tips...017.
A REAL RECORDING SESSION WITH POWERTRACKS.(cont.).
ok.the band CEFE have heard your drum tracks you created
useing some of the triks ive outlined,
and a good basic drum track is there.
and they are happy.
you dont want drums too fancy at this point cos,
once the whole song is down and/or as the song
is recorded the whole drum arrangement idea might change.
but the drummer is kinda annoyed that your drum track
sounds good..lol. and has stepped out for a coffee.
but the band want a cynbal track done to make the drums just a bit realistic.
luckily u have some nice cymbal samples.
in your library of samples.
but how do you place those cym samples at the specific
time points in the song the band wants ??
once again a trik is involved.
name a trak in ptw hits trak, set a mic up in front of the band
member that wants the cymbol trak, and tell him to tap
the mic with a pencil (use a crummy mic..!) each time
he wants cymbols.
record the pencil taps. (not too high !! in level.)
(while playing back the song.)
now go into ptw audio edit window after recording the taps,
and youll see a series of signals recorded.
at various time points.
place the mouse just at the start of each tap, and note the
time that ptw displays. write down all the times.
then copy the cymbal sample u decided to use imported to
a spare track...copy it. EDIT>>>>1 track paste.
and enter the time in the paste dialog. the FROM box.
ie...paste for each time where a cymbal is needed.
once u have this special cymbal trak done just wipe the
pencil taps trak.
now..before folks jump on me , there are other ways of course.
one could simply record a midi note from a midi kbd
into a midi trak in ptw to do a similar thing , then
note the times etc.
but the idea above assumes there is no midi kbd available or cant be afforded.
this idea can be used in any song.
useing this idea you could add anything to a song.
perhaps u have some nice samples of some african drums for example.

now lets return to our mythical recording session.
lets recap the tracks.
track 1 is the clik.
track 2 its been decided that the live off the floor with the poor drummer wasnt working.
so we have muted this track.
tracks 3 thru 6 mebe now become the drums weve just created.
with the combo of techniques ive discussed.
after haveing mebe created audio tracks from midi tracks.
so....at this point at least we have a decent drum track.
now we can proceed to get the rest of the bed tracks down like the guitars n bass.
so lets redo track 2 now with say just the guitarists playing along
to the drum track ..you..the engineer has created.
i would leave a space tween tracks and now record the stereo
guitars on track 8 leaveing track 7 free (just in case u want to
add another drum track later on.)
this brings up another point. a seperate track sheet.
i would strongly suggest u run off on your pc printer a track sheet u designed.
showing things like client name/song name.., ptw's 48 tracks.
with a nice big area against each track for track notes etc n run off lots of blank copies.
this track sheet will be a record of everything that occurs in the session n equipment settings etc.

now let me mention one thing.
another alternative to recording loud guitar amps
(lets say your in an apt...) would be
to use something like a pod. or one of the other little boxes that has lots
of guitar sounds in. in this scenario.
the guitarists might sit near u in your control room, hook
their guitars into a pod, the output of each pod would say go into a mixer ,
and the stereo output of the mixer fed to the sound card line in for recording.
its just another option.
its up to you as the engineer to politely coach the band.
for example if u find out that the bass player as well as the poor drummer
is not that great, but the two guitarists are, i would leave the bass player out of the equation at this point till
u get the first rhythm guitar guide tracks recorded.
cos u might have to do several takes of the bass player ,
and then do a composite trak of the various takes.

so now lets get just those rhythm guitars down on trak 8.
which youve named rhythm guitars.
make sure in ptw trak 8 is selected of course !
then press ptw's main record button and away we go.
STOP of course to stop recording.
now....on play back things are starting to sound better.
the new stereo guitars on track 8 are kiking with the drums.
hmm...but on reflection , listening back...the guitars dont have exactly the right sound dialed in.
there are a zillion options at this point.
one of course is to do another take.
so now you would name track 8 rh guitrs take one.
and now on trak 9 rh guitrs take 2.
some times the guitarists might be nervous on the first take.
so just do another take on trak 9.
but mebe they want to hear back a bit of track 8 as well.
what youll typically find is hearing some of track 8 while also recording track 9 will enervate them.
you should be able to get a big rhythm sound.
and this brings me to the concept of "stacking".
sometimes youll find just one track is a tad "wimpy"..
but double tracking of this nature (or even triple tracking.)
can realise a BIG SOUND. once again its all experimentation.
stacking is basically the concept of recording whereby settings on guitar amps
are subtly changed or guitar pick up selection..thus creating
a pleasing rhythm picture.
NOW..lets not forget ptw's large effects suite in all of this.
you can try a zillion and one things.
BUT dont go overboard...try teeny bits of effect.
for example hilite a bit of audio track to test out,
then EDIT>>>>audio effects >>>>chorus or flanger or reverb
try just a touch of effect. ie,,,largely dry with just a touch of effect.
frankly this is what seperates the top audio engineers
from the rest of us. ie...these type of decisions.
this is all about the black art of audio engineering .
ie...DECISIONS YOU MAKE. ie.which of the many ptw fx facilities will improve that rhythm track ,
or say a third party plug in. there are loads..but beware...
they CAN consume lots of pc resources.
mebe u use a bit of ptw's real time echo chorus and see how that sounds.
now let me explain another trik.
for those with low power pc's.
theres TONS you can do with ptw's non real time plug ins
(EDIT>>>audio effects.).
and my concern is many folks might not have discovered their depth.
for example..this rhythm track. mebe it sounds wimpy.
hi lite the trak in ptw's audio edit window. (select whole.).
then see what u can do useing audio effects >>>compressor mebe.
lots of luverly compressor settings there.
notice if u clik the drop down arrow at the bottom pg have kindly put some standard settings in ??
try some settings of your own also. (just undo if not happy.)
and dont be scared...just cos its a setting for drums say...
with some adjustment u never know...it might just work.
u dont know till u try. just oodles of settings to experiment with.
a tip .when experimenting....like this...
name a trak test trak.
for example lets say we want to experiment on the trak 8 the guitarists just did.
duplicate it to a trak named test track.
for example ..lets say our test track is trak 40.
make sure trak 8 is selected in tracks view..then...
TRACK>>>duplicate...and in the box provided enter trak 40,
and notice now trak 8 has been duplicated on trak 40.
thus u can experiment on trak 40 (the clone of trak 8)
without affecting trak 8 .
heres another trik. try this sometime.
this track 8 with the guitar rhythms on ??
duplicate it to track 9. then offset track 9 a smidgeon from zero start marker.
what we are doing here is slightly moveing forward in time..track 9.
(experiment with 5 to 8 millisecs for example.)
what is the purpose of this ??
it really depends on the source...but now track 9 (the clone of 8)
together with some of ptw's effects , u might get a new interesting sound picture.
in particular this technique might be usefull for getting a wider fx palettte
on a very slow pc where u cant run a lot of plug ins.
its all EXPERIMENTATION.
and it can result..if done properly and the clone trak is displaced from zero by the
right number of milliseconds a distinct sound picture.
(more to come.)