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igZine:

Top Recording Studio Tips

By Ian Morris



  1. A beer at the right time can dramatically improve an artist's talent.
  2. Always record the run-through.
  3. If you're stuck for an idea, restrict your parameters. Take two strings off your guitar. Take the snare drum away. Listen with your fingers in your ears. Throw away half those soft synths.
  4. A curry is not a good idea before attempting a lead vocal.
  5. How to set a compressor:
    • Set attack time as slow as possible. This is so you can hear the front of the sound without the compressor acting on it.
    • Set release time as fast as possible. This is so you can hear everything that comes after the attack.
    • Set ratio to highest amount.
    • Set input/threshold so she's really pumping.
    • Shorten attack until you hear the right amount of "front" on the sound (use your ears).
    • Lengthen release until the sound is grooving to the music (use your ears).
    • Back off ratio and input/threshold to the amount of compression you want (use your ears).
  6. Consider doing more recording in the kitchen.
  7. Observe the 3 to 1 rule: the distance from an instrument to a neighbouring instrument's microphone should be at least three times the distance from the instrument to its own microphone. This is very true when miking drum kits: too many microphones too close together equals too much phase cancellation.
  8. Musicians play louder when they're recording a take: set your levels conservatively to begin with. This is especially necessary with digital recording: once the signal goes "over", it stays over.
  9. Less may well be more, but the hard part is figuring out what the "less" is.
  10. I just love the sound of compression, don't you?
  11. Whilst I love the sound of compression, I do not like the sound of over-compression, especially when appled to an entire CD to make it "louder than everyone else's".
  12. There really is no place for herbal tea in a recording studio.
  13. Putting the microphone is a glass jar in front of the guitar amp/speaker makes a cool buzzy sound.
  14. Listen to your mix in a different room, not just different speakers in the same room.
  15. Sound travels approximately 1 foot (30cm) in 1 millisecond.
  16. World-ize your sounds: re-record them through a speaker in a different environment.
  17. Distortion can be your friend; it creates its own ambience. But be careful - once it's there you can't get rid of it.