If the Formatting Fits

Even after the mastering is done, the ability to get your CD out into the right places and to have it meeting the necessary standards still has to be a priority. There is more than one way to get your recording into the right place, but the engineering and technology has to come first in order to get it into the right arena.

The general concept to keep in mind with each of the areas that your recording formats can and should be is that each of them is based on two things. The first is the way in which the mastering is done with the instruments, allowing each one of them to blend together with the lows, mids and highs in the right places. What this means is that too much bass in one area is just enough in the other. The second consideration is the volume levels that are used. The overall volume format that you use will be different according to where you decide to put your music.

The way to follow each of these formats is to test it through your monitor speakers. This will give you an idea of the high end and low end sounds and how they are impacting the song. You can also look into industry standards and concepts with some of the following formats.

CDs The major capability of CDs is to be able to create your own unique sound and volume consideration. There is an industry standard for CDs in terms of volumes and mix; however, you have the choice of whether to follow this. Within this, you can master things according to your style. For example, if you play rock music, you will want the rhythms and the bass to be slightly higher on the low end than they would be in a country piece.

MP3s and Downloads Thanks to digital media, there are entirely new ways to listen to music. With this are also different volume checks, standards and mixes that are incorporated. This is important to follow because most of the digital media that is downloaded will be going onto a computer or a smaller digital device. This makes it so that the mix is different, specifically with the need to have low ends on a computer or not to have the high ends taking over the smaller speakers.

Radio The radio has a completely different standard than any other type of format. This is because the music must be processed through the radio’s player and then into the speakers that move into a home stereo. Typically, volume control for radios is going to be slightly louder with mixes in the low ends being more quiet than the high end. This allows for the format to be played on anything from an alarm clock to a car radio without a bad mix.

Of course, more formatting options are available, all which specialize in the volume control options as well as the high end and low end mixes. You can easily find your options through looking at the industry standards or looking at plug ins in your software that may already have the current industries recommendations as a plug-in. When it is time to change your wave file into a format, you will want to make sure that you know the formatting that fits.

Getting Your Recording Right

You finally have finished recording your piece, front to back and think that you are ready to mix everything together. But, before you start, you notice that there is one little glitch right in the middle. Before you start over again, or start to give up with your song, find the tools that will work so that you can get the recording right.

Software that is designed in recording is always designed with the human element in mind. This means that you can play the instrument the way that you best know how, then create a way to get the exact sound that you want later. While you want to be exact while you record, you can be somewhat merciful in knowing that this sometimes doesn’t happen, then find the right tools to put it back together again.

One of the greatest software tools that can be used are punch ins. This allows you to flag a certain area that you want to re-do. You will be able to go back a certain number of seconds and replay. You will then move into the area that needs re-done and record over what was already recorded. You will be able to continue to play afterwards in order to fade back out and put everything together right.

With this option, you want to make sure that you can put all of the sound waves next to each other. With some programs, the punch ins will slightly divide once starting. Giving yourself enough room to prepare for the punch in as well as creating a seamless tie together of the two will help you to put everything together.

Once you have all of the instrumentation exactly right, you can start putting in the right sounds. This is often times called the pre-mixing stage and is used in order to make your instrumentation have the right effects and resonance within your instrument. You always want to do this before you reach the mixing stage as it will often times make a difference in the volume as well as the way in which the instrument mixes with other instruments.

The pre-mixing stage will always begin with the normalization process. This is simply taking the setting of the waves and making it so that it peaks out in both ends. When you normalize something, the frequencies will go up or down. You should see the waves change in order to reach maximum and minimum peaks at both ends. If you have your volume set correctly, everything will normalize to be around the same peaks, allowing you to mix together the sounds easier.

After this, you can set the sound that you want in the end for your instrumentation. This moves into reverb options, flange, effects, fades and other instrumentation effects that adds in extra color to your instrumentation. When you do this, you should make sure that you work with what will sound the best with your instrument and how it will change the sounds within your song. Once you start to hear the right sounds for your instrumentation, you can preset this part and allow for time saving options when getting ready to mix.

After this stage, you will be ready to start your mixing of instruments. Your check list for the pre-mixing stage is to simply make sure that your individual instruments has the right sound that you want for the entire mix. This starts with the smoothness you will want from the song and moves into the options for getting the sounds that add a little bit extra into the mix of your individual instrument.

Getting To the End of the Road

If you have a home studio or a small set-up for your recording studio, you are probably familiar with the blues of the recording process. It includes the down times of having to listen to the same things over and over again, trying to hear the different levels and parts of the instruments several times and spending hours just to get to the end of the road.

It’s the recording blues that stop hundreds of small bands from completing a CD and taking ten years to get their next album out. The difficulties that come with recording and the process that has to be done can be tedious, frustrating and can cause to burn out of either the songs, members or others who are working on the CD.

If you are recording, and even if it is by yourself, you don’t want to stop until you complete the CD. The levels of satisfaction that can be achieved can help you to do greater and better things and can help to influence those around you to do the same. There are several perspectives that allow for the benefits of finishing the CD to be a part of what you are doing. Sticking with the process, learning what you need to and plowing forward will eventually get you to the end result and allow you to be even more effective with your music and creativity.

If you’re feeling down about your recording, keep in mind your end goal. Keep visualizing yourself at the end of the road and how this will affect everyone else. This begins with the achievements that this is able to bring you and what you have accomplished with the CD. This is something that many don’t have the will power, desire or capacity to do. That already puts you ahead of the game.

More than that, never stop thinking about what your fans or potential fans would think if you have a CD out and how this will influence them. Finishing the recording process and getting the CD into the public opens doors for you to make connections in a positive way and to do what you need in order to share your creative process with others. Whether it is one person or fifty million, this part of the process is one that can be effective and make you want to set the next date to record your next CD.

In recording, it is not necessarily the end goal of the CD, even though this will bring rewards individually and towards those around you. It is also the process of being able to hear your pieces in a different way and to manipulate the sounds from an engineering point of view, instead of just a performance point of view. If you haven’t stopped to enjoy the process of putting together your CD, start listening a little bit differently for the way that things fall together within the process.

The main advice for recording your CD is to keep the different perspectives in mind. While the entire process may be tedious and difficult, allowing yourself to enjoy the process and think of the end benefits can help you to further your career as a recording producer and engineer as well as a musician who is able to share creativity with others.

Getting the Right Mix: Mixing Boards and Recording

The most important step from the instrument to the recording software is the mixing board. This particular part of recording is one that allows you to put everything together the correct way, before you have to manipulate it in the computer software. If you want to make sure that you are putting together everything right, you will also want to know exactly how the mixing board can benefit you.

A mixing board is also referred to as a sound board and is responsible for taking the instruments and mixing and routing them into the computer. As soon as an instrument is plugged into a mixer, it will then turn into a digital signal, which creates sound waves.

A mixer works by allowing each instrument being recorded to have one area in which the signal is received. These individual instruments can be changed with volume levels, depth of the sound and other features through the mixing board. For example, if you are playing with a piano and a bass, they can both have a different input area in the mixer. One can be louder and the other can be softer, with the bass having less treble, or high end sound, with the piano balancing out with more mid-range sounds. It is these volume levels that then move into the software and allow for the sound waves to be recorded with a specific balance.

When defining the different parts of the mixer, there is also the ability to combine different types of volumes, depending on the knobs that are being used for the right mix. These are known as input controls, and contain everything that allows for the specific sound of the instrument. This starts with defining the volume through this one instrument. There is also a trim or gain control, which defines the level of sound within each wave.

From here, the mixing board will allow for details of the sound waves to be defined through an EQ, which means equalization. The main responsibility of this part of the mixing board is to change the frequencies within each range. For example, if the EQ of the bass is too high, the higher frequencies can be boosted in order to balance out both ranges. The EQ frequencies can be referred to with some general preferences that work within instrumentation as well as personal preference to allow the sound to be as low or high as you want.

When the instrumentation is received into the mixer and begins to be balanced, other options can also be put into the mix. For example, the amplitude of the sounds can be defined through specific parts of the board. There are also noise gates, which stops the sound from echoing before it goes into the recording area, or allows for some resonance to be in the mix. There is also the ability with some mixers to compress the instruments, meaning that the sound waves will be shortened if they reach or go over a certain peak number, allowing you to keep control of the volume before it gets into the computer program as a sound wave.

After all of these options for individual instruments, the mixing board will then move into mixing the physical space. Main volume areas as well as controls for outputs are used in order to ensure that everything is balanced while recording and remains equal in sound to those who are listening while recording. Like the instrumentation that is moving into the software as sound waves, these areas have a variety of options for making the sound balance within the studio.

The idea with a mixing board is to make the right mix for both the internal software so that the sound files can sound the same, as well as the external area, so that all of the instruments can blend together while recording. The different devices that are used within the mixing board help to achieve this through the different options for volume control and mixing options.

When you are looking into a sound board, you should always consider the options for getting the mix right, including the number of instruments that you can hook up to the different functions that the mixing board contains. When you start to put together the recording with the right mix board, you will have a better blend of sounds and will allow the end result of the recording to mix together exactly right.