What Are The Benefits of Further Soundproofing

Do you still have sound coming into your home studio you know like a TV from another room or maybe you can hear water running from the dishwasher or anything else. There are three areas that get overlooked when building a room for sound work first is electrical wall plates and switch plates. Like most rooms there are multiple plates and each is capable of letting in sound or noises. Since the boxes are already in the wall (and if you can't take them out) you will need to caulk around the opening between the wall and the box hopefully it's not to wide. If it is you can use acoustical putty and fill in the edge around the box and it is fire rated also you can use the spray foam that you use around outer doors and windows. Then find some thin foam cut it to fit between the plate and wall cut out your plugs or your switches and screw holes as close as you can then screw the plate back on. Next doors and windows now here we want to create a small vacuum when you shut the door or window so for the door we need a threshold with a rubber seal on the top so when you shut it compresses the rubber seal. On the door itself down at the bottom screw in a door strip with the rubber edge on it and make the edge barely touch the floor you don't want to see any light coming through under the door. Now around the door in the door stop you should have some kind of seal that will not stick to the door itself I recommend Q-Lon or Zero International they both make kits that work well for this situation. With windows there are usually the slider type and depending on how old they are depends on the glazing I recommend two or three pains make sure the caulking around both sides of the window is not old and worn from weatherization if it is remove it and re caulk. The third place is your H VAC system and depending on the money and resources you have depends on your fix. My studio is in the basement of our house it stays about 60 degrees which is great in the hot summer months everything is turned off so no noise. But in the winter months the heating system is turned on and (I always seem to record more in the winter) so what I do is I use a small space heater in the room your recording in. And I will turn the main system off while the session is going on then I turn it back on when I'm done. Turn the small heater off in between tracks. Unless you have cash to burn you could install a mini-split system where the main unit is outside and the air movement part is inside the room including wall /ceiling ducts and they are very quite. For more on recording tips go to http://www.musicanddjinstructionalmedia.com/homerecording.html

Dub Turbo - Your Answer to Making Beats Online

If you are interested in making beats online and I am sure you are if you are at this blog, then you have probably already heard of Dub Turbo by now.

It is causing quite a stir because it is the first DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) to be released with every feature that a fully functioning recording studio has and at a mere fraction of the price.

Although I wanted to write up a blog post and tell you all what the best thing about Dub Turbo was for me!

So what is it?

The quality!

If you have a look about online you can see other programs such as Fruity Loops or Cubase to name a few and these are all very good, but when you start using them you quickly find that if you are a beginner at making rap beats then you will find it a struggle.

Yes the quality of the beats are good, but as I say when you are starting out it can be difficult to make any really good sounds until you do some swatting up on music production. Not to mention the price of these programs and that is just the software then you'll have to buy the equipment to go with it OUCH.

So this is where Dub Turbo comes in!

It gives you a fully functioning recording studio and all the features, keyboard, drum kit, wave editor and you can even burn your new creations onto CD!

Although the thing that impressed me was the speed and ease in which you could get your music created and out there with it sounding AWESOME!

All the sound samples that it uses were recorded in a REAL recording studio and that is what will give your beats that “EDGE”.

The other cool thing is that although it has all of those features it is not very complex at all!

You can get up and running and get an AWESOME beat out there in just 10 minutes!

Check out Dub Turbo today and start making some classy beats with ease!!!!

www.musicanddjinstructionalmedia.com

New Engineer, New Singer and What You Need to Know.

 So lets say your studio is up and running now and clients are wanting you to record them. So you record their tracks and now  it's time for the vocal tracks and your singer is new and so are you. Don't panic make sure you have a nice quite and fairly dead corner in your studio if you don't maybe you could use a device like a Voxgaurd from Prime-acoustic or another possible solution is stand- mounted mini-booth from sE Electronics Reflexion Filter or the Flexibooth again by Prime-acoustic. Although not convenient , they do a good job of removing unwanted room noise unless you have a vocal booth then one of these will work well. I'm not one of those engineers who thinks you should fix it in the mix with a bunch of plug-ins I approach it by finding and removing the noise source if possible. Now pull out your large diaphragm condenser microphone and plug it into the preamp of your system oh and don't forget turn on your phantom power. OK you will need a pop screen to stop the P’s and sss's when the singer starts getting their groove on and your trying to capture a killer performance. And remember if the sound should rumble on you use your high pass filter on your mic or your preamp at about 70 Hz.

Keep it simple and make the singer as comfortable as possible recording is complicated, but it shouldn't be for the singer their job is to sing the very best they can and not  have to worry about all the technology around them that's your job. There are some producers who are demanding at times and get good results but this approach with a newbie will probably end in a disaster. Your are responsible for capturing the best version of the song your are recording if inexperience threatens the life of the song then you have to find natural and creative ways to overcome this situation. Singing with a pair of headphones can be a challenge to the newbie singer most if not all have only sang live so you will have to experiment with the headphone cups. Generally most singers take one cup and move behind their ear but leave it on their head so the sound from the cup will not bleed into the microphone then they can hear their pitch better. Some singers can not use headphones and there are ways around this by having the singer sing in front of the main monitors facing them and isolating the microphone then record another pass but do not sing this time invert the phase on this track and bounce it with the track that has the vocals on it and that should eliminate all the bleed. Also try to have no-latency hardware monitoring singers new and experienced are sensitive to any slight delay it could really ruin a good vibe. Now singers have to be encouraged and have to stay focused on the subject matter and the groove of the song. You might have to do a little coaching and keep your thoughts to yourself while you're recording complete end to end vocal takes. You can fix trouble spots after you capture the track.

Remember a newbie singer is very nervous as it is so your only going to get a few usable passes to edit together into one usable track at the end of the session. If you can get a punch-in or two that might help fix some areas that need some surgical attention. I find that if you put a little compression on the input source about 1.5db, attack and release 4.1 or lower will make the vocal sound bigger and sit nicely in the track. Also keep in mind if the track doesn't sound that good with this minimal work you might want to change your mic for a different brand or type. I have over the years built a pretty decent mic closet so I have a lot of mics to choose from and even the smallest of studios should have at lease two good mics in their arsenal I suggest one of them be tube and the other a large diaphragm condenser with a high-pass switch and an Shure SM58 will work well on rock vocals. Remember singers are looking for your production skills and coaching. Give them honest feedback , inspiration and enthusiastic support for your vocalist and they will start to recommend you to other singers and return themselves. There is merit in re-thinking how we approach the most important element of the song. That is to just keep it simple.