What Makes a Good Recording

[Aearth]

A mate of mine just tracked his first recording on his own using his 002. He has made many recordings using other people including myself but this time 80% of the tracking he did himself using his system. Digi 002R, Amek 9098, AKG 451, Studio Project T3 and great musicians. I must say it sounds pretty good. The mixing was all done using a HD system with a lot of high end outboard gear.
So what do you need to make a good enough recording? For me and in this case with my mate, a great bunch of musicians with good instruments as well as great high end preamps. Add on guys.

Nic

[Chris H]

At the very least, a good performance and gear that doesn't get in the way. I'm doing pre production for a local musician, and we did a live recording at the Edinburough Castle using their very humble setup. A Yamaha 8 ch desk, no sweeps on the eq, JBL powered speakers for FOH and monitors.No comps gates or any other gear for the tracking. The interface was a MOTU 896 into Logic Pro. I think its a decent sound. Check it out on her myspace;
http://www.myspace.com/emilyhanscamp

I still would rather use my better gear though.

[Mark Bassett]

Good question... I made up a little formula (well I think I made it up anyway).

The goal of a perfect product (mastered and ready to sell) is 1,000,000 points

The way I see it there are 6 steps in that process

The Song, The Musicians (incorporates performance), The Intruments, The Recording, Mixing, and Mastering.
Each of these is worth 10 points. So the perfect product if such a thing exists = 10x10x10x10x10x10

These steps are multiplicative (obviously).

Now Recording is a fairly general term, so perhps we could come up with anoter little formula that comes out at 10. I think you'd have to lnclude time, engineer, gear, room, etc

[Ausrock]

Mark,

Have you listed those in (your perceived) order of priority?

8)

[rick]

what about the time, talent and money .. formula
most problems seem to arise when only two out of three are used
as in "pick any two and i will give you and excuse of why things dont sound right "

[Chris H]

I hate maths!

[jkhuri44]

i think this question really relies on "what" is being recorded.

if we firstly look at single genres....each has specific values which must be upheld in order to produce what we can identify as a "good" recording.

if we use the example of classical music, we can say what classifies that is "good"...is things like appropriate mixture of dryness and wetness, depth, accuracy in capturing that sound in that space, etc..

if we look at "heavy metal" as another example...A good recording of that, usually has to be "tight" either with editing or with impeccable performance, has to use compression in its different uses to form the final edited sound, just two examples there...

if we look at these 2, there are huge differences in what is considered "good"....for example....classical hates using compression, where as in metal, it is always (bar a few cases, and engineers) used.

This question is extremely broad...and changes according to the genre being recorded...but what i think makes good recording is "Creativity". The ability to use what is at hand in the most efficient, suitable and pleasing (sonically) way.

finally...8 bit samples and dodgy toy chinese microphones may sound crap on a classical or jazz recording, but may be an awesome idea for an screamy metal vocal, or experimental album....

creativity creativity creativity...

[heathen]

A great vibe can make even poorly recorded material pretty grand. Though great gear, great talent, experience etc makes for a pleasurable listening experience. Combine these elements and things should be rockin.

Heathen

[Aearth]

[quote="Chris H"]I hate maths![/quote]


Yeah.....Maths and art is for the geeks.

Nic

[Kris]

I have a similar philosophy to Rick on this one, and have used it a few times with clients who are being.... unrealistic.

Good - Fast - Cheap.

You can have two. It's amazing how many of them don't understand the word "two".

But on topic... I have for years wanted my stuff to sound like artist 'x' or artist 'y'. I'm trying to make my stuff just sound like the artist now. It's harder than I thought. I reckon just use what you have and if the material is good enough it won't matter. Case in point, I have a Steve Poltz album (guitarist and co-writer for Jewel) and it's an album of songs recorded on his answering machine. Do I love high end recordings and mixes? Yep. Do I love the answering machine tapes? You bet.

[Peter Knight]

Choruses that sound louder than the verses.

[Simon B]

a person that knows when it sounds good, then they stop......


I have heard something like that quite a few times, and I think it stands true.

[Chris H]

a person that knows when it sounds good, then they stop......


I have heard something like that quite a few times, and I think it stands true.

Spot on. Trouble is if you are like me, as you get into a mix it's all too easy to take the mix into territory where it starts to sound less than the rough i started out with. For this reason i always save copy of the rough arrange page (Logic) to go back to and save versions as i proceed when i'm happy. I also regularly refer back to the rough mix. For some reason the rough mix i develop while tracking often seems to be the best place to start from. This is one of the biggest advantages of ITB mixing.

[Dave Shore]

It's a really interesting question. I was thinking about Mark's formula:

"The Song, The Musicians (incorporates performance), The Intruments, The Recording, Mixing, and Mastering.
Each of these is worth 10 points. So the perfect product = 10x10x10x10x10x10 "

But then I thought of the song "She Loves You" by the Beatles.
Musicians = 3/10 (just chords, no lead guitar, very ordinary singing, nothing sonically special)
Instruments/Recording/Mixing = 3/10 (might have been good in their day - almost half a century ago - but cannot compete with todays standards)

So this song would score very low. And yet it sounds amazing and everyone loves it. So, maybe 'The Song' should be weighted more heavily than the other attributes. Or maybe the version of the song that we hear today has been Mastered brilliantly (you guys would know better than me).

Or maybe I'm just wrong (?) - I'm only a beginner in terms of sound engineering.

Is there another aspect to that song (other than the songwriting) that I'm overlooking? Would love to hear your thoughts..

[Mark Bassett]

My initial thoughts would be that my formula is wrong.

[chris p]

Ever see "Dead Poet's Society", where Robin Williams tells the kids to rip out the front pages from their textbooks?

While art (including music) can be analysed to see what makes it tick, the creation of art cannot be reduced to numbers - else Einstein would have been Picasso.

[Martin]

Is there another aspect to that song (other than the songwriting) that I'm overlooking? Would love to hear your thoughts..

my thoughts that there is soon to be a generation of people who's parents were to young for the beatles, and who don't think the song, nor the recording is that spectacular... their parents were young when adat's were new...

can an engineers analytical ears get in the way of 'feeling' and 'being immersed' in the song if it hasn't been mic'ed, pre-amped, clocked, sample-rated, 2inch'ed, neve-d, outboard-ed, neve'd etc etc etc

bland and low end digital recordings make my ears not want to listen anymore...

unless i made the recording and heard the song pre-tape/computer :)

[Dave Shore]

Ha ha, Chris P, you're right. I guess if art could be reduced to numbers then someone like Bill Gates would be in the Top 40 ;)

I guess there is just an undefinable element to it.