MusicRadar

Read on to discover Rusty Cooley's studio secrets.

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Jason Sidwell (Senior Music Editor, Future Publishing)

Levelling off
Get a healthy signal at every stage of a recording project, from the soundcard's input channel to the individual track levels. The latter is obvious (you can easily see if you're in the red) but the former is easy to overlook. The worst case scenario is a WAV file that has driven the soundcard too hard (and clips) but has also been recorded too quietly. You reach for the compressor or normaliser for a better volume, but there's nothing that's going to save the ruined performance – arrrrgh!

Drying out
Unless it's absolutely necessary, recording to tape (or your hard drive) without ambience effects like echo and reverb always encourages better performances. The clarity of articulation and the precision of timing is easier to judge that way. Come mixdown time, adding reverb and/or echo to that dry performance will turn a good run into something truly awesome!

Kieron Pepper (Dead Kids)

Splitting it 50/50
I split the signal twice, firstly to take a clean feed directly into Logic, and the other for my two amps. After that, it depends on what the song requires regarding levels of distortion, etc. The main thing is to trust your ears, get the sound, get the take, then have fun with breaking some rules: this normally gives an unexpected result that has enough magic to make it to the final cut. I mic the speakers at the side, pointing to the centre. The clean signal used in Logic is for doing indescribable things that'll remain secret!

Countdown
If you really want to know what each dial on a plug-in or effect unit does, then you should turn the dial up full to hear what the results are like at its most extreme setting. So, if I've got a new unit, I set all knobs to 10, then back off gradually to truly discover every parameter.

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Iain Archer

Acoustic anthems
Choosing the right guitar for the track is the most important thing. This can range from boxy and dead (in a good way) to open and resonant. I like the strings to have aged by a month or two to avoid clang and zing. If I feel the guitar sounds too naive, I'll drop all the strings by a half step or even a step, if the guitar will wear it. This way I get more string/fret interaction and the guitar doesn't try so hard to project, like those Van Morrison or Neil Young records from the late '60s and early '70s.

Room mic
I record in many different spaces and places, so mic placement is almost as much to do with the room as the guitar. I'll place a mic facing the neck from a few inches away, maybe in line with the 9th or 10th fret. Another one gets placed at a distance – maybe half a metre (if the room is good/forgiving) still just to the left of the sound hole (from the guitarist's POV). I'm not concerned with stereo, so I'll choose either mic or both (it's often a very simple AKG 414 at the neck through a Supre valve mic pre).

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