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Lessons From Recording, Mixing and Mastering My First Album

After three years of work, the first shrinkin-minkin album, “Tyrannizing Harmonics”, has been released. A majority of that time was spent looking for musicians who could play the parts that I wrote and drilling the songs until they were perfect; the last 6 months or so was spent recording, mixing and mastering the album. If you know me, it should come to no surprise that I DIY’d the whole album: recording it in my basement “studio” and mixing and mastering it in house with major help from Mike, the other guitarist in the band (not putting his full name here as I assume he would not want to be linked to my blog which is mainly personal).

There were a lot of things I learned during the creation of the album that are most likely not readily available when someone searches “How do I record my own music” or similar. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel and teach you how to EQ a bass drum, but more so elucidate hidden obstacles before you run into them.

1. Do Not Allow Musicians To Record At Home

Sure, they have an audio interface and a DAW, but are they actually going to get the tracks to you on time? I ended up waiting six weeks for a track, and when I finally got it, it was played incorrectly. This instance severely slowed down the recording process and ended up pushing back my release date by 2 weeks or so. This is your project, take control and make people record the tracks in the room.

Another important part of recording in the studio is the “vibe”. If you have a musician who is going to improvise a solo at home, they are most likely going to be sitting in their office or bedroom with headphones on trying to bang out a solo. This environment is not conducive for improvising a killer solo. In the studio we can crank up the monitors so it sounds like the full band is there, the engineer (me) can put on a guitar and pretend like he is playing along as well to set the mood, and the engineer can also push the musician to give the best performance he can.

Vocals are another important thing to record in studio with someone else. My vocals always come out better when someone is there watching and critiquing me. I am not a professional singer, so having someone call out when my tone or delivery is off is also helpful. This is true of all parts to be honest, having someone there to critique the performance (especially the person who wrote the music) is going to lead to a better product.

Do not let the musicians record at home, or alone. It is probably the biggest mistake you can make and it just going to lead to wasted time and re-recording.

2. Two Heads Are Better Than One

If you knew what you were doing when it comes to recording, mixing and mastering an album, you would not be reading this article. Having a designated mixing-buddy will make the process much easier because they will (hopefully) be able to provide valuable insight you may not have thought of. There may be times when you disagree with your mixing-buddy, but that is great because finding a happy medium between both view points may end up helping the mix.

The main disagreements I ran into with Mike was in regards to the volume of the bass and the vocals. Mike wanted the bass way louder than I like and the vocals way lower than I like. I definitely had the bass levels too low and the vocals too high, and finding the middle ground between our opinions on levels ended up benefiting the album.

You do not need more than one mixing-buddy. It will be hard enough finding time for two people to meet frequently enough to mix the album together. Three people will just become burdensome. The computer monitor is not even big enough for three people to look at at once, unless you are using a TV or something.

You should still be sending mixes to all band members and asking them for opinions constantly. They should be giving you a list of critiques for each song. This does not mean all of their critiques will be addressed in the final mix, but it does provide the benefit of having a dedicated listening audience while you mix the record. Some people will provide great notes, some will not listen at all (or just give you the notes way too late)–those people do not get to complain once the album has been released.

3. Vocal Tips

Record your vocals with more than one microphone at the same time. This is a low effort technique that allows you to A/B recordings or blend both microphones. If you have multiple types of microphones available to you, it is a no-brainer.

If you are not a great singer (like me), have others harmonize with you throughout a majority of your vocal tracks. I do not know why, but harmonized vocals can take a mediocre performance to the next level. It is probably due to the fact that if you both are a bit off-key it has a chance of cancelling out.

I am not saying harmonize like someone sings a fifth above you, while that could be cool, but really just the same note, or an octave higher or lower. In the first vocal section in the song “glop”, we actually have three people singing in different octaves. It resulted in a pretty interesting texture in which each vocalist becomes the focal point at different spots. This is also most likely due to me bumping the back-up vocals close to the level of the lead vocals.

4. All Drum Funny Business Needs To Be Recorded In Separate Takes

Does your drummer overuse bells, cowbells, blocks, etc? If you record those accoutrements during the main drum take, you will have limited ability when it comes to changing their volumes & EQ in post. I had to surgically remove 14 bell hits on one song. This means 14 x 4 cuts because the bells were picked up by the snare mix, both overhead mics, and the out-front mic. If you have room mics, that is even more cuts. Of course we could have just rerecorded it, but it really would have been more work to get the drummer back in to rerecord. It was a pain the ass though and not worth the time. All funny business gets recorded separately and then can be used tastefully and when necessary. Do not make exceptions, it results in wasted time.

5. Watch The Tone Of The Instrument When Punching In

This is a simple one. If you are punching in, the tone of the instrument should be close to where you are punching in and out of. This is a common issue if you are recording a guitar with a wah-wah, or a synth that is heavy on mod-wheel manipulation. Check the tone first so you do not have any weird and obvious cuts in your music.

Similarly, if a synth-lead has a heavy LFO on the filter, just turn the LFO off and add it in post. It is much easier to control and you can be selective about where the peaks of the LFO are. If you do not want to do this, attenuate the LFO range. If this is jargon, do not worry about it. just make sure there is minimal modulation on synth-lead patches, add the mods in the DAW.

6. Use Two Limiters

If you mix volumes are low (like mine always are) in comparison to reference material (like a mix of a band similar to yours), limiters will solve this issue. Add the first limiter to the master track and limit it right to the point of clipping, then put another limiter after that limiter with a -0.1 DB cap to bring everything below clipping range. I do not know if this is the right thing to do, but it is what I did. It really glued all the tracks together, gave me a proper volume for the final track, and make the mix actually sound like produced track.

7. Do Not Let People Complain About Your Choice of DAW Or Operating System

I recorded, mixed and mastered the whole album on a Linux Mint machine running Reaper. I had complaints from band members that Reaper is not a real DAW and that I need to use Pro-Tools. I have had random grumblings about the fact that I use Linux despite the fact there was never an issue with my computer once during the recording process (or before/after for that matter). And despite all of this, the album sounds good. It does not matter which DAW or OS you use. Linux is fully capable of recording an album and I proved that with Tyrannizing Harmonics.

Do not be afraid to DIY everything. All of the information needed to succeed in anything is available to you online. Save the money on spent on studio time and invest it in your own studio. Skip the mixing and mastering cost and put it towards pressing your album on vinyl or making T-shirts.

Another great benefit from doing this all yourself is the creative control. Mike and I were able to painstakingly analyze and tweak every parameter of the album to make it the best that we think it can be. Sure a mixing engineer is more skilled than us, but we had infinite time to experiment with different takes, mixes and FX which resulted in a unique artistic expression.

Listen to the album here: shrinkinminkin.com

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Lessons From Recording, Mixing and Mastering My First Album

After three years of work, the first shrinkin-minkin album, “Tyrannizing Harmonics”, has been released. A majority of that time was spent looking for musicians who could play the parts that I wrote and drilling the songs until they were perfect; the last 6 months or so was spent recording, mixing and mastering the album. If you know me, it should come to no surprise that I DIY’d the whole album: recording it in my basement “studio” and mixing and mastering it in house with major help from Mike, the other guitarist in the band (not putting his full name here as I assume he would not want to be linked to my blog which is mainly personal).

There were a lot of things I learned during the creation of the album that are most likely not readily available when someone searches “How do I record my own music” or similar. I am not trying to reinvent the wheel and teach you how to EQ a bass drum, but more so elucidate hidden obstacles before you run into them.

1. Do Not Allow Musicians To Record At Home

Sure, they have an audio interface and a DAW, but are they actually going to get the tracks to you on time? I ended up waiting six weeks for a track, and when I finally got it, it was played incorrectly. This instance severely slowed down the recording process and ended up pushing back my release date by 2 weeks or so. This is your project, take control and make people record the tracks in the room.

Another important part of recording in the studio is the “vibe”. If you have a musician who is going to improvise a solo at home, they are most likely going to be sitting in their office or bedroom with headphones on trying to bang out a solo. This environment is not conducive for improvising a killer solo. In the studio we can crank up the monitors so it sounds like the full band is there, the engineer (me) can put on a guitar and pretend like he is playing along as well to set the mood, and the engineer can also push the musician to give the best performance he can.

Vocals are another important thing to record in studio with someone else. My vocals always come out better when someone is there watching and critiquing me. I am not a professional singer, so having someone call out when my tone or delivery is off is also helpful. This is true of all parts to be honest, having someone there to critique the performance (especially the person who wrote the music) is going to lead to a better product.

Do not let the musicians record at home, or alone. It is probably the biggest mistake you can make and it just going to lead to wasted time and re-recording.

2. Two Heads Are Better Than One

If you knew what you were doing when it comes to recording, mixing and mastering an album, you would not be reading this article. Having a designated mixing-buddy will make the process much easier because they will (hopefully) be able to provide valuable insight you may not have thought of. There may be times when you disagree with your mixing-buddy, but that is great because finding a happy medium between both view points may end up helping the mix.

The main disagreements I ran into with Mike was in regards to the volume of the bass and the vocals. Mike wanted the bass way louder than I like and the vocals way lower than I like. I definitely had the bass levels too low and the vocals too high, and finding the middle ground between our opinions on levels ended up benefiting the album.

You do not need more than one mixing-buddy. It will be hard enough finding time for two people to meet frequently enough to mix the album together. Three people will just become burdensome. The computer monitor is not even big enough for three people to look at at once, unless you are using a TV or something.

You should still be sending mixes to all band members and asking them for opinions constantly. They should be giving you a list of critiques for each song. This does not mean all of their critiques will be addressed in the final mix, but it does provide the benefit of having a dedicated listening audience while you mix the record. Some people will provide great notes, some will not listen at all (or just give you the notes way too late)–those people do not get to complain once the album has been released.

3. Vocal Tips

Record your vocals with more than one microphone at the same time. This is a low effort technique that allows you to A/B recordings or blend both microphones. If you have multiple types of microphones available to you, it is a no-brainer.

If you are not a great singer (like me), have others harmonize with you throughout a majority of your vocal tracks. I do not know why, but harmonized vocals can take a mediocre performance to the next level. It is probably due to the fact that if you both are a bit off-key it has a chance of cancelling out.

I am not saying harmonize like someone sings a fifth above you, while that could be cool, but really just the same note, or an octave higher or lower. In the first vocal section in the song “glop”, we actually have three people singing in different octaves. It resulted in a pretty interesting texture in which each vocalist becomes the focal point at different spots. This is also most likely due to me bumping the back-up vocals close to the level of the lead vocals.

4. All Drum Funny Business Needs To Be Recorded In Separate Takes

Does your drummer overuse bells, cowbells, blocks, etc? If you record those accoutrements during the main drum take, you will have limited ability when it comes to changing their volumes & EQ in post. I had to surgically remove 14 bell hits on one song. This means 14 x 4 cuts because the bells were picked up by the snare mix, both overhead mics, and the out-front mic. If you have room mics, that is even more cuts. Of course we could have just rerecorded it, but it really would have been more work to get the drummer back in to rerecord. It was a pain the ass though and not worth the time. All funny business gets recorded separately and then can be used tastefully and when necessary. Do not make exceptions, it results in wasted time.

5. Watch The Tone Of The Instrument When Punching In

This is a simple one. If you are punching in, the tone of the instrument should be close to where you are punching in and out of. This is a common issue if you are recording a guitar with a wah-wah, or a synth that is heavy on mod-wheel manipulation. Check the tone first so you do not have any weird and obvious cuts in your music.

Similarly, if a synth-lead has a heavy LFO on the filter, just turn the LFO off and add it in post. It is much easier to control and you can be selective about where the peaks of the LFO are. If you do not want to do this, attenuate the LFO range. If this is jargon, do not worry about it. just make sure there is minimal modulation on synth-lead patches, add the mods in the DAW.

6. Use Two Limiters

If you mix volumes are low (like mine always are) in comparison to reference material (like a mix of a band similar to yours), limiters will solve this issue. Add the first limiter to the master track and limit it right to the point of clipping, then put another limiter after that limiter with a -0.1 DB cap to bring everything below clipping range. I do not know if this is the right thing to do, but it is what I did. It really glued all the tracks together, gave me a proper volume for the final track, and make the mix actually sound like produced track.

7. Do Not Let People Complain About Your Choice of DAW Or Operating System

I recorded, mixed and mastered the whole album on a Linux Mint machine running Reaper. I had complaints from band members that Reaper is not a real DAW and that I need to use Pro-Tools. I have had random grumblings about the fact that I use Linux despite the fact there was never an issue with my computer once during the recording process (or before/after for that matter). And despite all of this, the album sounds good. It does not matter which DAW or OS you use. Linux is fully capable of recording an album and I proved that with Tyrannizing Harmonics.

Do not be afraid to DIY everything. All of the information needed to succeed in anything is available to you online. Save the money on spent on studio time and invest it in your own studio. Skip the mixing and mastering cost and put it towards pressing your album on vinyl or making T-shirts.

Another great benefit from doing this all yourself is the creative control. Mike and I were able to painstakingly analyze and tweak every parameter of the album to make it the best that we think it can be. Sure a mixing engineer is more skilled than us, but we had infinite time to experiment with different takes, mixes and FX which resulted in a unique artistic expression.

Listen to the album here: shrinkinminkin.com

Tags: