MusicRadar

A 'head back' vocal pose can actually result in a better take.

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These days, it’s perfectly possible to create the majority of your sounds inside your computer, but if you never bother to capture any real-world audio, you and your music will be missing out.

With this in mind, MusicRadar has put together 25 tips for anyone who has an interest in live or studio recording. Take your time to digest this lot, then click here for 26 more...

1. Buy yourself at least one decent condenser and one decent dynamic mic as soon as you can. As long as you don’t juggle with them, they’ll last you for years and open up a whole world of fun. Music production is largely about recording stuff – don’t lose sight of that.

2. Don’t dismiss live recording. With so many samples readily available, it’s very easy to overlook it, but you must try it a few times, as it teaches incredibly useful skills and highlights a lot of principles computer musicians often ignore, such as phasing issues and other mixdown-stage problems. Oh, and it’s fun!

3. When recording guitars, try using two mics placed centrally but pointing at opposite ends of the instrument. They’ll produce tonally different sounds that can then be panned later for a great stereo effect.

4. If your musician is swinging their instrument around too much it will affect the sonic quality, no matter how much compression is applied, so it’s sometimes worth hanging a marker or dummy mic and asking the player to keep their instrument level with it.

5. Live recording and studio recording require different approaches. Live recording is all about close-miking to avoid noise bleed, but this almost always sounds worse than a mic placed a comfortable distance away, so don’t be tempted to close mic in the studio…

6. Create a recording template project in your sequencer. With that done, whether you’re a musician, DJ or just an engineer for others, you’ll always be poised to start recording any flashes of inspiration.

7. When recording a group of musicians with one mic (a brass section, say), the key is to create the right dynamic balance before you hit the record button. Try placing your players about three metres from the mic and pointing it down at them slightly, so as to capture reflections from the floor.

8. Essential to the successful recording of acoustic instruments is creating the illusion of being in the room. Your ultimate goal is to make it sound like it would to your ears in real life. That is what makes it such a challenge – the whole art is in making up for the fact that no microphone captures sound like our ears do.