The web home of Kim o the Concrete Jungle, including Kim o the Concrete Jungle, Kinsley Castle, the Mortal Taint, the Mojo Liberation Front, Creighton Keane, and the Blues Convicts.
The web home of Kim o the Concrete Jungle, including Kim o the Concrete Jungle, Kinsley Castle, the Mortal Taint, the Mojo Liberation Front, Creighton Keane, and the Blues Convicts.
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Kim o' the Concrete Jungle's 2. Music HardwareI promised to show you how to record on the cheap, didn't I? Well, there are still some things you can't download off the internet. I had to laugh back in the internet bubble days when a bunch of so-called experts assured us that information was the future, and the information economy would be the new driver of prosperity. Oh yes, well can you eat information? Will it keep the rain off your head? Will it cradle you in its arms and comfort you when the bubble bursts and you lose everything? We need real stuff as well, not just virtual stuff. Maybe it's easy to think you don't need real stuff. You can actually make music with just a computer, some software, and a pair of headphones. People do. People who make electronic music do. But if you listen closer, you'll hear that even a lot of electronic music has real stuff in it too, like a real life singer in front an actual microphone. So sooner or later, you're going to have to bite the bullet and buy a real interface. You can't skimp with the interface either. Buying a cheap and nasty one is a false economy, because you'll only have to replace it down the line. Buy the best one you can afford that has the most stuff on it. I have a Lexicon I-Onix u82s, and I'll be referring to it through the rest of this guide. But in this case, at least, I'm going to have to concede you'll probably buy something different. The I-Onix is a bit of an oddball. Even though it's a quality thing, it's uncommon, and it often gets bad reviews because of the unfortunate choice of pots on the gain knobs. You might end up with a Focusrite or something instead. So whenever I mention the I-Onix, you're just going to have to translate.
An interface is the musical link between your computer and the outside world. It's what you use instead of the crappy sound chip on the motherboard of your cheap-ass computer, or the even crappier built-in laptop microphone. Here is a list of the features you might want on an interface:
The Lexicon I-Onix has all of that... but hey, don't let me twist your arm or anything. The other issue for an interface is how many inputs and outputs it has. For a USB 2 device there will be two, four, or eight inputs (eight being the maximum number that USB 2 can stuff through the connection at a time). How many do you need? If there's any possibility you'll be recording more than one person at a time (or even a band), go for eight. If you're a hermit who lives on a mountaintop, you can save some money and get two. The in-between option is either a waste of money or a pain in the neck, so don't ever bother with four, unless it's in the bargain-bin or something. The USB cable comes out of the back of your interface and into a USB port on your computer. Once it's there you'll need to put in the CD to install the drivers. Maybe you'll get an error message about incompatible drivers, whereupon you'll say, "Bugger it all!" and go off to the internet to get up-to-date ones. In the case of the Lexicon I-Onix u82s, that would be from here: http://www.lexiconpro.com/product.php?id=155#downloads Once you've done that, you can go ahead and use the interface as if it were the main soundcard on your computer. I mean, hey, why not? It will sound at least a million times better than your crappy soundcard. At the other end of your interface, you'll have a pair of outputs. You weren't thinking of plugging them into your tinny computer speakers were you? Because, you know, I just heard you say, "All I need is a splitter cable that converts a stereo mini jack in to a pair of quarter-inch phone jacks." I guess you could do that, if you're really strapped for cash, but I can tell you right now, your "awesome" 5.1 surround sound computer speaker system is kind of rubbish, and it's definitely not up to the job. You can go on using that, or buy yourself a nice pair of quality headphones, but you won't be making any decent recordings until you get a proper pair of studio monitor speakers. Any audio engineer will tell you, monitoring is the most important thing of all. Then he'll probably recommend you buy a pair of speakers that cost more than ten thousand bucks. After you've unfriended him on Facebook, you can console yourself with the fact that you don't need to spend nearly that much money, because of Behringer Truth.
It just looks like a pair of speakers, right? But they're speakers specially designed for mixing music. They're different from your iPod dock, because they're designed to have a flat frequency response, and to be as neutral and boring as possible. But hey, that's a good thing, because when you're recording and mixing, you want to hear what the actual music sounds like, not the speakers. If your music sounds kind of bad, these speakers will be honest and let you know about it... ... to an extent. Because, let's face it, these are cheap. On the plus side, the expensive ones wouldn't do you any good anyway, because chances are you don't have a purpose-built, acoustically-treated recording studio to put them in. I'm recommending these in particular, because in between the mocking laughter, recording geeks can sometimes be induced to admit they're not bad, considering. You won't need to buy an amplifier to drive these either, because they've got amplifiers built in. You just plug them into your interface, then change the knobs away from the stupid factory default settings (i.e. you turn all the EQ switches back to zero). Okay, we're getting somewhere now. We have a computer, which is the heart of the studio. We have an interface, which are its ears. We have a pair of studio monitors which are its mouth (for communicating with you, that is, not for eating your brains -- hopefully). What else do we need? A sense of touch! You could, of course, do everything with a mouse. Playing Diablo III with a mouse is fun; however, playing music with one is no fun at all. Not one little bit. Unless you're committed to only ever recording live instruments, you'll need a controller to play the virtual ones. Without a controller, you're condemning yourself to a life of tediously entering each and every midi event into the computer manually, one laborious note at a time. The most obvious kind of controller is the midi piano keyboard. And the one I'm going to recommend and refer to in this guide is the Behringer UMX.
Here at least, the snooty audio engineers can't complain about how rubbish Behringer gear sounds, because a controller keyboard like this makes absolutely no sound of its own. It's only purpose in life is to send midi notes and control messages to your computer. To that end, it has a keyboard with velocity sensitive keys, and a bunch of knobs and switches that can be assigned to specific midi functions. You can plug it into the midi input of your interface, but it works best if you hook it up directly to your computer with a USB cable. And yes, it will want a dedicated USB port all to itself. You suck at playing keyboard? Don't worry, you'll learn pretty quickly once you start getting deep into soft-synths and VST instruments. Of course, you could buy one of those guitar midi controllers, or one of the pad style things, like Native Instruments Maschine. But the keyboard is still the most direct and intuitive way of playing midi notes into your music projects. Of course, if you're main instrument is keyboards, you probably already have something you can press into service as a controller, so you wouldn't need to buy a cheap UMX. Just A Bit More Money...Back upstream, I said there wasn't any point buying expensive monitors, because you probably don't have an acoustically treated recording room. Well, why not? If you've got the space to have an entire room dedicated to recording, then you really should look into doing some basic acoustic treatment. First of all, this means setting up your gear properly. You want to set up your recording desk so your speakers are pointing length-ways down the room. You'll also want to take some care about how you place your speakers. You don't want them too far apart, or too close to the back wall. The back wall behind and above the speakers is the first place you put those acoustic foam panels. The next thing to do is put bass traps in the corners, because bass traps in the corners will make a bigger difference than anything else. And here's a thing. If you look at an acoustic foam panel and think, "hey, this stuff is just like ordinary packing foam." or if you look at a bass trap and think, "I could have made this myself with a bit of rockwool and a frame." then you're onto something. There are some things you don't want to do. You don't want to go mad and glue egg cartons all over the walls -- that old trick never worked. And when I say "egg-cartons" go ahead and include acoustic foam panels and carpet in that as well. The thing is, bass frequencies are much harder to absorb than treble frequencies. So when you do the egg-carton trick, you'll only manage to suck all the high-end out of the room, making it sound unnatural and muddy. When you do use those foam panels, you don't want to glue them directly to the wall either, and not just because the landlord will object. They'll work much better if you mount them so there's some space behind them. Finally, you'll want to avoid setting anything up in the exact center of the room, because that's where all the nasty comb-filtering lives. But who am I kidding? I don't have the space to set up a dedicated recording room, and I bet you don't either. You're probably working out of a cupboard in the spare bedroom, where the first step in preparing to record some tracks is putting away the ironing board and chasing the cat out the door. So through the rest of this guide, I'll assume your recording space sounds pretty horrible, and I'll recommend techniques that will minimize the effect of your room on your recordings -- even if that makes real audio engineers cringe. |
