Can you really get a great mix with only the stock plugins on a free piece of software?
That’s been my challenge this week as I’m wrapping up our little challenge of recording and mixing a great sounding full band production with only $300 worth of gear.
In today’s video I want to show you how I got a more studio polished drum track out of a single microphone recording, as well as show you some simple tips to getting wide and clear mixes no matter what DAW you use.
All on a studio setup that cost less than some single plugins that I own!
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My name is Graham Cochrane and I'm the founder of The Recording Revolution, one of the world's most loved audio recording and mixing blogs with over 200,000 readers each month. 
This drum sound from just one mic is absolutely mind blowing. That makes all of us gearsluts the idiots that we have been through all of these years. lol
I second that Mike. We (speaking of self) have been unwilling to learn to get the best sound we can out of what we have and instead have been chasing after the next piece of software to give us the sound…. but that will never happen. Music comes from within you, not from what you use to deliver it. Learned it the hard way. Graham was right all along. Good job Graham!!
Graham, you didn’t talk about the bass EQ. If the drums and the bass are up the middle, didn’t you have to carve out a nice place for the bass to sit amidst the drums? There is allot of competing frequencies there, right?
I’ll be taking on this challenge myself.
It’s 1 mic, 1 interface, stock/free plugins and instruments, right?
I think i can do that.
The main problem is my vocals. I can’t sing properly. But that’s not a gear problem, for sure.
Great video as always Graham. Thanks for helping us make more and better music.
We’ll done graham, sounds amazing. There seems to be a natural space and “air” that is shining through. A product of the simple approach to the recording perhaps…. I’m liking it.
Thanks Graham! It’s so liberating to hear someone else say what we all (myself included) need to hear. Keep up the good work!
Impressive, I must say. I am amazed how you continue to go to the fundamentals of mixing.
The very first book I ever read about recording continually stressed that Volume and Pan were the first “Effects”. and through the shuttle EQ-ing on the drums and your sweet vocal enhancements, this has come together as a very serious sounding mix.
Thanks for everything Grahan
Nice work as always Graham! I’m glad you called out your compromise on the drums with mic positioning as well as your explanation of the addition drum tracks to provide a richer and fuller sounding kit. Pulling all the other tracks together, balancing, effects, eq’ing, and making effective use of a “one knob” compresser communicates an underlying message: “Yes you can make great music with what you have!”. Solid reminder to all of us. Thank you!
Hey Graham, love the new video! I’m hoping to catch your attention and just don’t know where’s best to ask…
‘ve tried sending off my application but it doesn’t work for me. I’m so excited that your doing this and really hope you could accept my application in this email PLEASE! 😀
My name is Sam Docherty
I’m from the UK in the East midlands, Kettering, Northamptonshire, NN155BG, UK (Further details i’d prefer to email you).
Email: [email protected]
Mobile number (Main phone): 07984650093
Home phone: 01536521559
I’m an absolute massive fan of the recording revolution, I’m 18 years old and I’ve been watching your videos for years. I play guitar, piano, drums, bass, ukelele and sing and make videos synced with multi track recordings . The reason I’ve been so interested in TRR is because it’s what got me into recording and it’s continued to make my tracks sound a lot closer to pro stuff with the equipment I have at home. I’ve been learning more from you than I could really even imagine! My studio is built in a loft so there’s not a lot of space but in the room below the loft i have a room with more space that I use for recording my drums and vocals. I can’t tell you how much I would really appreciate this Graham! I know I would learn so much from you and I have so many questions I’d love to ask! I know I’m from the UK and it seems like a long shot but I would honestly be more than happy to travel and come see you for two days man that would be amazing ah! Please let me come visit you in Nashville 🙂
I’m able to catch a plane over to Nashville on July 30th-August 1st
Just amazing work Graham. It sounds excellent with the amount of effects you have going on and it’s pretty mind blowing that this came from a $300 setup! Inspiring to say the least. Now, to my taste, I would back off a little delay on your voice. To my ears it sounds like to much to me, but that’s me. Excellent and I’ve learned a lot from this. Thank you very much for taking the time to do this. Like I said, it’s very inspiring!
Great job Graham – I really love the hook on that song!
I think this is a great challenge. My only comment would be the drums. Beefing the snare sounds great but that resulting kick sound from the boost could be mitigated by some editing. With a little bit of tedious effort, cutting out/muting everything other than the snare hits would really improve that overall sound and tighten things up. I realise that’s more than this exercise is trying to accomplish but that’s my two cents to fix that part of drum sound. Great work overall, Graham.
not a bad idea. Super tedious, but it would do the trick!
Good suggestion!
Dope, as always.
I’m curious, however, about the compressor. I know GarageBand has another stock compressor aside from the one under smart controls. I’m all about simplifying and using what’s right there in front of you, but when you mentioned “I don’t even know what this compressor does,” it made me wonder if you were aware of the other one, which has the normal controls (threshold, attack, release, ratio). This isn’t a jab at all, just genuine curiosity.
Anyway, thanks for all that you do.
Yep, I’m aware. Just wanted to use the simplest tool I could.
Awesome. Again, meant no disrespect at all.
None taken 🙂
Hello Graham, Listening to your touring is great. I have a problem that I think might keep me from recording and listening correctly. I only hear out of one ear (y left) and deaf in my right ear. what can I do with my speakers and hearing stereo which is hard for me. I have my speakers sort of on my left side so I can hear a little stereo if that is all possible.
A little help there, PLEASE!!!!!!!
kThank you,
Kenny
Hi Kenny,
First of all, good for you pushing through and mixing music being deaf in one ear. Many people would just give up. I think what you’re doing is awesome.
For me, I actually do most of my mixing in mono. Graham talks a lot about this as a “hack” to help you make better mixes. It forces you to get levels right, and be careful with EQ. So for you, this part shouldn’t be a problem.
Putting the speakers on the left side so you can hear a bit of stereo will help. LCR panning will make the panning decisions more obvious. At least put things in stereo, pan some things off to the left and right, and evaluate your levels again, as sometimes this can change them a bit.
Using a reference track will help. Again, listen to the amount of stereo width that you can, and try to emulate it with your tracks.
And maybe the answer is to simply do the mix in mono as best you can, and bring in a friend at the end to help you with the panning decisions. I think you can get a fantastic mix in mono that will translate well to stereo. You can probably make more of the broad panning decisions yourself, and just get someone’s help or opinions on the more subtle ones.
Hope that helps!
Alex
Hey Kenneth got on this a little late, I too have an issue with loss of hearing in my right ear due to big guns in the army. My monitor placement is standard triangle and I will sit sideways to pick up the stereo field, not perfect but you can hear the difference. I’ll usually start with headphones and then listen on the monitors. Grahams tips have helped me a lot. You can do this…….. I get good results and most who listen to what I produce think it sounds good. Hope this helps you.
The concept of duplicating the drumtrack en eq the tracks differently to enhance certain elements, like the kick and snare is nice. But, even if it’s a bit more elaborate, you could get a cleaner result by muting the parts of the tracks that you want to supress and keep the parts you want to enhance. for the snare track you could mute every instance of the kick unless it coincides with the snare.
Also, I don’t see how a xy stereo mike, would ruin the budget, but allow for a considerably more wide drum sound than the mono sound you have to settle for now. Of course you could cheat by offsetting the drumtracks slighty in time to get a fake stereo impression but i may also sound out of phase and not very natural.
I agree Mats – slicing up the kick and snare tracks for better isolation would definitely give a cleaner result!
Fantastic! I bet those same e.q. techniques on duplicate drum tracks will also work well when directly recording a drum machine or inserting loops. I’m wondering if it might be worth the effort to group such channels, duplicate the group, then set-up some parallel compression . . .
Do you boost around 50 Hz pretty often or is it mostly just because you recorded the drums with a single mic here? I found it a little surprising because I usually use a HPF to get rid of everything below 60 Hz on the drums (and like 50-55 Hz on the master channel as well) unless I’m mixing EDM, but even then, I’m certainly not boosting anything below 70-80ish Hz. I guess if you want to make the kick stand out more from the single mic recording, boosting the extreme low end does do that for you, but TBH I’m not a huge fan of how it ends up sounding.
I usually tend to keep 50Hz on drums and bass. I’ll usually cut between 30Hz and 40Hz in case there’s any “rumble” down there.
I find that 50-60Hz contains some beef and punch in a kick drum. Actually there was one hip hop track where the kick drum didn’t have enough, so I added a sine wave generator at 60Hz and side-chained a noise gate on the kick drum track, so that when the kick drum played, the sine wave would play, just for a moment. This did a lot to add some nice body to the kick.
So I would say keep 50-60Hz on the kick. At least give it a shot on your next mix. I would almost definitely cut those frequencies on all the other tracks though.
Nice idea of splitting out the drums. Had you thought about putting a gate or expander on the kick track to control that low-end ambience and just leave the thump?
Wow! The “drums” show and tell really blew me away…I didn’t expect that dramatic of a change, but the A and B demo was truly surprising. You have inspired us all Graham. Keep up the great work! I’m definitely here to stay, and looking forward to the next episode. Blessings!
Been a huge fan of TRR for couple of years now and have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge – invaluable!
Really digging the $300 recording challenge videos and the result using minimal equipment/instruments is really awesome – can’t believe you got that drum sound from one microphone – I need to tell my drummer he doesn’t need to take up 10 channels on our mixer! I used to have an acoustic kit in my studio but got rid of it and opted for an electronic kit due to the issue of having to mic each drum EQ, compress it, gate it, bang my head because I just couldn’t get that big drum sound in my small space… not to mention it took up a lot of room….but I digress… absolutely great mix Graham. The guitars are recorded/mixed nicely and the vocals shine in the mix!
Graham have you authorized a questionnaire pop up that promised a $75.00 gift which turns out to be some spurious diet pills or cosmetics?
Nope.
Those popups don’t come from the website. They come from malware on your computer, sometimes disguised as toolbars for your browser. They hijack the browser and insert code into the rendered page. I’d run a malware program to search for anything, or disable all browser toolbars and plugins to see if they go away, then turn them back on one by one until the popups come back.
Firstly thanks for putting together this website and all of the information you’ve been passing along! It’s a great resource with a lot of fantastic information for everybody from a beginner to a seasoned engineer. And while I totally agree with the concepts of “don’t get bogged down by the gear hunt” and “fundamentals are the most important part of your mix” and “get to recording / making music”, I have a small qualm about the way you’re presenting some of it.
While this is a great challenge to inspire people and show them what’s possible on the smallest of budgets, the one flaw is that it’s success is highly dependent upon the style of the track. It works great for the song you’re showcasing, but I can say with a heck of a lot of confidence that this would not work for a lot of different styles of music. Something like a metal (i.e. Slipknot) or driving rock track (i.e. Foo Fighters) requires hard hitting drums / guitars / bass to get the energy and vibe right. This approach is great for a more indie sounding style and vibe, but most anything beyond that and it’s going to be really difficult to get a professional sounding end result.
Now I am NOT advocating that this means you have to go get only high-end gear to make music in these other genre’s, but I feel it’s important to talk about style and genre and how those affect recording techniques. When I see comments on your videos talking about how this $300 example showcases how gear is not important, I think that means the wrong message is being gleaned from it. I think dispelling the myth that chasing the golden-eared dragon of it taking $100k worth of analog gear to make a professional record, is a good myth to dispel. But there are also a lot of limits as to what can be achieved with the opposite approach of absolute bottom barrel, and how professional an end result can be achieved from it.
Hence I would love to see you hit the middle a bit as well. There are those that are ready to take their game to the next level (i.e. they have the fundamentals, they know what they can squeeze out of minimal gear and get something good), so understanding what that next level of gear can bring is important, and what to expect out of the different types of gear when you upgrade. I’ve personally gone this route, and I’ve found there really aren’t a lot of resources out there that go into what kind of improvements can you expect / look for out of stepping up certain pieces of gear (other than digging through hundreds of forum discussions, which in the end tell you nothing).
I can tell you that I’ve been very methodical about each piece of gear I upgrade, and since I’ve gotten the fundamentals, I can tell the quality difference the upgrade has made and how it affected the end results. Misha from Periphery is a good example of what you can do with the middle ground and getting a very professional end result. On their EP Clear, his track “Zero” is all done in CuBase, tracked through a Focusrite interface, using Toontrack Superior Drummer samples, and an AxeFX for the guitars and bass. Definitely a lot more than $300, but under $5000 (which is still friggin’ amazing that you can get that kind of end result for that money)!
Anyways, long comment :). Thanks again for creating such a great resource! Also just to show where I’m coming from, here’s a mix I just finished for an artist. Again, there’s no way I could have achieved this same end result on a $300 budget 🙂
https://soundcloud.com/natalienicole/im-not-jaded-with-benson-russell
Cubase, Superior Drummer and AxeFX make your life a lot easier, but you don’t really *need* them to make awesome sounding metal productions. Your DAW certainly doesn’t need to be Cubase, you can make your own drum samples, and there are free amp sims with great sounds. I think that, in addition to what Graham has here, you need a good dynamic vocal microphone for metal, which costs $200 or so. Not all types of metal require synthesizers, but if you do need them, something like Massive or Sytrus can get you pretty far already and they both cost around $200. If you really want to, you can still afford to buy Superior Drummer and an extension library designed for metal and the total cost is still just $1000ish, and I think you could definitely do very cool stuff with a setup like that. Although, at that point you might as well make your life a lot easier and buy a proper DAW as well, but for example Reaper is pretty cheap.
I was only stating what Misha uses as one example of what you can use in the mid range and still get what people would consider professional results (not just good results). But the point is you can not get those kind of results for $300 in a metal context. And yes you can skip the AxeFX and use an amp sim for that style of music (Meshuggah used the amp sim built into CuBase for Colossus), or get a cheaper unit like the Line 6 offerings, but again the point being you’re going to have to invest some more money. It doesn’t have to be a lot more, but more than $300. Hence my request is that I would love to see someone help those that are ready to take it to the next level. Help guide people where best to invest and spend their money (what each class of gear would get you, what can you expect from different price ranges, etc…).
Also creating your own drum sample library is extremely difficult if you’re wanting to get the full dynamics of a drum kit. Drum sample libraries have thousands of samples just for a single kit to capture not just the different velocities, but also different hits at the same velocities so it sounds real (i.e. no machine gun effect). Also you really do need a few different types of mics to get each drum to sound its best, so either you have to invest in the ability to track a drum kit and sample everything yourself, or rent a studio to do that. Not to mention the complexities involved in this type of undertaking (correcting phase issues, aligning samples so the play together when triggered, lots of editing, etc…). Point being, it would much cheaper time and money-wise to just get a drum sample library.
hey bro check out this album i recorded for less than $700.00
its a metal/death metal album that got amazing reviews and i made a ton of money off of.
i used:
logic express 9 $200
pod farm $50
steven slate drums EX was on sale for $50
line 6 ux2 i found on ebay for $100
used blue bluebird condenser for $200
anything is possible man. check out old as i lay dying recordings, old attack attack recordings, old anything really. it was all done on budget gear for usually less than 1k. its all about inspiration really. inspiration makes music, not gear, not people. we are just the vessel and gear is a tool.
Major ”like”
Don’t forget to mention KONTAKT, because you need that to run Steven Slate Drums. Cost is $399.
That’s good stuff, nice work. But you’ve made my point in that it’s going to cost more money to do different styles. It doesn’t have to be a lot more money, but it will cost more than $300.
Benson,
I agree with you on some things. I also commented on Graham’s post about the $300 studio before he did the challenge, saying that there are certain styles and genres of music which you simply can’t produce using the minimalistic setup.
For example, what if you want to create scores for film, games or do any type of orchestral stuff, you will only scratch the surface with $300. That’s what Eastwest Hollywood Strings alone will cost, if not more. If you want Vienna Instruments, we’re talking even more $$. What about that computer you have? I don’t have a bad computer, it can handle almost anything I throw at it when I make my own music or when I mix, but if I were to arrange orchestral compositions, it would bog down after the first few instances of some of those samplers. You need serious power for that.
$300 studio is definitely possible, but very limited even as to what kind of music you can make with it.
I do have to challenge what you said about Misha, though. Even with AxeFX you can achieve the same result for less money if you used Cubase Elements and EZ Drummer as opposed to the full version of Cubase and Superior Drummer.
No doubt you can get similar results with something other than an AxeFX, but my point in referencing Misha is that it would be nice to see some articles / videos for guiding people that have the money and want to go up to another level of gear. As great as the tones are you can get with cheaper / free stuff, higher quality gear can improve your sound (but only after you’ve done what Graham teaches and learn / understand the fundamentals).
There’s also something to be said about how hard do you want to work during the mix? If the main goal is to get the sound as close to “right” on the way in, it’s much easier to do that with higher quality gear. This doesn’t mean gear that is massively more expensive, just better in quality. For example, a Rode NT1A is a great mic for at / under $300, and I think would provide a better sound than the $100 mic he’s using now. It’s smoother sounding, and doesn’t suffer from that top end sizzle that really cheap mics tend to add to the sound. Or if you’re doing something screaming / growling, a Shure SM7B is a classic choice that isn’t that expensive. Your tracks will sound more in-line with what you want the end-result to be, and you’ll be fighting it less in the mix (less compromises that even Graham showed in this video he’s had to make).
Hence if someone has the cash and is looking to upgrade, having this kind of knowledge on what to look for, and what parts of their studio could get the best benefit, would be fantastic. It’s what I wish was available when I was ready to make the jump, and even to this day there really isn’t a resource to help you grow in this way.
Thanks, Graham! You have refocused my attention on methods and techniques. What a great idea: “The $300 studio. Whatever equipment I have to work with, I hope I will always use it correctly and wisely. The engineer and the mixer guy and the musicians are the tools that make or break the recording. The human touch is indispensable. Btw, I like this song; has a “Mercy Me” feel to it.
Hi, Graham! Is there a way I could get a hold of the audio files of this song, to try a mix of my own, without being a member of the Dueling Mixes. I’d like a chance for a stab at it. Thanks for your answer!
Hey Graham! Greetings from Mexico!. Finding your website was like finding light in darkness! Thank you so much for this amazing videos you keep uploading. They are improving my skills as a composer. I am just starting my career as a composer you have been a lot of help. Thanks again.
Graham I am inspired I am gonna record a song through air ignite. J don’t know how it compares to garage band but I like the sound of it and j am going to use a mbox mini and record to my 8in tablet and use stock only and my headphones recording skills aside you are a great singer and songwriter.
This is great! One of the biggest lessons I’m learning is kind of a by product of your courses and videos. And that is how much preproduction, mic placement, arrangement and performance can save me literally hours of time when I get to mixing. I like to work really fast when I’m inspired but I tend to use the “fix it in the mix” mentality too much in order to capture the moment. I’m finding that I need to shift that a little in order to get a better sounding starting point. Thanks!
Well, in fact that’s the way I recorded for quiet a while. I Head a Behringer B1 for 79€, a Focusrite Saffire 6 for 140€ an Behringer Headphones for 20€. I used Cubase LE, it was a gift in a newspaper and Hand only Stock- and Freeplugins. For drums I used the digital Solution with the Sounds from cubase or later drummic’a. And it worked. Thanks for that inspiring challange
Another good series Graham, we always enjoy them!
And is it just me, or are there more & more arm-chair engineers posting on YOUR site to, you know, just “let you know” how much “experience” they have and how, in some small way, you are doing – presenting – explaining SOMETHING “wrong”?
Well…. Um… Smurf… I already have complimented Graham and thanked him for this resource he’s put up. I know I’ve learned a few things from it, and it’s fantastic that he’s willing to put in the effort for us all. But if I take issue with a part of the message, then I have no issue politely explaining it to him as that’s what he specifically asks for. Ya know, that whole discuss in the comments thing? It’s not just here purely for people that agree 100% with everything he says and does. He likes having differing viewpoints, as long as it’s respectful (which I have been). So in actuality your passive aggressive armchair insulting is what’s really out of place here.
A little off-topic; I have seen the expression “arm chair producer/engineer” before, but I do not understand what is exactly meant by it, except that it is not really a compliment.
I’d appreciate it if someone could explain this for me and the reference to the words “arm chair”.
Thanks in advance.
It’s formed from the term, “armchair quarterback,” which is someone who yells a lot at the football games on TV, or yells a lot about the games he watched, as if they know or knew EXACTLY what should be or should’ve been done, but have never been on the pro football field, or forget that the real quarterback has or had an entirely different view of the game. Much of the armchair QB’s rants are hindsight, whether that’s a split second later, the next day, after losing an argument about it at a different bar from the current one he or she is at when being this way, etc. Every field has some folks with similar mentalities. They’re not quite the same as a know-it-all, cuz the know-it-all is usually afraid or arrogant, whereas the armchair tends to be passionate and occasionally too macho. One is more in the head, and the other is more in the heart. Anyway, that’s my view of it all, and others may have a better way to put it. Oh, and I’m speaking of American football, just in case that wasn’t clear.
Let them post. Graham is a big boy, and he can handle himself. The rest of us with experience in life can just as easily see who’s been in a studio and who hasn’t. I’m someone with a relatively small amount of experience, and I’m definitely not afraid to say that it’s that way for me. Guys like me–and I’d wager that there are plenty of others here as well–are in a prime position to learn from everyone else’s mistakes and triumphs, which can only help me–and others like me–work smarter and not harder. This is not about figuring out who’s a chump or a wimp. Who cares? Everyone is here to learn, even Graham (he indicated as much in the video), so it’s all good. Let them post.
An armchair engineer was someone who appreciates the value of comfortable studio furniture. 🙂
I forgot to mention that I am surprised at how well the low-cost Sabian cymbals recorded…but then again, their Sabian, enough said 😉 LOL!
You know what’s best?
I’ve done the exactly same thing when mixing my drums only after some TRR in my life. And now you come up with a challenge that’s exactly the gear I have and make the exact same decisions… Well. It’s a good feeling, I tell you.
Clearly this is knowledge: not only repeating steps, but learning how to think them on your own.
Thank you once more, Graham! I’m proud! 🙂
It’s not done yet? 🙂
Sounding decent, Graham.
BTW, the drums are a good example of, you CAN fix it in the mix. 🙂
Graham,
First of all, thanks for taking on this project. It’s mind-blowing and humbling to hear what you’ve done here with so few tools. It’s a bit of a kick in the butt to those of us gearheads who, as you point out, aren’t ready to perform our next task because “once I get that new [name the device], I’ll be all set to go.”
Also, everything you cover in these videos is great information, but the biggest surprise to me (as many have already pointed out) is what you did with the drums. I’ve actually never attempted to record drums in my studio, because I’ve always felt that I don’t have “the right mics.” To paraphrase Freddie Mercury: Another myth bites the dust.
Bravo! And keep up the great work.
I want to first say that this is great and it’s a super thing that Graham is doing here!
One thing I wanted to discuss on this: I listened to this through my studio monitors in my mixing room and felt that I was hearing significant “mud” – maybe in the 200 to 600Hz region – in the overall mix. To check my hearing I played some other reference tracks through the same signal path and found no mud.
When this $300 studio series was started, it immediately caught my attention that Graham appears to be using the Sennheiser HD201 headset, because I use that headset often for casual listening. They have a respectably wide frequency response and are easy on the ears for hours with very little ear fatigue (sonically, not just the fit).
…so I listened to this episode again through the HD201 set and things sounded much better, i.e., virtually no mud and quite full sounding – as if it had been mixed for this headset. Well – in essence, it has been.
This is where a modest investment in even low end monitors is so valuable.
I say this with all due respect – please don’t think I’m belittling this $300 setup – Graham is making a great point! I just noticed this when using (modestly priced) studio monitors and felt I should mention how valuable it is to have them.
If you can’t possibly afford to drop $200~$300 on a set of monitors (and/or don’t have a room you can set them up in), it is valuable to play reference tracks through the headset you are using to monitor with so you know what spectrum it is presenting to you. Keeping this in mind can help you make your end product sound good on all sources.
Thanks for doing this Graham! It has been great and I’m looking forward to hearing your final touches in the next episode!
Yep the biggest challenge for me was not being very familiar with the frequency response on those headphones.
Nice easy listening on your track, love the delay and the harmonies on your vocals….the TRR multiple drum track technique has improved my sampled drums……thank you for that. Always inspired with your approach to making music.
Graham, for your next challenge, try using only Nero SoundTrax–the DAW that’s not a DAW–and Nero Wave Editor, to do your mixing and editing. If you can show people that mixing can be done with whatever they have, well, that’s what I have. While I know it can be done, I’d love to see you show all of us what YOU can do with it. I’m sure that nobody in their right mind would settle for using Nero’s stuff (except me, cuz I’m crazy), but then again, with all the limitations it imposes, it just might actually teach us something about surmounting those limits with sheer skill. How about it? 🙂
Kool work…..
You look so stressed out Graham. Hope it’s just a temporary thing and that you are taking good care of yourself. Big hug!
I think it was amazing how you pulled this off on a DAW you’re not familiar with but I’m assuming you didn’t use your Focusrite pre amp………..how did you get such a clean acoustic guitar sound.I’ve tried it not using my Focusrite and can’t seem to get my acoustic to sound as good.
Could be the guitar.
Could be the player, too. 😉
I play my piece-of-junk electric and it sounds like a piece-of-junk electric. My brother picks it up and it immediately has great tone.
Nice playing, Graham!
Could be that you’re just overcritical with yourself… :p
Hey Graham! Good work – this will no doubt inspire many to record from home….the only thing I don’t get about this song is the low end …? It just sounds like a massive wall of bass energy. Not trying to be negative – the tune sounds pretty great – I just feel like the bass/kick energy is like 8-10db too loud….anyone else find that?
Hi Eric,
I think you’re hearing what I commented on April 24. The HD201 headset is pretty mellow in the lows and low-mids, even though its response extends down pretty far.
Since the headset doesn’t emphasize this area much (maybe around 200~600Hz), trying to EQ on them might lead one to put a bit extra in that area to compensate.
Graham replied that he wasn’t very familiar with the frequency response of this headset, which makes it hard for him to get the balance right across the spectrum.
Reference tracks can be useful in helping find how the headset itself sounds and then you can use that knowledge to guide your EQ work, but it’s harder than just having accurate monitors that are well placed in a treated room.
This is a great demonstration of both the challenges and capabilities of a $300 studio.
Correction: With today’s SDOD “stupid deal of the day” of a PreSonus setup from MF, the new price of a starter studio is now $200! (At least for today…)
Hey Graham!
Here’s my progress with the challenge so far.
Gear used (so far):
Interface:Avid Fastrack Solo ($149 new, can find for as low as $50 used) + Instrument cable ($15)
DAW:Logic Pro X (could’ve used Garageband as I didn’t do any major tinkering other than minor EQ and compressor, everything else is stock effects also found in GB).
Main Guitar: Fender Telecaster
Drums: I used the software drummer (same as in GB)
Strings: I used an old MIDI keyboard I’ve had for 10 years with stock string sounds from Logic.
I have to admit to being humbled by this series. The quality you got was impressive. Not that I would trade my $600 interface 🙂
To make things just a TAD easier, I would recommend making this the $400 studio challenge, and buying an inexpensive mic for the kick drum. In fact, the next time I record my band, I think I’m going to go with just a kick drum mic and condenser overhead, placed to maximize the snare crack. It’ll simplify the mix immensely!
Thanks!
I would prefer that as well 🙂
Hi Graham,
Aside from the great info in this series, the 800# gorilla in the room is the track itself. I love it! Is there anywhere I can download it ?
I’ve been listening to and really enjoying the Aletheia stuff too. Thanks for being an inspiration to me and my humble home studio.
The final version can be found here: http://therecordingrevolution.com/2015/04/30/the-key-ingredient-to-killer-recordings-the-300-studio-wrap-up/
Original version of this song can be found here: http://grahamcochrane.com/artist/