mix
Acoustic DI into mac, no interface
Manual time alignment
Vocal dynamic compression

Song3 - Times Like These (Foo Fighters and All Stars version)
SSL2 usb interface
Reaper6
DI and CloseMic Acoustic 2input tracking
Headphone monitoring
Click track
Harmonies

Song4 - Titanium (Guetta / Sia)
Room monitoring
Effects busses
Take comping
Automation
MTPowerDrumKit midi drums
DI and Mic Acoustic, DI Electric

Song5 - World War 3 (Ruth B )

DI Piano
Electric guitar Neural Plini amp sim - printed wet
Quantising live instruments to grid
Side chain compression vocals trigger piano
Master compression

andy_k

I have only had a quick listen on my laptop, but my first impression is - impressed.
You both did a great job, I can't comment too much on audio, but as most people will be listening on crappy speakers, it all sounds good. I don't know the source material at all really, but I do like Billie Eilish's album production, which was apparently recorded in a bedroom, it obviously wasn't, but I like the idea.
I'd be interested to know the mics you used for vocals, and I can give a better critique when I have a listen later through my monitors, they are not great but I know how they sound.
All told, great work-keep it going, you never stop learning.
Well done.

spark240

OK....so you want honesty right ?

  First...a big up for getting t this stage....it takes a lot of work and then putting it up for review is a mission !

  Overall the recording quality was good, but a thought maybe you used the same basic format for all the songs, i.e guitar sound , vocal treatment etc, ...would be good to hear some things a little different?

  More vocal harmonies would definitely lift things, and with her vocal style I would favour lower harmonies than higher.....it would be greta to hear her vocal in a full on mode....she sounds a little hesitant of the mic....a bit laid back....tyr ruling her down in the cans so she has to project a bit more.

  The acoustic guitars sounds little over compressed and and maybe a chorus effect ?....perosnally I would lose some of that but double track the acoustics L/R pan.

In summary - great songs...nicely done, and these are all just opinions right ?....if you like it thats it job done.

Keep going ;-)

darius

Thanks for feedback @spark240 @andy_k

Yes the plan was to keep it simple, as close to one guitar one mic as possible, but its amazing how many tracks you need to make it sound like just two. I even wrestled with adding drums or not for ages to avoid over complicating things.

Harmonies were a definite goal, but no surprise they're quite difficult to do so we rejected a lot of them.

In mixing I tried to make it all about the vocal, had to fight off my inner guitarist and keep them in the supporting role. Agree I'm encouraging her to pick a song for her 'chest voice' rather than 'head voice', a real belter would be excellent to try. She does love the soft quiet stuff.

Not much compression on the acoustics, but loads on the vocals. My producer friend tipped me off, dont be scared to us lots of compression on soft female vocal, so I tried it and it really works.

Keeping going.