You’ve probably guessed by now, but I love prog.

Did I say that out loud ?

Well, it’s true – there doesn’t seem to be much point in denying it any more – after all, Radiohead are one of the biggest bands in the world, and they’re prog, right ?

So while it may not be exactly hip, I don’t think that enjoying progressive rock can be considered quite the crime against music that it once was.

And, being me, one thing I’ve always enjoyed about “progressive” music is that it almost always sounds superb.

I started early – the first album I taped to play in my Sony Walkman was “Oxygene” by Jean Michel Jarre, swiftly followed by Sky’s “5 Live” and “Script For A Jester’s Tear” by Marillion… and from then on I was hooked. I even got my friends to listen to “Songs From The Wood” by Jethro Tull !

Once I got to university I quickly realized the tragic un-coolness of my ways and diversified swiftly into Talking Heads, Prince, techno and later brit-pop – and since then my tastes have become more and more eclectic, especially I as I became exposed to all kinds of different genres through my career as a mastering engineer.

But lately I’ve been re-visiting the progressive back-catalogue, and finding I still love a lot of that stuff just as much as I used to – and, I’m really enjoying discovering more via new connections on social media.

Including, along the way, Steven Wilson. I actually worked with him once, in fact – authoring the Enhanced CD single of Porcupine Tree’s “Piano Lessons”, and mastering a few bonus tracks along the way. It wasn’t until his first solo album, “Insurgentes”, that I really got interested though – I made a copymaster of the album at SRT for promo purposes and got hooked.

Because of the music, but also partly because of the sound.

Everything Steven has worked on sounds fantastic to me – and his new solo album, “Grace For Drowning“, is no exception – just check out the song above, for example ! If you ever want an example of the power of perfectly balanced dynamics, that must be it.

If you’ve heard Steven’s work before, that won’t surprise you – but what might is to learn where he recorded it. Here’s a shot of his studio:

“It’s not how luxurious your room is, how good your speakers are or the quality of the acoustic space, it’s how well you know what you’re hearing, because if you know what you’re hearing, you can make good-sounding records!” – Steven Wilson

The image above is taken from an excellent article on Sound On Sound’s website:

Steven Wilson: Recording & Marketing Porcupine Tree

I strongly recommend you head over and read the full article – here’s another unexpected quote, given Steven’s reputation for unusual sounds and audio production excellence:

“A lot of the stuff I use comes free with Pro Tools. I don’t feel the need to rush out and buy the latest fancy EQ or compressor because I’m comfortable with what I know and like. Sometimes having all this stuff available is a barrier between you and creating.”

So, does this mean I want you to start adding instrumentals, unusual time signatures and even the odd bit of mellotron or e-bow to your music ?

Of course not – or not unless you want  to. And it doesn’t mean I don’t still appreciate unusual, lo-fi or even outrageously distorted music, either.

It just re-enforces the message of my last post, and this one and this one and this one that you can make your music sound great anywhere.

Even prog.

Stop worrying and love the prog is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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So we know that Peter Gabriel writes and records in a shed – how about David Gilmour ?

Well his studio is on a boat.

And what a boat… well, houseboat. Watch the video and see.

Once you’ve finished wiping the drool off your keyboard, you may be thinking –

“Well it’s pretty bloody obvious why he writes on a boat, Ian – and, if I’d sold 50 million copies of Dark Side Of The Moon, I think I’d record on one, too.”

But stop.

Rewind. Go back.

Listen again to what he says at 3’12″

In case you didn’t bother, I’ll tell you.

“We have made most of two Pink Floyd Records in this tiny room”

NOT in that enormous, beautiful control room, with it’s analogue tape machine, massive monitors and zillion-channel desk – they did all the recording in the tiny little room next door.

Sure, the technology was in that lovely big room, but the noises were made in a space not much bigger than your spare bedroom.

And they sound lovely. Don’t believe me ? Watch this – all the way through, mind you.

Now OK, I know that’s not technically a Pink Floyd song, but it’s David Gilmour still, recording superb-sounding music, in that same tiny little room – where I don’t even see any acoustic treatment, actually. Some soft furnishings and carpets, maybe. It probably has decent proportions.

[Edit to add - actually, as Richard points out in the comments, that might well be a broadband absorber above David's head (rockwool in a frame, to you and I) and perhaps even some foam in the corner behind - so, let's qualify that and say there's only minimal acoustic treatment :-p]

But at the end of the day it’s a real space, not so different from real spaces you have access to – and it’s where a musician who could literally record anywhere in the world chooses to make his records.

Yes, there are some nice mics, and a lot of expensive gear on the other end of the mic cables, but that’s not why those records sound great. Decent mics and converters are very affordable these days, and even David was recording to digital, just like the rest of us.

The recordings sound great because they’re great instruments, with great performances, recorded with care and attention to detail.

And that’s something we can all make happen.

Tell me about your unconventional but great-sounding recording spaces in the comments !

(Thanks to Bobby Owsinski for posting the original video)

PS. Here’s another great album recorded in a great, real space:

Production secrets – Daniel Lanois on making Neil Young’s ‘Le Noise’

Why David Gilmour writes and records on a boat is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Day 11 of 11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music

Since this is the final post in the series, and my speciality is mastering, it would seem to make sense for this to be a mastering tip.

But I’m not going to do that.

Regular readers already know all about my views on levels and mastering ! For example:

How to avoid over-compressing your mix

How to make your music loud (without killing it stone dead)

Learn the Loudness War secret that will give YOUR music an edge

- and there’s no need to repeat myself here. But this tip is about loudness – or rather, levels.

Specifically, gain structure.

Gain structure just means – how loud your audio is, at every point in the audio chain. Back in the days of analogue it was crucial to get the levels as high as possible at every point in the chain to get the best signal-to-noise ratio, but not so loud as to cause distortion.

These days, it’s not really an issue. With over 60 dB of signal to noise ratio in even a 16-bit signal, all we need to do to get clean audio is avoid clipping, and we’re good.

Or, are we ?

Here are 3 reasons to pay attention to gain structure, even in a digital recording environment.

1 – Where’s your head at ?

Pro audio equipment is always built with plenty of headroom in the analogue stage. You can push it as hard as you like and never run into trouble. But with “pro-sumer” or “home studio” gear, you can’t always rely on this.

To avoid trouble, always give yourself 3-6 dB of headroom at the converters when you’re recording – if you’re using 24-bit, you’ll never hear the difference. Plus you won’t get a nasty surprise when the drummer decides to go all “Animal” on you !

2 – Don’t float your boat

Most modern DAWs operate using 32-bit floating-point arithmetic. There’s no need to know what that means (although it’s pretty zarking clever) but in practical terms it means you have almost infinite headroom – you can’t clip your signal digitally.

That’s right, you can max out every single channel in your mixer, and then just pull the master fader down so it’s not clipping at the output.

But I don’t recommend it.

Not all plug-ins can be relied on to use 32-bit float correctly, and if you’re not careful you could end up clipping everything going through a VST reverb (say) without realising it. It’s safer to just keep things clean.

And until version 10 Pro Tools was still using fixed point. 48-bit fixed point, but even so – in Pro Tools, if it’s clipping, it’s clipping.

3 – It’s just bad practise and makes you look like a n00b

;-p

Seriously though, once the meters are hitting zero, they’re not telling you anything useful. There’s no reason not to keep the levels sensible, so do !

And just as analogue converters don’t sound great if they’re maxed out when you’re recording, so it’s best to give your playback D to A some headroom, too.

Rather than adding a limiter to your main ouput and pushing the mix as loud as possible, crank up your monitor gain, and give yourself a few dBs more daylight.

Your converters will thank you, your ears will thank you, and your mastering engineer will give you a big sloppy kiss. OK, maybe not that last one.

So there you go – those were my 11eleven easy ways to make your music sound better.

I hope you found something useful – if you enjoyed these posts, please take a look around the rest of the site, and share some links with your friends !

To see all the posts in the series, click here.

Day 11- Check your level [11elevenproject] is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Day 6 of 11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music

The great thing about modern technology is you don’t need to get the performance perfect in a single take.

You can just pick the best bits of multiple takes, loop the difficult sections, and in fact you can even build an entire song note by note, if you like – no-one will ever know the difference.

…right ?

WRONG.

Music recording always sounds better as part of a single, cohesive, well-rehearsed take. Even the haters agree that Coldplay’s “Parachutes” is a great album, and one thing that’s great about it is that the band just kept playing the songs until they found a take with magic in it for every single song.

That doesn’t mean I’m against digital editing – far from it ! I take advantage of the power and flexibility of the DAW at every stage. But I always prefer to get a single master take wherever possible, and patch any flaws we can’t live with.

There’s a rhythm and a power and an internal musical logic that happens with a real performance that can’t be beaten, and I strongly urge you to use that fact to your advantage.

So that’s it – follow tip #5 and practise a lot – and then keep recording till you have a great take.

On the other hand

Don’t overdo it ! Monitor yourself, and learn when you tend to hit the “sweet spot”.

For some people, there’s something special about the first ever take – if that’s you, make sure you record your rehearsals !

Other people have amazing stamina and just need to keep going till they nail it.

But most of us are somewhere in between, and there comes a point when doing yet another take isn’t worth it to eliminate the fret buzz in bar 15. And banging our heads against it just leads to tedium and fatigue.

Look for the magic

The best take is rarely the perfect one – it’s the one where everything locked together, the solo was exciting and things got a bit crazy at the end.

Remember, mistakes can be patched ot chopped in from somewhere else, but try and keep the master take as complete as possible.

6 – Do enough takes – but quit while you’re ahead [11elevenproject] is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Day 5 of 11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music

I’m not going to labour this – you need to be able to play or sing your stuff well.

That doesn’t mean you need to be a virtuoso, but you do need to be able to do your material justice. And that means you need to practise.

A lot.

Here are four killer advantages to being well-rehearsed.

More brain-space for musicality

Ask one group of people to remember two numbers, and another to remember seven. Then get them to walk down a corridor, and offer both sets a choice between fruit and cake. Guess which group is more likely to choose cake ?

Put another way, research shows that multi-tasking stresses us out. And music is a highly multithreaded operation. We have to play in time, in tune and with emotional connection – it’s a whole-brain experience.

And that means, the more we can make the mechanics of playing like riding a bike – virtually unconscious – the more space that leaves us for the important bit – the emotion and musicality

More brain-space for for confidence

There’s nothing worse than a hesitant, tentative performance – and there’s nothing better than confidence and assurance. The weakest material can bring the house down when performed with power and conviction – I’m sure you can think of an example or two : )

And following on from the previous point, that same part of the brain that handles multi-tasking is also the part that can calm our nerves when we’re nervous or stressed – like, when we suddenly put a microphone in front of oursleves, and every tiny flaw in our performance is analysed in microscopic detail, just for example.

The solution ? Practise. The less our brains are thinking about the mechanics of performance, the more energy we can devote to playing and singing with confidence and conviction.

More money

The better-rehearsed you are, the quicker you’ll get a great performance, and the more money you’ll save. If you’re paying for studio time, the reason is obvious – but even if you’re recording yourself, time is money – time you could be working on email campaigns, your website, booking gigs, burning CDs, reading Production Advice… : )

Better timing, better tuning, just better

Great peformances are easier to mix. They need less editing, less tuning, less re-timing – just less of everything.

And they sound better. Always.

So, enough reasons already – stop reading this, and go away and rehearse !

But come back tomorrow for the next tip ;-p

Day 5 – Perfect your performance [11elevenproject] is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Day 4 of 11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music

If you’ve followed the first three tips in this series, with any luck your recorded sound and mixes will already be starting to sound better.

And if you’re like me, you love recording and will be fired up and ready to make a start.

Hang on, though.

Before we get ahead of ouselves, let’s tackle a seriously powerful studio technique – but one that is far less talked about than the more popular topics – planning.

Wait – stay with me !

It might sound dry, but this is a key component to getting a great result – or at least, saving yourself a huge amount of unnecessary work.

Just imagine you get halfway through the recording process, and decide you’ve picked the wrong key to sing it in. Or you’ve recorded without click track for a loose live feel, and suddenly realise it isn’t working. Or you want to get rid of the original guide guitar parts but there’s spill all over the drums.

Problems like these and so many others can be avoided by taking a little time, doing some thinking and rough versions – in a word, doing some pre-production.

It’s a bit like writing a book – or a blog post ! Sure, you can just dive in, with no clear idea of where you’re going or how you’re going to get there, but it’s a far better idea to make up a detailed outline beforehand.

I’m not going to go on at great length about this – mainly because my friend Joe Gilder loves pre-production, and has written some great posts about it – for example this one:

The Importance of Pre-Production

Click over and take a look, I really recommend it.

In fact while I think about it, this is probably a great time to mention that Joe has just announced the launch of his excellent “Production Club” – in an updated “2.0″ style, no less !

It’s a full 16-week course, walking you through every aspect of the production process, including live webinars, downloads and HD video content – and one of the topics he covers is – you guessed it – pre-production.

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, head on over and take a look :

HSC Production Club

And as an added bonus, if you sign up using my link, you’ll get a copy of my “Mastering with Multiband Compression” eBook, completely free !

(If you’ve already bought a copy and are thinking – “hey, no fair”, don’t worry – just let me
know once you’ve signed up for the Production Club and I’ll refund you right away.)

You can take advantage of this offer by using this voucher code:

prodadvice

Just enter it and click the “validate” button – then you’ll be good to go ! Make sure you remember the code though, otherwise you won’t get your copy of the eBook.

The course covers the entire recording process from beginning to end – everything Joe does is super-practical and PACKED with value – and he offers a full money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk. To find out more, click here.

Watch out for another tip tomorrow !

Day 4 – Plan your recording process [11elevenproject] is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Day 3 of 11eleven easy ways to improve the sound of your music

Yesterday I suggested moving your mic to improve the sound of your recordings, and one of the points I made was that reflected sound from the room can have a big influence on how things sound.

Now if you have a great-sounding room, that can be a good thing – and personally I like the character that real space adds to a mix. But lots of rooms don’t sound great, especially if they’re on the small side, so today’s tip is about controlling the sound of your recording source using acoustic treatment.

If you have time, that can mean building your own acoustic panels, or if you have money maybe buying some – or a dedicated “refection filter” but most of us don’t have time or money !

So here are three inexpensive ways to begin to take control of the sound of your room:

1 – Draw the curtains

Probably the easiest problem to solve acoustically is “flutter echo” – the sound of whatever you’re playing or singing “zoinging” off the walls and hard surfaces in the room and adding a harsh, or slightly phasey quality to the recorded sound.

This is caused by high frequencies reflecting, and probably the main culprit is the hardest, flattest surface in the room – the window. Luckily the solution is easy – put up some thick, heavy curtains, and draw them when you’re recording.

2 – Roll out the red carpet

Actually it doesn’t have to be red, but the next hard, reflective surface in the room that’s easy to cover is the floor. If you have a resonably high ceiling, it’s usually far enough away to be less of a problem, but the floor is often very close to the mic, especially if you play or sing sitting down.

So cover it ! A heavy carpet, thick rug or even a foam mat can quickly help calm down high-frequency reflections.

3 – Blanket it out

Any remaining high frequency reflections these are quite easy to damp down using something as simple as a blanket or heavy quilt.

Just experiment with hanging them around the room – a simple three-sided “cubicle” around the mic will work very well, or you can hang them up in front of walls, for example. They work best if they aren’t directly against the surface, and if the fabric isn’t that heavy, folding them double can increase their effectiveness.

Having said all of that – don’t overdo it ! Some instruments will actually benefit from the “live” sound of a room, so don’t go crazy and cover all the surfaces everywhere straight away – just start thinking about where reflections may be coming from, and start experimenting and noticing the differences, so you can choose the best solution for the instruments you want to record.

There’s a huge amount more to be said about acoustic treatment, but not enough room for it here – if you’d like to find put more, you might like to check out Joe Gilder’s “Understanding Your Room” product that he put together with Gavin Haverstick – and there’s free information on building your own acoustic panels here.

See you tomorrow !

Day 3 – Treat your room nice [11elevenproject] is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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“Propeller Seeds”, by Imogen Heap, formerly known only as “heapsong2“, has been released – on the same day as the last ever shuttle launch, and like it, a little late – but such a success that no-one minds !

The song is superb, the video is beautiful, as you can see (despite having me in it) and I’ve already written in a previous post about the unique way that Imogen is involving her fans in the writing of the new album. Now that the song and video are released though, I thought I’d quickly explain a few of the reasons I love it so much.

The song is a collaboration with Nick Ryan, who Imogen met at a PRS event. I first became aware of Nick’s work when I saw a demonstration at TEDxAldeburgh last year of “Papa Sangre“, the immersive 3D audio iPhone game that he worked on - but his idea for this song was possibly even more ambitious.

Immi says the song is probably her first proper love song – it tells the story of when she met the new man in her life. Nick’s idea though was that not only would the song tell the story, but that the audio would too – the listener would experience the events and be transported into the locations where they happened as they listened – and the music would evolve out of those sounds and atmospheres.



In technical terms, this means that he and Imogen spent a huge amount of care and attention sampling, sequencing and morphing all kinds of sounds, from floorboards and piano stools masquerading as tree roots through to cutlery percussion, crowd noise and Felix’s Machines – as well as making impulse response recordings (bursting balloons !) in different locations, allowing them to build convolution reverb patches of those spaces, including the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford amongst others, and later place Immi’s voice back inside them during the song.

In musical terms this means that as the song plays, these sounds and environments float and swirl around you – sometimes sound effects, sometimes rhythm tracks, sometimes atmospheres and flavours – and Immi’s voice moves with them, from one location’s acoustic to another, as the story unfolds.

All of this swirls past you in a blur as the song plays – it reminds me a little of “Being For The Benefit Of Mr Kite” – and you only really start to appreciate the intricate detail of it when you listen to the 9-minute “Places and Spaces” making-of commentary included in the release package. But as always the most impressive thing for me is that the song comes first.

When I heard a preview of the track (less than two weeks ago, still !) it was unfinished, and the sonic cleverness was distracting rather than immersive – because as Nick said, it was less important than getting the song right first. Once that foundation was in place though, then the 3D audio fun could start – but running throughout is a always a beautiful melody, with simple, evocative words, and a heartfelt emotional message.

So “Propeller Seeds” combines everything I love in sound and music – a great song; a great performance; playful, happy humour; 3D acoustic environments and startling, spectacular sonics, all with a captivating story – and above all, emotion and heart.

“@no_575″ summed it up perfectly on Twitter for me this evening, when she said the song is “like euphoria moving within sound”.

And that’s why I love it.

If you’d like to buy “Propeller Seeds”, complete with video, making-of commentary and an acoustic version of “Lifeline”, Imogen’s first song from the album – click here.

Update – I made a little video of the live performance of “Lifeline” at the “Propeller Seeds” release party, edited from mobile phone and camera footage – here it is !

‘Propeller Seeds’ by Imogen Heap – The first ever 3D immersive song ? is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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A while ago I posted a video where Dave Grohl discussed Foo Fighters decision to record “Wasting Light” in their garage. They also chose not to use computers at all during the recording or mixing process.

Here are some quotes that stood out to me from a great new article on eMusician.com talking about the process and the consequences of that decision:

“If you only have cheap mics and pres on hand, it doesn’t mean you can’t get good sounds,”

“The main rule of thumb is, if it sounds good in the room, there’s a good chance it will sound good recorded.”

“Something happens to the tape, oh well, you have to play it again. God forbid you have to play your song one more time.”

“If you zoom in with Pro Tools and put everything exactly on that microscopic downbeat it’s so perfect that it loses a thickness. If everything is off just a little bit the music just gets wider and thicker.”

“We mixed manually on the API board, with me, James, Alan Moulder and Dave, all eight hands on board, all doing the faders, no automation; we couldn’t even do mutes. So every mix was a performance.”

“You have to be patient and get focused. Sometimes, with the Foos, they rehearsed a lot… You need a band that can play great, and is willing to do that. It’s so easy to manipulate stuff with computers. I don’t know if I will do this in the future. They have to be as good as the Foo Fighters, and play that well.”

(To read the full article, click here.)

That last quote is one of the most interesting, I think. Does it mean no-one should record in this “old-school” way unless they too are as good as the Foo Fighters ?

Regardless of the process they used, the end result of the sound of “Wasting Light” still sounds very slick and clean, to me. I’m not sure I’d have guessed it was recorded 100% analogue in a garage if they hadn’t told us. How about you ?

Foo Fighters – Recording and Mixing ‘Wasting Light’ is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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Recording & Mixing

Here are some of the most popular pages on the site:

Do you make these music recording mistakes ?

Compressors and limiters – how to set them up using cushions

7 crucial EQ bands to help balance your mix

10 simple steps to recording an awesome drum sound

What is mastering ?

If you check out these links and keep an eye on the “related posts” section at the end of each article, you’ll find loads of great info !

“Quick start” eBook

If you’re impatient like me though, you can get all these posts plus another 18 “Best Of” articles in a single downloadable eBook – for more information, click here.

(Image by Robert Parviainen)

Popular Posts is a post from Ian Shepherd's: Production Advice
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