Mike Whitla’s Blog

Making a Recording (Part 01)

I thought it might be interesting to document the process of recording a song from start to finish.

Ok before you start recording you first need to have your song. For this process I am using the song “Some Like it Hot” a folk rhyme from England that was turned into a folk rhyme in Trinidad. I have been singing the song for a while and have adapted myself from the Trinidadian version. Then you need  to get your musicians rehearsed. For the rehearsals you need sheet music I have been using a program called sibelius to do this. It is a nice music notation program which I have just started using and seems to work quite well. I made an arrangement that has drums, bass, guitar, and several vocal parts for the band to read in rehearsal and recording sessions.
This song will have the following instrumentation:
Drums
Bass
Guitar (several guitar parts 4-8 different tracks and sounds)
Voice (about 5 different parts)
Horns (probably 3-5 different saxophones and brass instruments though I might not use em)

The first part of the recording is to Read the rest of this entry »

How to Dampen Reverb in a Room

Ok. I’m really lucky to have this problem. My old studio in my last house was a tiny carpeted room that had no noticeable reverb so this was not a problem for me. Now I have moved into this wonderful 1900 built triplex that has a new huge room for my control room. The problem:

Tooo Much Reeeeverrbbb. . . . This is because the walls reflect the sound and it bounces around the room. This gives the room an inherent built in and uncontrollable reverb.
Recording and mixing all have this reverb added automatically to what you are hearing and it makes all recording have this added and all listening becomes biased by it.
You can spend thousands on acoustic tiles or you can follow the instructions here . . .
Read the rest of this entry »