The Producer's Toolbox - Budget recording , adding layers after a Live session.

Hello Steemit!

Here I am with another production tutorial , using another of my productions to set examples and show a quick step by step process so maybe you can pick some ideas from them .

There is a general misconception around that in order to get good quality recordings you need to have all the fancy gear in a professional studio with the best recording ''magic'' equipment.. though this might me partially true and it does affect the final quality of a product .. It is more important to know your tools and work your best around them. The following production was cut Live in a living room with mostly borrowed gear and with ''no magic ingredients''.

(Image used for reference.. this living room is MUCH nicer than the one we recorded in ..)
Image source

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So.. first of all.. before we start let me give you a background of what we were working on.

This song is called ''Colibrí'' from bassist/singer and songwriter Raul Rueda , an artist I had the pleasure to work with in two other singles that I have shared here with a very different approach to what is normally heard in Guayaquil , our home city , here is another production we were able to release.

After cutting a few tracks on a studio and for what was originally going to be a 4 song EP , all the budget was spent . Raul then wanted to add two more songs but since we had no more money to put a proper session together.. we got creative and found a different way to make it happen , and actually I must confess this second part of the EP was more fun to produce :P !!

So .. when recording on a budget , first thing to know and be honest about is :

- What are your limitations?

So , we did not have a big console with all the channels we needed and a whole array of microphones and guitar amps , etc . We had to work with what we could get our hands on and work around it .. adapt to our gear or as I prefer to say it : Make it work!

So , as our main interface all we had was an old discontinued TASCAM US-1800 .. so we had basically 8 preamps and 2 line imputs.. so.. 10 channels.. that was it..the whole band had to use 10 channels MOST. So .. we adapted to this.

The actual main layout in the session goes as follows:

Channel 1 : Kick drum
Channel 2 : Snare top
Channel 3 : Snare bottom
Channel 4 : Tom 1
Channel 5 : Tom 2
Channel 6 : OH ( hi-hat )
Channel 7 : OH (ride )
Channel 8 : Guitar Mic
Channel 9 : Guitar ( extra line - in for reamp )
Channel 10 : Bass Guitar ( Line - in )

I can't remember the microphones used since in this case it wasn't a ''let's choose this one'' scenario but rather we had to use what we had .. but I can assure it was very basic equipment , a couple SM57s for the snare and the guitar , standard Shure drum kit or even a cheaper Samson kit.. I think for OHs we had some behringer stuff.. anyways.. not THAT important as there was really nothing special going on the gear we used.

So we went in and did the take Live ,trying to play as precise as possible since there was not going to be much editing.. we were in the same room.. so there was a lot of microphone bleeding all over!

- Adding Layers

I have a personal style of production in the sense that I like to layer a lot , I'm always looking for ambience and little elements to come in an out of the song to keep it engaging , never having a section be exactly repeated .. at least some small element is changed in order to keep introducing new information to the listener , this is used extensively in pop songs as they in nature are repetitive but good producers know how to add and take away small elements all the time so that ''we can't stop listening to the song!''

Also my main focus of layering is 90% of the time on the electric guitar , being a guitar myself this makes sense but I am also a fan of the Nashville style of producing as I normally tell @paintingangels. No matter what they do over there , the guitar is most of the time showcased heavily.

Putting it all together

So , I'm going to make a separate tutorial on how I worked the vocal track for this particular song and a couple more examples as @hoscker suggested. That would pretty much deserve a post of its own to cover enough ground but now I headed in and edited the whole thing .. the solo I had tried in the previous version was rejected , so after editing and meshing the thing together we came to this ... oh.. and by the way... that's not the final vocal track.. just a reference ;)

- I got a solo! ..not the one I expected but.. yay!

This is a funny one.. I actually made 2 or 3 different solo options keeping good and consistent ideas that I though worked for the song , laid back , in a more concept oriented style and I kept getting the ''mmmm.... we are not there yet'' response.

Little side note:

I have a weird sense of humor and I like to mock many ''producers'' ( note the quotes) that like to ask for things that make no sense in an arrangement. Like '' I need more concept'' , ''Can you play more bucolic?'' , ''How about some sponginess to the line?'' ( these are all true btw ! ). So I on purpose added little tags on certain pedals, I have the ''concept'' knob , the ''bucolic'' knob (that one fell off already ) available on my rig but when you turn them up they all sound awful!

I usually just bluff my way around those situations .. ''oh yes.. of course.. yes , to get the bucolic sound you need to ''______________" <--- insert nonsense '' Then I just move or pretend to move some EQ settings and BOOM! BUCOLIC TONE!

So , back to the solo... it needed to be more ''conceptual'' and I still don't have the slightest idea of what that means. So I just went and got and grabbed some bad equipment , mic'ed it wrong and played with a quite gnarly sound for a pop tune in my opinion... and that one stayed!

I used a Fender Bronco.. with a loose speaker.. you could hear it rattling inside.

I then just put an Sm 57 hanging from the amp's handle.. so it actually pointed to the ground this way it would grab more of the mid frecuencies.. and not the high ones.

(not the actual amp used .. the microphone was hanging like the one on the left)

I grabbed my semi-hollow Thinline Telecaster and put a Maxon SD-9 in front of it and just went for it.. and we got the solo!

- Mixing!

Not my area of work .. as usual.. I send all my productions to Sergio Vivar at La Real Sociedad in Guayaquil.. this is what we have so far:

After some extra corrections this will get sent to Mastering and then released ;) , I will share this with you when it's done!

(Btw , I always ask the artist's permission to share sessions and Demos )

This wraps it out for today! I hope you get some ideas from these examples and don't let gear limitations stop you from producing! You can get good results from equipment in various levels of quality! As always , questions are always welcome!

Thanks for reading and listening!