4 Basic Tips For A Better Recording

Have the entire band tune with the same tuner
Tuners can vary in their accuracy, so having the entire band tune with one tuner is a great way to ensure A = A for everyone. A hand-held tuner is about $30 bucks, but in a pinch Pro Tools comes with “TL InTune”, a plug-in tuner that can suffice. Have your musicians tune every 30 minutes to be sure tracks stay consistent.

Tune the drums before recording
Drums can – and should – be tuned. It isn’t difficult to Google your drum kit model and find out the “default” note to tune each drum. Drum Tuners can cost as little as $60 bucks and can stop a $700 kit from sounding like a $200 one. Without a tuner, drums can be hand-tuned by ear and feeling the amount of tension around the circumference of the drumhead.

Record to a click track
A performance that’s very close to perfect can easily be edited to perfection with built-in Pro Tools editing power to snap the performance together. Beat Detective and/or Elastic Time can help maintain the groove of drums and align the beats with the click and tempo meter. Then Elastic Time can be used to warp the bass performance to the drums. Basic editing – simple copy and pasting or nudging – can always be used to ensure the entire band hits on a downbeat or finale of a track.

Use a DI with your guitar and bass
Some amps don’t translate well through any microphone. Recording through a DI allows you to mix amp modelers like Eleven or Chrome Tone with your amp signal to beef it up. This helps to minimize the bleed from other instruments or the buzz from a noisy amp.

Brandon Papsidero
Engineer, Studio West of San Diego
Instructor, "Signal Processing with Waves"