Brian’s Bedroom

It is quite obvious that the better the equipment you use, the better your recordings will sound. However, as you all know, I’m a cheapo and try to focus on doing things cheaply with the best results.

The first proper pieces of equipment you should look at buying are decent microphones. This will improve your sound drastically. Different microphones have different applications, but for a cheap home setup the most important aspect to look at is versatility. You will want two types of mics: a decent instrument mic like the SM57 and then a decent condenser mic for practically everything else. A dynamic mic uses a diaphragm and an electromagnetic coil to induce a voltage signal, whereas a condenser mic uses a diaphragm and an electrostatic plate (capacitive effect). If that confused you, don’t worry it’s not too important – it just means that dynamic and condenser mics record sound differently and will thus have different sounding outputs.

The first decent microphone I ever bought was Shure’s SM57 instrument/vocal mic and it has served me well. The picture below shows what it looks like:

The SM57 is said to be one of the best mics for use on guitar amps, drums, wind instruments and is therefore very versatile. You can see from its frequency spectrum below, that it has an excellent mid-frequency response which gets a little wobbly towards the high-end. This explains its claim to fame, because electric guitars and drums dominate the mid-range. The SM57 is actually the exact same mic as the common SM58 vocal mic, it just doesn’t have a pop filter. It can therefore be used, with quite nice results, as a live vocal mic as well. For studio vocals, a condenser mic is better as it has a flatter high-range, but as a cheapo, this mic will work there too.

Another cool aspect of this mic is what Shure calls the “proximity effect“. This suggests that the closer the sound source is to the mic, the louder the bass response, meaning you can get some serious punch out of your mic. I highly recommend that you check this mic out if you are looking to improve your sound with equipment. For more information you can check out the Shure website.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Firewire Audio Recording Devices
Sound Proofing and Room Acoustics Basics
Monitor/Speaker Placement
What Gives a Guitar its Tone?
Sound Mixing Tips: High There?!

Okay, by now you should have a drum track recorded in Ardour as the first step for your recording project. If not, check out Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio – Part 2: Recording a Hydrogen Drumbeat. The drum track really is the backbone to your recording because it is often filled with the most emotion (i.e. build-ups, double tempos, break-downs etc.) However, in order to allow the recording artists to feel the full emotion of the song, we must add a few basic effects. These effects can then be tweaked towards the end of the project for the final mixdown.

Let’s take a look at what we have. The figure below shows my multiple drum track recording of Sunday Bloody Sunday in Ardour.

It is important to record the drums as dry (i.e. no effects) as possible because this will make your recording more versatile. You can easily add effects to a dry recording but you cannot easily remove recorded effects. The above tracks are therefore dry and can be heard from the MP3 below.

DryDrums.mp3 (555 kB)

We now need to add effects to each drum by using Ardour’s Mixer. The mixer can be opened from Ardour’s Window menu by selecting Show Mixer (or pressing Alt+M). This should look similar to the one below, minus all the effects on each drum.

You can add effects to each drum by right-clicking in the black rectangle above each drum’s level fader and selecting New Plugin. A list of all your installed effects will be shown, choose the relevant effect and select Connect. You should now see your effect appear in the black rectangle. The effect should still be bypassed so double click on it and a window displaying all the effect’s options will appear. You can vary the effect options and click the Bypass button to switch the effect on or off.

Now that you know how to add effects, which effects best suit drums? Firstly, if you want a natural sounding drum kit, stay away from EQ. The effect which is easiest and most effective for use on drums is reverb. I used the TAP Reverberator which requires a a stereo input. I therefore used the Hilbert Transformer to convert my mono track to a stereo one. I also used the TAP Equalizer to make my kit sound a bit more like U2′s, but as I said earlier, be subtle when using the EQ. The drum track with added effects can be heard from the MP3 below.

WetDrums.mp3 (555 kB)

Compressors are very useful for drums because they make the drums sound powerful. However, you can add these during the mixing stage of the project. The early use of effects is merely to inspire the artists with a emotion-provoking drum track. For more information on some cool Linux effects, check out this post: My Favourite Linux Audio Effects.

In the next part of the Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio series, our song should start taking shape as we add a guitar track.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio – Part 1: Plan your Project
Audio Recording in Ubuntu Studio – Part 2: Record a Hydrogen Drumbeat
Overview of Compression
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates – A Non-drummers Best Friend
Panning for Gold

Ah, sound proofing… a term which is thrown around by newbie sound guys who have heard of it but don’t necessarily know what it means. They may have heard something about egg boxes, seen really expensive studio setups or heard of some funny stuff like bass traps, suspension ceilings and the like. This one’s for you little ones (Don’t be offended – I was in your shoes just a few years ago).

First off, let’s define the difference between sound proofing and room acoustics.

• Sound proofing: This is essentially the method of isolating any sound from getting in or out of a space/room.
• Room Acoustics: This deals with getting a room to sound good by using materials within the room to dampen reverb/echo and flatten out the room’s frequency spectrum.

I hope you’re starting to see the difference, a sound proof room can sound really bad inside and a room which has been acoustically treated can still let sound leak in and out of it.

With that said, let’s ask the next question: How can I improve sound proofing and room acoustics cheaply and effectively? To answer this, I will start with sound proofing and then deal with room acoustics separately.

Sound Proofing

The only way of stopping sound from escaping or entering a room is to isolate the room from the noise source. Sound can escape from a room in two ways: either directly through an air gap or indirectly by vibrating the medium between the room and the noise source (i.e. a window vibrates quite easily and thus even when it is closed will still transfer some sound). The best sound proofing method which is used by most professional studios is to build double walls with an air gap between them. This is also expensive and thus not relevant to cheapos like us. A cheaper way of doing this is to modify an existing room by sealing all the doors, windows and anything else which provides a gap for sound to travel through. Sound is able to get through very small gaps so covering the bottom of the door and even keyholes can make a significant difference. I have sealed my doors and windows with a weather proofing foam tape. The idea is to seal any gaps which connect the inside and outside of the room. It also helps to use really think curtains or wood to cover the windows as this will also create an air gap between the windows and the room.

Room Acoustics

Sound proofing is the easy one, because it is just about sealing things and going big. Room acoustics is more difficult because if you go too wild, your room will sound bad.

There are two major materials used to better a room’s sound: absorbers (soft things like mattresses, carpets, sofas, etc) and diffusers (rough things like egg boxes, randomly loaded bookshelves, etc). Absorbers stop reflections by absorbing the higher frequency sound energy whilst diffusers still reflect sound but the reflection is scattered, making it harder to hear it as a defined echo. The easiest way to think of it is to use the analogy of light. A beam of light will reflect clearly off a straight piece of tin foil but when the same beam is shone onto a crumpled piece of tin foil, the light is reflected randomly around the room. In the case of the crumpled tin foil, the whole room should become brighter just like when you use diffusers, the room fills with a warm sound as opposed to a clear echo.

With that said, please don’t go out and make the same mistake most rookies do. Most rookies hear this and decide to cover their entire room with absorbers and diffusers – i.e. a room covered from floor to ceiling in carpet. This is not ideal, you want your room to sound natural and enhance your recordings – reverb is a good thing if it is controlled. You control the room’s sound by placing these materials in planned places around the room. This is a complicated process and I’d bore you to death if I wrote it all in one post, so I will just throw around some thought provoking ideas and then fill in the gaps in a future post. Idea 1: Focus on eliminating the corners, because corners amplify bass and muddy sound. Idea 2: If working in a room with parallel walls, place absorbers or diffusers on one wall only to eliminate sound waves bouncing back and forth. Idea 3: A thick carpet on the floor always helps. Idea 4: A bookshelf loaded randomly with books can act as a cheap diffuser. Idea 5: Read this awesome article: Acoustic Treatment for Home Studios. Idea 6: Keep reading my blog for other tips because I’m not finished with you :).

Other posts you might find interesting:
Monitor/Speaker Placement
Sound Mixing Tips: Bringing an Instrument Out of the Mud
What Gives a Guitar its Tone?
Sound Mixing Tips: High There?!
Sound Mixing Tips: Panning for Gold

Hey guys,

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Brian

How do you know the stage is level?

…the drummer is drooling out of both sides of his mouth.

Yeah, yeah… I’ve heard them all. I know as a non-drummer it is very difficult to think like a drummer. Especially when most non-drummers reckon that drummers don’t have the capability of thinking much :). However, to make a decent sounding drumbeat from a drum machine, you need to “think” like a drummer.

This can be quite a task, but don’t fear! I, as a drummer, have done the thinking for you and made a bunch of Hydrogen beat templates which you can simply piece together to make a drumbeat. The concept is simple – all I have done is made a Hydrogen Song using various rock patterns. You can download this song and simply rearrange the patterns to suit you. Below is a link to the first beat template I have made:

BriansBeatsROCK.h2song (217 kB)
Note: These songs require the YamahaVintageKit available for download from here.

It consists of several basic 4/4 rock beats with a few fills. There is also a crash and drag pattern which can be overlaid on any of the pieces in order to pimp them. This sounds a bit weird but I have made an example song which shows just how easily these beat templates can be used. This can be downloaded from the link below:

ROCKBeatsExample.h2song (217 kB)
ROCKBeatsExample.mp3 (747 kB)

I have only used a closed hi-hat for the right-hand rhythm, however it is easy enough to interchange this with whatever suits you, like the ride, open hats, or crash. This is just my first attempt at beat templates. If I feel they are successful I will make more templates to suite the various genres such as Punk, Metal, Jazz, Funk, Latin and Pop. So please let me know by means of commenting on this post if you find these templates useful.

Other posts you might find interesting:
Hydrogen Drumbeat Templates: FUNK Beats
Hydrogen Drumkits
My Attempt at a Hydrogen Drumkit
Pimp my Hydrogen Beats
Making a Roll Sound Realistic
Sunday Bloody Sunday Hydrogen Beat