tips...013.
A REAL RECORDING SESSION WITH POWERTRACKS.
(hopefully this will help newbies see all the aspects
of a recording session. it will take several posts to explain.)
the best way i felt to explain some powertracks triks is
to step the reader thru a real recording session.
how i might do it.(there are many ways.)
heres the scenario.
a local band has come to you called "CEFE"
who model themselves after their heroes.
a certain well known rok band they admire.
(lets see if u can gues their heroes name..lol.).
they have given u a v ruff cassette of a song they want to re record
that was recorded v v ruff to cassette with one mic.)
it is assumed u have basic gear like mics/mixer/pc with sound card,
monitors etc etc. the band brings in all their own amp/guitar/drum gear.
for interest sake..lets make it difficult.
you only have a stereo sound card..but good quality convertors.
(eg maudio or some other like julie etc etc.)

STEP ONE. prepare for the session.
in advance of the band coming in....u need to do some things.
after makeing sure your pc/rig is working fine of course.
listen to their song on cassette.
its called "lets Power Rock."
try and assess its bpm.
cos CEFE is a bit sloppy n it would be nice for them to
have a clik trak to record against.
but before doing this...
create a new folder on your drive called "lprcefe".
ie.band name plus song name.
now open up powertracks (hereafter ptw).
use one of your ptw templates u custom created (as mentioned earlier for rok
band clients.)..load it...so its displayed in ptw.
with all the track names...mebe changeing some track names to reflect
CEFE's needs and SAVE AS into the lprcefe folder a seq called lprcefeseq.
this name will also be displayed at the top of the ptw screen.
tip..notice if u hold the mouse over a track in ptw mixer the names of the tracks are displayed.
now record the bands ruff cassette into ptw on an audio trak .

after stopping.
on another track while the bands ruff is playing back,
record yourself tapping a crappy mic (one u dont care about.)
for a minute. add up the taps on playback to get a bpm idea.
lets say its 140 bpm.
record a drum machine into an audio trak in ptw set to 140bpm.
or.if no drum machine use ptw's fill track with drum pattern
feature. set tempo to 140.
have the band do a couple of ruff run thrus of the song while listening back
to the clik track over their headphones.
adjust the tempo to suit them. either faster or slower.
at this point convert the midi track to an audio track.
so lets say now track one is the clik track.
(i always use trak one as clik trak audio.).
once again save as to the lprcfe seq.
now lets turn to setting up the band properly.
lets assume its two guitarists plus bass player n singer n drummer.
normally we would baffle off the drums...
but lets do it old style useing leakage.
our general strategy on this song will be to record
a good kiking stereo rhythm track of the band.
then do overdubs n embellish the song n final lead vocs.
so lets start off with the first track.
what i term the bed rhythm track..in stereo.
on track two in ptw.
(track one is clik audio.)
heres how i would set up.
put two guitar amps in front of the drums .
put a mic on each guitar amp...but also so the guitar amps capture the room sound of the drums.
put one mic in front of drums. plug bass player into a direct box ,
then into the mixing console.
now very important.if you have a mixer with individual pans on it..
MAKE SURE...your send to the sound card stereo line input is proper stereo.
a common mistake for folks new to recording is to set up these pans incorrectly.
for example ..if sending 8 mic channels to two group faders feeding the stereo sound card,
and each group fader has pan controls...ensure one pan control
is rotated totally left.. n the other totally right.
make sure on the ptw track 2 , its set to record stereo.
assuming on the mixer mic channels you have pan controls.
pan one guitar cab mic all left n the other all right.
pan the bass center mebe if that is your preference.
and lets pan the one drum mic center also.
in this phase before people jump on me we are just getting down a guide rhythm track.
that we might or might not use later on.
also plug in the singers mic but route it not to sound card ...
but around to the back end monitoring.
so its not recorded. ie.singer is just singing along low down as a guide for musicians cans.
noew have the band play after haveing set up the mics etc
n mixer levels/send to pc.
while band playing look at ptw input monitor led's.
aim for -6db on ptw leds input.
if too hot..eg...-2db...
lower the send to sound card from mixer.

now haveing done that lets record the band proper.
now clik ptw's red record button..(make sure track 2 is selected in
ptw tracks window).and have the band playthru the song.
a dry run. for say 20 secs.
hit stop. play back.(ptw's PLAY button.)
what does it sound like. ??
if it dont sound great...then (and this is where an assistant can come in handy.)
try tweaking the guitar amp sounds.
or...LOL...yell at the guitar players for useing too much distortion..lol.
a common guitar player mistake when recording.
now this is where we get into what i call the black art of audio engineering.
if the drums suk...then they need to be tuned properly.
if the kik drum sounds like junk or the snare, you might have to put a trigger
on either (a common trik.) and trigger a sample that then is fed into the mixer
thru a line input n mixed in.
if the bass suks...then u could try compressing it before the mixer and/or
try a bertter sounding bass.
mebe the guitar amps have lousy sound.
in which case youll need to try different guitar amps.
but there ARE some triks in ptw we can do to address some things as i'll detail
later on.
so the first stereo recording on track two didnt come out too well huh ??
another technique is to try again but this time repositioning the mics,
and seeing how a new track recorded on track 3 might work.
this is a common cycle in studio recording.
ie....trying different approaches till the source recorded track sounds good.
let me suggest something.
one of the best bed tracks of this nature we are dealing with here i heard was done in a
loading dock. mic on the kik (replaced by a sample.)..
two drum overheads...then two guitar amps in front of the kit
with a mic on each. picking up leakage from the drums also.
you might have to try lots of run thrus before getting the source track right.
(more to come.)