I see so many posts nowadays ( mainly on Facebook groups) on what seem to be very basic recording questions....I.e ..how do I record my guitar ?....How do I add reverb to my vocal?
I think one of the issues is that for me .....and likely a lot of us in the age 40-60 bracket....we have learnt using hardware, where you physically plug in and you can almost see the signal path until it comes out the other end...it seemed like a real pain then......now I think it’s underestimated how valuable this experience was....
New users who dive straight into the digital domain just can’t see underhand signal path....
what you reckon?
Comments
Where do you start?
For those of us who have been at this since the time that dinosaurs roamed the earth it’s easy to forget what we were like, and the mistakes that we made, when we started. I can just about remember trying to get my head around the semi-parametric EQ on my first Tascam 244 Portastudio (despite reading the manual) or plugging a guitar directly into the recorder and wondering why it sounded so horrible.
Then there was the fact that you had to build your gear up over time (it was far more expensive in real terms). My son has set himself up with his own recording setup (he likes to do this on his own and only ask Dad for help when he really must) – it’s on his phone. Of course if you are working on a PC you have a huge learning curve before you can even get to hit record, it’s no wonder that people have questions. Once you have got all the technology running you still have to learn all of the other skills required to make a recording. When you are learning the steps are something like;
Does it sound right / wrong? Hopefully most of the population can hear this (otherwise we’ve been wasting a lot of time and money on mixes that nobody else can appreciate)
Do I know what is wrong?
What do I do to fix it?
It’s that last step that takes a lifetime to get to grips with.
Personally I find todays young engineers very good within their workflow and organisation when working within the box but they don't always have the experience to work outside it in terms of setting up the patching, purely because they have never had to. A lot of older guys I know are pretty much basic audio electronic engineers as well as recording engineers and would think nothing rewiring a single balanced aux send to feed both channels of a headphone amp when they have to or knock up a quick attenuator to convert line levels to mic but a lot of younger guys are less practical in this respect. These are skills learnt when working in a real studio rather than skills in a pure digital environment.
But as in any work life there's no substitute for experience and when your engineering a large session with 8 musicians or more all set up and ready to roll that experience gained from learning and fucking up on your own in your own time is invaluable.
I've been known to ask the odd dumb question on here rather than dive back into the documentation, too. No-ones perfect! ;-)