Playing the saxophone Tips for home recording

[Pete Thomas]

At some point I found out that using only half headphones is better than having the saxophone in them.
Now I just hear myself from the natural sound.

Yes, this can work very well.

But some engineers hate it if there is a click track in the headphones, as the side which is not on your ear can easily spill into the mic.

 

[rhysonsax]

Yes, this can work very well.

But some engineers hate it if there is a click track in the headphones, as the side which is not on your ear can easily spill into the mic.

I use headphones with one earpiece on and one off, and have the mix made mono and panned all over to one side. Can't the studio engineers just do that ?

Rhys

 

[aldevis]

Engineers are a strange breed. I am always respectful of other people's competence, but I've seen and heard things that can be really depressing.

 

[Nick Wyver]

It's interesting that everyone now assumes that you're going to be using a PC for recording. Doesn't anyone (apart from me) use a multitrack recorder?

 

[DavidUK]

I use headphones with one earpiece on and one off, and have the mix made mono and panned all over to one side. Can't the studio engineers just do that ?

Rhys

This may be a daft question, but why not use a single "in ear" headphone in one ear? No sound leakage back to the mic doing this either?

 

[rhysonsax]

This may be a daft question, but why not use a single "in ear" headphone in one ear? No sound leakage back to the mic doing this either?

I guess it is just an old school way of doing it.

Rhys

 

[Pete Thomas]

I use headphones with one earpiece on and one off, and have the mix made mono and panned all over to one side. Can't the studio engineers just do that ?

Rhys

Yes, but the issue is actually not just click tracks but anything really including drums, however a click track may be the worst as it's always unlikely to be something you want in the final mix.

 

[Danny@HSM]

I use an M-Audio interface. The one you can see here: Deadlink Removed it works fine with two Behringer B5 condenser microphones http://www.behringer.com/EN/Products/B-5.aspx and has inputs for any kind of instrument (Bass guitar, Guitar...). I have also a vintage Yamaha SY77, connected via MIDI to use cubase virtual instruments and a Shure B58A which is an excellent microphone. When I record the saxophone I use headphones. You can listen yourself while playing over the recorded tracks and add a bit of reverb in real time which won't be recorded. This is an M-Audio feauture. In this way you can add your own reverb during the final mixing and at the same time have some fun playing along the track. The first thing I do is to record the drum track, that's because I don't like the metronome click...

 

[littleplum]

For the novice recordists, there is a course run at the Stables theatre near Milton Keynes. It is in 2 parts and teaches you how to record and mix.
Each day is 6 hours long and costs about £38 (discounted if you book both at the same time) with a maximum of 8 people per day. You can take an instrument and record a track between you.
I have just done both and learnt a lot to get me started.

 

[altissimo]

a few words which may or may not be relevant ....
if you're playing along to a backing track and overdubbing something onto a fairly complete mix, it's likely that a little bit of spill from headphones won't really matter and won't be noticeable in the context of a finished mix. Many classic albums from the 'good old days' have a lot of spill from the drums bleeding over into the guitar mics etc and they sound good because the engineer knew where to put the mics to get the best sound. (That last bit is important - finding the right mic position is everything when you're recording - be prepared to experiment a lot with this) - in my more whimsical moments, I sometimes wonder if 'let it bleed' was the Rolling Stones' instructions to an overly fussy sound engineer, but I digress...
A few months ago I mixed an album by a Polish jazz sextet all recorded in one room and everything spilled over into every mic - I was only half joking when I told them I could get a reasonable mix out of just the drum overheads. But with a bit of work I came up with a finished mix that they really liked and paid me for. I used the spill to create a sense of ambience, depth and space that didn't involve using any artificial reverb.

As Pete pointed out, the only time that spill from headphones can really be an issue is if the headphone mix contains sounds that aren't going to end up in the finished mix, but outside of the world of session musicians playing along to a click track, how often will that situation occur?
Absolute separation of all the instruments in a mix is rarely achievable, nor is it particularly desirable - the tales of Martin Hannett dismantling the drum kit and getting Joy Division to record each drum separately indicate the path of madness that you can go down in the pursuit of isolating each instrument..

Capturing good performances on whatever equipment you have at your disposal is, I think, the real aim of recording music - I've cleaned up and mastered albums that people had recorded on a Zoom H2 that went on to be released on vinyl and lauded by trendy music writers - it's the music that counts and not the process. There once was a time when the mix was determined by how far from the mic you stood

These days we have computer software at our disposal that The Beatles could only dream of and the amount of control and the degree of choice that it affords us is not, as Brian Eno would point out, always a good thing

 

[Nick Wyver]

I've cleaned up and mastered albums that people had recorded on a Zoom H2 that went on to be released on vinyl and lauded by trendy music writers

Who, no doubt, spent tens of thousands of pounds on hi-fi to faithfully reproduce the sound of the crappy recording process.

 

[aldevis]

Who, no doubt, spent tens of thousands of pounds on hi-fi to faithfully reproduce the sound of the crappy recording process.

as long as you call it "lo-fi soundz"...

 

[altissimo]

Who, no doubt, spent tens of thousands of pounds on hi-fi to faithfully reproduce the sound of the crappy recording process.

the music writers I've met couldn't afford their own drinks, much less an expensive stereo - thirty quid a review and as many promo albums as you can filch to sell on ebay isn't the path to fortune.

with a bit of work it is quite possible to get reasonable results from unpromising recordings, you just have to know how to EQ out the noxious frequencies and leave the nice sounding ones - multiband parametric equalisers are a godsend

 

[Jeanette]

with a bit of work it is quite possible to get reasonable results from unpromising recordings, you just have to know how to EQ out the noxious frequencies and leave the nice sounding ones - multiband parametric equalisers are a godsend

If I ever manage to get a nice sound on my H2 I'll hand it over for your expert attention 🙂

Jx

 

[altissimo]

If I ever manage to get a nice sound on my H2 I'll hand it over for your expert attention 🙂

Jx

great, I could do with a new H2

 

[Jeanette]

great, I could do with a new H2

Love it 🙂

Jx

 

[jbtsax]

I just wanted to thank everyone for their advice in this thread---especially about microphones and recording distance from the mic. I purchased a Shure 57 mic and am very pleased with the results. I am finding the recording feature in Band-In-A-Box very easy and convenient to record the tunes of the month.

I will ditto what others have said about the usefulness of recording one's self in order to improve one's playing skills. Some of the feedback that I have found most helpful is hearing intonation problems on certain notes and being able to tell when I am not "blowing through" a phrase and sustaining the intensity of the sound till the end. Something else that has surprised me a bit is that a tone that sounds to me like it has too much of an edge when I am playing actually sounds quite good on a recording. Go figure.

 

[jbtsax]

I'm reviving this thread because some different questions have come up. I am trying to record with a Shure 57 using Audacity on my desktop computer. It sounded good when the Shure was patched into my Mackie mixer that went into the desktop via firewire. I wanted to simplify the set-up so that I could also record with my laptop so I bought a Shure X2U XLR to USB adapter so I could plug the mic straight into the computer. Now the recorded sound is distorted.

Is anyone familiar with using this type of adapter. At this point I don't know if I have something wrong in the recording settings, or if this just isn't a workable set-up. Any help or advice is greatly appreciated since I am a technologically challenged "senior citizen". Hell, I don't even know how to operate a cell phone.

 

[Guenne]

Hey jbtsax,

which OS, Windows or Mac?
I suppose you have to set the mic's sensitivity (gain) somewhere as the X2U acts as Audio Interface.
Wait, from what I can see
here
you have so set the mic gain on the interface, and it seems the x2u has a built in headphone amp, which you also have to adjust in volume.
Please excuse if this solution is to simple....

Cheers,
Guenne

 

[altissimo]

there are usually 2 or 3 different places where you have to adjust the signal level - first check the device itself - the gain control just below the little LED -
adjust the gain control until the LED is flickering yellow on the loudest bits, if it's red, it's too high - turn it down -

http://cdn.shure.com/user_guide/upload/1899/us_pro_x2u_ug.pdf

there are other places where the level can be adjusted eg in the software, in your case Audacity. I assume that you've already got as far as getting it to record from the audio interface, but wise to check, I've had it recording off the internal mic on my laptop before now by mistake
there's a thing in the top tool bar below the record button, with the little microphone looking icon to the left of it where you can select the signal source, in my case I've got stereo mix, but if you look for Shure Digital or USB Device or something similar and make sure that's selected, then at least we know that it's recognising the thing

to actually adjust the record volume, there's another little microphone looking icon, dead centre near the top
there should be a little drop down menu - click on 'start monitoring' the meters above may flicker momentaritly - look to the right of those meters and you'll see a couple of horizontal faders, the first one with the little loudspeaker icon is for the playback level, the next one with the little microphone icon controls the record level
As far as I know, Audacity over rides any internal record level facilities in Windows, so this should do it, but you can check via Control Panel - Sound - Recording - Shure Digital - Levels
the file path may vary depending on which version of Windows you're running

If what you're experiencing is more like crackling and dropouts it could be to do with latency settings, how Windows deals with USB power management, or any one of a number of issues

apologies if this is a bit elementary for you, you've run the firewire device ok, so you should already be familiar with this stuff, but this info may be useful for other users