Record making is a ground up process, where the foundation formed in an earlier phase impacts the later stages. Recording, Mixing, and Mastering all have equal importance in regards to function, but without a good recording the last two stages will be wrestling with the material, as opposed to working in concert with it. Much of the online focus in today’s audio realm seems to be upon mixing, with a firm emphasis placed upon its ability to manipulate and fix. Of course the tools used in that process and (more importantly) the skills used in that process deserve the accolades and attention they receive. It is important to remember ,however, that stripped down to its base, mixing is the process of balancing multiple tracks with one another. As the old recording adage says, do not fix it in the mix.
The recording process is about capturing a performance in the best way possible. Sometimes this means trying to record an instrument, or group of instruments as true to life as the engineer is able, while other times the recording stage is about using microphones and other equipment to frame the sound within a particular vision. In either case the recording engineer is using their wealth of experience to inform their decision making process, which is crucial for a successful session. The recording engineer must not only be able to manage, interpret, and relay information and communication between musicians, but must also have a working knowledge on how best to capture instruments ranging from the standard to the obscure. This means the engineer must know where to place instruments in a room, while also making sure a musician is comfortable performing within the optimal instrument placement. If the musician cannot perform properly the engineer must know how to compromise in order to increase the conditions for the best possible performance. This is followed by microphone selection, microphone preamp selection, and microphone placement; as well as the determination of when and if other equipment, such as compressors, de-essers, and equalization should be implemented during capture.
When an engineer begins to learn about the recording process from proper sources, the basics are broken down for them and hopefully learned as they begin to gain hands on experience. As some years go by they begin to try new techniques, possibly delving into more complex approaches. Further years from that they have become more seasoned and realizations begin to occur. Suddenly the words “trust your ears” have a new meaning, as years of listening have developed their ears’ palate. They now have a better understanding of what makes something sound good, and if they already possessed that ability, they now have greater confidence in standing by their audio decisions. At this point they may also begin to strip things back down and place more importance on the fundamentals of the audio process, finding areas where they can refine their technique. One of the ways this concept applies to recording engineers is in the way they use microphones and microphone arrays.
Microphones can be thought of as mechanical ears. The way they are selected and placed have the greatest and the most immediate impact upon captured audio. The simplest way to display this fact is to listen for yourself. If you or your friend have access to two different microphones and a recording interface try the following experiment:
Place the first microphone close to an instrument (guitar, voice, horn, ect.), set to an appropriate, non-clipping level, and record. Then shift the mic back a few inches, check levels, record, and again shift the mic back a few inches, check levels, and record. Repeat the process with the second microphone. It is obvious there will be sound differences, but the point is to understand what the differences are and identify which microphone and microphone position sounded best and why. This rudimentary experiment can be further explored by moving the microphones and instrument into a different location and repeating the same process as before. After recording and listening ask yourself what changed and how. Is there a new microphone position that sounds better than a position from the previous experiment? Whether the answer is yes, or no, always ask yourself why and try to determine the reasons for a change in the sound of the recording.
The object of the experiment is to illustrate the impact different microphones and a few inches (or even an inch) can have upon a recording and then begin to picture what these findings mean for a recording engineer who is presented with a full band and a mic locker filled with a hundred microphones. The picture begins to become more clear that years of working with a group of tools, experimenting with them, moving them, trying them with different instruments, in different environments, has created a knowledge base for the recording engineer to draw from and help them make appropriate decisions to achieve a successful recording. Unfortunately, as audio budgets have tightened, the recording process has sometimes been overlooked, as more emphasis has been placed upon mixing engineers to fix lower quality recordings in the mixing stage. It is quite possible that the extra hours a mix engineer had to place in massaging a session could have been avoided had the budget incorporated a skilled recording engineer. In fact the extra paid hours needed to fix tracking, could have been used to help pay for a well versed recording engineer, who would in turn deliver well recorded tracks to the mixing engineer, who would in turn have better material to work with, thus lowering stress, saving hours, and creating a greater potential for high quality sound in the process. This would then be sent to the mastering engineer, who would also have greater quality material to work with, thus raising the potential for a high quality end product. In the world of audio, no stage should be overlooked.