Welcome to the Sound On Sound Recording

and Mixing Podcast channel. My name's

Julian Rogers. [upbeat music] In this

episode, we'll be discussing guerrilla

recording techniques, an informal term for

an approach to studio recording, which

prioritises capturing a performance over

concerns like fidelity and control.

I wrote an article about this recently on

Sound On Sound, but rather than repeating

the article, I wanted to talk to someone

who's actually built this kind of

adaptability into his work.

My guest today is Lincoln Grounds, owner

of Maverick Music, a composer, producer,

and recording engineer whose work spans

production music for TV, film, and

advertising, as well as live performance

credits with artists including Sister

Sledge, Cockney Rebel, and Kid Creole.

He's worked everywhere from improvised

basement and village hall setups to

studios like Abbey Road and Blackbird in

Nashville, recording everything from bands

and orchestras to world instruments from

across Africa and Asia.

Lincoln's approach is firmly music-led

rather than conventional-led, which makes

him a particularly interesting person to

talk to about guerrilla recording.

And with that over, welcome, Lincoln. Good

to see you.

Hi. How's it going?

[chuckles] It's going better now I've read

that.

Yeah. [laughs]

Yeah. We were having a chat-

Yes, we were

... recently about guerrilla recording,

and I think we both independently,

unprompted by each other, used the term

guerrilla recording. I don't know if

that's something people talk about, but

I've certainly talked about it for a long

time, and clearly so have you.

What do you mean when you use that word?

What are you saying?

Probably don't use that word

in a

civvy environment.

But-

[chuckles] Yeah

... I think it's

probably just being

adaptive and fast and

not

sweating the small stuff too much,

being music-led, performance-led rather

than tech-led.

And we all love fancy tech, but there's no

reason why you can't make a perfectly

good recording

in a non-ideal environment and with

modest gear.

Absolutely.

My gist with this is that, certainly from

my point of view,

the recording that I've done in the past

few years hasn't been about producing

anything that aspires to be a record. It's

been recording for other purposes.

Yeah.

And very often, the people I've been

recording don't want all of that stuff

that goes with making a record because

it's not what they're trying to achieve.

They're-

Yeah

... trying to make a better recording than

they can make putting their phone down in

a rehearsal, or they're trying to capture

something for social media or things like

that.

Yeah. In the introduction, one little word

just jumped out at me, which was the word

fidelity.

Mm.

And in the context of

audio,

normally you'd associate that with

super clean, fancy recording situations.

For me, the fidelity thing is

the opposite.

It's

how true to the source are you being?

So guerrilla recording for me might

actually just be

fidelity.

Recording. [laughs]

Recording, yeah.

I'm aware that there is a bit of an

overlap here about saying things like,

"Oh, you should prioritize the

performance." And I'm thinking anyone

who's making any kind of recording should

be prioritizing the performance. Isn't

that just recording? But in my experience,

sometimes it isn't.

No. Sometimes it isn't. No. That's right.

And is what we're talking about a response

to

the technology being the focus?

The inevitable visual simile comes in with

like a photographer obsessing about

shutter speeds rather than where he's

pointed the camera, that kind of thing.

Yeah, absolutely. I think you have to

qualify that a little bit. If you're the

engineer, let's say, the producer, you're

the guy in charge, having a really, really

clear sense of what it is you're actually

trying to achieve. Some music is best

pored over and

multi-tracked and messed with because that

process is part of the art form.

So if you compare early Beatles to late

Beatles, for instance,

the first is great because it's exciting

and

immediate and recorded all in the room,

but you can't record "Day in the Life"

with a four-piece band.

But it's an equally good piece of

recording.

So they both

kind of do the job.

You make a good point talking about the

same band there, just because that came up

in a conversation recently about early

Beatles recordings and the idea that a

band will go out and play stuff live and

polish it there, and then bring it in and

capture what they've been doing live. But

not all music's like that, and some genres

are never like that at all.

That's right. Yeah. Sometimes every time

you, I don't know, you do a little trick

on a

soundtrack or something, or you're sort of

drifting into the area of sound design

and you're starting to reverse things and

that's what you need to do to get the

effect that you're after. And in that

sense, there's nothing guerrilla about

that at all. [chuckles] You use-

It's outside of the brief.

Yeah.

But

let's

keep it

to

bands and that sort of scenario, I think

that's where guerrilla recording is

recording. I don't like really the terms

amateur or professional. But

an inexperienced band, for instance, will

go and do a demo, and they'll spend all

their money on it, and then they'll play

it to you, and, "What do you think?" And

it'll be

just the same as every other band you've

heard who's done the same thing

because they will have dried everything

out too much. They will have pored over

each individual part. Everyone will be

slightly anxious about what they played

and then play it again to make sure

they've got it absolutely right and all

that kind of thing. And by the time you've

done all that hundreds of times overIt's

no longer the band. It's

just like a kind of a

paint-it-by-numbers version.

A point very well made. I think possibly

we should park the

gorilla work because it is a distraction.

All we're doing-

A little bit, yeah

... we're reacting to

a methodology and a temptation that's

there, given all the choices we have

today-

Yeah, that's right

... to possibly not concentrate on the

thing that's important. So,

I don't think either of us are suggesting

that this is the way to do it. This is a

way to do it, and sometimes it's got a lot

to be said for it. What you say about

drawing stuff out too much, this is a

little bit like if we get a new

capability-

Yeah

... then we'll always go too far with it

before we pull back and find the right

level.

Yeah.

I've made jokes

at my own expense before about the first

time

I got access to a digital reverb,

and I think some of those tails are still

reverberating somewhere, right the way

back from the early '90s are still going.

You know what I mean? It's like I went in

hard.

Yes. Yeah.

And

I listened to stuff where I first got

access to

Pro Tools on a

computer that could handle more tracks

than I was used to, shall we say.

Yeah.

And rather than having a rack with, I

don't know,

eight channels of compression in it at the

studio, I had as many compressors as I

wanted. So,

unsurprisingly, things were a bit

over-compressed, for example.

Mm.

In the same way, I chased

an ideal in those sort of early days of

getting perfect isolation between tracks.

I wanted to be able to solo a track and

hear nothing but that.

And eventually I got it, and

the recording was dreadful.

Yeah.

And I've been retreating from that ever

since.

Yeah.

So, this is an example of the kind of

thing that

I think we're talking about. Do you have a

similar kind of example of the kind of

thing that

perhaps once you've indulged, you want to

reverse from to find a sweet spot?

Yeah.

Again,

starting from cassette four-tracks, being

that age,

when I first got my hands on Pro Tools, it

was ridiculous. And then the moment when

you

first got your hands on Beat Detective,

and suddenly you're moving snare

beats a millisecond to the left and

thinking that you're doing yourself a

favor.

Mm.

We all go through that process, and then

you

sort of sit back maybe a couple of weeks

later and listen to it back and you think,

"What on earth was I doing?" Not only

have I kind of not made it better, I've

probably made it worse, and I've wasted a

lot of time doing it.

Mm. But you have to have got there to find

out it wasn't where you wanted to get.

Yes, 100%.

Yeah. I think.

You could be one of those really mature

people who takes advice. [laughs]

But I didn't get where I am today by

taking advice.

Yeah, but none of us do that, do we?

Because we like the shiny things, and we

like playing with them.

Mm.

Sometimes, I suppose you could go back

through

music tech history, if you like, and look

at some of the great records that were

made when things first came on board and

they were massively overused.

Like roto toms and things like that all

over the place.

That wasn't going to be my first choice,

but yeah, sure.

But

Simmons kits and stuff, and some

of the overuse of tech has ended up being

iconic.

It places things-

Yeah

... in a timeline.

Absolutely.

But anything that's

exciting like that, you know it's going to

date fast, and whether or not that

matters is, I don't know, a moot point.

Yeah.

I'd say that if people were scared of

that, then nothing would ever change-

That's right

... and we'd still be doing things the way

they were-

I think your point about the more general

point that probably applies to more people

is that thing where you've got all these

tracks lined up on the mixer

window of your DAW, and there's all these

little slots that you can put plug-ins in.

And you've now got a computer that can

just do infinite plug-ins, and away you

go.

Yeah.

And you start filling all these slots up

with things, listening to the

track isolated, thinking, "Oh, yeah,

that's made it fatter, thinner,

brighter," whatever.

And

it's kind of pointless, really, a lot of

the time.

If everything's compressed, nothing's

compressed.

This is true. We can start to sound very

zen if we keep going down this route. But

it's true. It's like without quiet, there

can be no loud, and all of those things.

Yeah.

Going to briefly dipping into specifics,

anybody using Pro Tools, I'm sure

there are equivalents of this in other

DAWs, and I wouldn't know what they were.

But using

Control to bypass

up and down your plug-in chain is an

excellent thing to know.

It is, yes.

And if you combine that with Option, you

can do it across basically everything in

the whole session.

Yes. Yeah.

And

that can be a very sobering experience.

It can, especially when you've just spent

eight hours putting them all in.

"It sounds so much better. What's

happened?" Or something like that.

Yeah. [laughs] I know. But these are the

lessons that you learn, and I think that's

probably what we're talking about here.

You need to get at least reasonably

experienced before you kind of

begrudgingly put your hand up and say,

"Yeah,

I've been there."

Yeah.

We should talk about

performances, I think, just because there

are lots of reasons why you might want to

strip things back.

Yes.

And

for me, actually,

sometimes people talk about budget, and

I'm kind of thinking, "Budget? What,

someone's getting paid?"

But

actually, it's time and speed, and there

are lots of reasons why working fast is

good.

There's the flow and how it feels to the

people

performing.But

to be honest, in my experience, getting a

group of people together is

the most difficult thing about making any

band recording. And don't squander it

experimenting. Get on with it. And the

smaller the technical footprint can be, in

my experience, the happier the band are,

and a happy band makes for an easy

session.

Okay. Good call.

That's my take on that. What do you think?

What's the

motivation for speed? I've probably

covered the good ones already, but can you

think of any I haven't already greedily

taken first?

For me, the most important thing about

being quick is

momentum

and-

Mm

... keeping people in the right. Because

when people are approaching a recording,

it's like when they arrive, their energy

will be very high.

Mm.

And then it'll be high for about an hour

to two,

and if you don't grab something,

it'll start dropping off. And when

people's energy starts dropping off, you

start

losing the optimal place, and you've got

to keep people's-

Diminishing returns.

Yeah. Keep people happy for as long as

possible.

And rather than it sounding [chuckles] me

trying to

sound like I'm

all zen and stuff, it's not actually,

because for me,

99% of this is preparation. It's just all

about being professional and prepared. And

the way that I would run sessions

in my studio, I don't have a patch bay. I

have each channel is always the same

thing, and it's always hardwired.

You're probably avoiding a lot of pain not

having a patch bay.

Yeah.

Because however flexible they are, they

rarely work. [laughs]

Well, the flexibility is another word for

time-wasting, as far as I'm concerned.

Yeah.

It's always the same, and the mics already

have got little covers on. They're all

plugged in, ready to go. You bring the

people in, you put the mics where... You

don't fret too much about,

"Oh, right. Let's try this with that mic,"

or, "Let's try..." You know

pretty much which mics are going to get

you in the zone, and then anything after

that, you deal in the physical world. So

if a kick drum's not sounding great,

deal with it physically, damp it more,

tune it different.

I'm a big, big believer in dealing with

things physically because it's quicker.

The person you're with, the musicians,

they understand this

because you're dealing with their

instrument rather than

disappearing off into the other room and

fiddling about with stuff, which most

people

get rapidly bored with.

In theory, it should be quicker to tweak

an EQ than move a microphone.

But it's not. [laughs]

But you're right that if you move

a microphone in the right direction, then

it's very visible that something has

happened and you're doing-

Yeah

... something in the room.

Yeah.

Rather than going away and coming back

again.

Yeah. I'm trying to think of examples. A

good example of why you have to be quick

is for people like horn players. Their

lips have only got a certain amount in

them, especially trumpet, if they're doing

high trumpet parts.

You've got to

plan ahead who should actually be there.

This is very true. Don't ask

people to wait because they'll get bored.

Yeah.

I'm sure you've been

the one being recorded in the studio more

recently than I have, and certainly more

than I have because for context, Lincoln's

a great player. I'm

somebody who plays a bit.

But it was a little while ago now, but I

played bass on a friend's album,

and it was the first time in such a long

time that I'd been client side, if you

like, in a studio.

Yeah.

And my overwhelming recollection of it was

how intensely, tediously boring being in

a studio is.

Yes. That's the enemy

right there.

Because if you're running a session,

you're not bored. You're busy. It's the

opposite of bored.

Mm.

But it's really important to check in on

that occasionally-

Yeah

... just to remind yourself why they're

being so annoying if they're,

for want of a better word, misbehaving.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

It's because they're bored out of their

brains. They've had nothing to do for

however long while you've been busy and

too busy to think about it.

The first thing I always used to

do when I have more than maybe two or

three people in at a time is find out if

the singer can make tea,

because people like to have a job to do.

They want to be busy doing stuff. Give

little jobs to people to do if they're not

involved directly in what you're doing at

the moment,

and that stuff can help.

Real basic stuff. If you have a studio and

that's your regular place to record,

that's a slightly different scenario to

the one that I'm really talking about in-

Oh, yeah

... the article in "Sound on Sound"

because what I'm talking about is that

kind of mobile rig coming to them,

which is a really strong motivation for

keeping the technology on the down-low

just because it's quicker to set up.

There's less to go wrong.

Yeah.

If everything's set up, it's kind of

easier because it worked last time, it'll

probably work again this time. It hasn't

been-

Yeah

... moved.

But

as goes

organizing things, the only thing that

I'll do really is I will try to get the

drummer to come early,

and that

is kind of essential if you're trying to

figure stuff out, because so often these

spaces are too small as well.

Yes, they are.

There's a couple of spaces I've used

regularly, which are barely big enough to

fit a band into. But if it's where there

is and where they're used to playing, then

it's not about you, and this is probably

the overriding point that I'm making, is

that if you're recording somebody, then

you're trying to change what people

usually do as little as possible so that

they're comfortable and things are normal,

but there's someone else there and more

stuff.

Yeah. I think, again, when it comes down

to that, again, it's preparation. I

remember having to go down to some, I

can't remember where it was. It was just

like a hall somewhere in North London-

Mm

... to record a big band, and there was

about 30 of them. I had no really idea

what the room was going to be like. I just

took a bunch of leads and a bunch of mics

and a-

Mm

... computer and an interface. But I had

an idea of

what number of each instrument there was,

the kind of material they were playing,

and wrote out a seating plan for them.So

before even thinking about any mics or

anything, it's like, well, where are you

going to actually physically put them?

And in terms of the relative volume of the

instruments that they play.

If you think about that

in a detailed way, you can use fewer

mics.

Don't put the flutes in front of the

trombones. That's not going to work out

well.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

You need to maintain the line of sight

between the people that want to be

together, but an acoustic bass is a lot

quieter than a trombone,

and if you want to control it, you need as

much isolation on that, for instance, as

you need

barely any on

a horn desk.

They just blast away, and you can put them

anywhere, and you'll get them.

And so

doing that, I got them, they all turn up,

and they all start putting the chairs out

as if they're doing a concert, and I had

to sort of go, "No, no, no, no, no."

[laughs]

Which, that's a good point about that's a

line there where it's worth changing what

people usually do.

Yeah, 100%. So I put them all in little

semicircles,

dotted around the room.

Was anybody bothered about that?

Yeah, they were confused-

Were they?

... but they went with it.

Yeah.

Okay.

But you're basically putting them into

little semicircles of people that all play

the same sort of thing

with a drummer as far away from

the quieter instrument as possible.

And the singer in the room, in that

scenario, you're not going to be

bringing out a

posh condenser,

a 58 [laughs] and just sing right up to

it-

Yeah

... because [laughs] it's

good singer-

Because you've got to give it a fighting

chance. Yeah.

You've got to give it a fighting chance.

And so yeah, did all that, and they were a

bit confused and then...

But it was good. It was possible to mix

it.

And that's working, and it's not like

going and doing it at Capital, but if it

gets the job done, then it's fulfilled the

brief, and that's what we're chasing.

Yeah. Because you haven't got a lot of

time.

It's almost like we planned it, but should

we talk about separation? Because this is

a lot of the motivation-

Yes

... for some of the most damaging things

that I think the

studio orthodoxy might encourage us to do.

Mm.

And I do

know of sessions, thankfully not ones that

I've done, where

a band

who have almost no studio experience have

turned up and been requested by the person

whose studio it is to

put their parts down separately as

overdubs, which I found bizarre until I

found out that the guy had four

simultaneous inputs. And I went, "So tell

me more about this studio you were at,"

because this was quite a long time ago,

admittedly, and I think that's less common

than it used to be. But it's a great

example about

it's called comfort zone for a reason.

My favorite examples with

things like that are

probably exploring polar patterns if you

have a choice. And unfortunately, so many

people don't.

But my top tip for anyone who wants to

keep flexibility

is to have access to

at least some microphones that have got a

figure-of-eight pickup pattern because if

you've never experienced the side nulls on

a figure-of-eight, then

it's

a really, really handy thing.

It is, yeah.

What would you say? I've probably already

chosen your favorite because-

Mm-hmm

... I know you're

quite keen on ribbons. But...

Yeah.

Well, spill, for starters, can be a really

good thing.

There's one area which I've done a lot of

where you can have absolutely no spill,

and that's soundtrack production

because in a soundtrack production, you

have to deliver multiple mixes with things

in or out, and so

zero spill is absolutely... But let's get

that out the way and assume that's not

what you're doing.

Spill between

things that are

sonically different but of a similar

volume can be pretty easy to

deal with when you mix.

It all depends what's spilling into what,

really.

Yes.

And

for me, I've got no problem with

the

components of a drum kit spilling into

each other.

I rarely-

Mm

...

close mic toms.

Okay.

I've never found a use for it. I've done

it and never used them.

They can feel a bit futile when you... I

was doing this yesterday-

Yeah

... and finding the one tom hit through

the whole track and thinking,

"That was-"

Yeah.

"Was that worth it?"

I've had lots and lots of percussionist

drummers-

Mm

... who've been all over the place, and

it's not just me. There's a lot of people

who

I'd know what I'm going to do before they

arrive, and if I'm going to put maybe five

mics on the kit tops,

it means I'm ready to go

20 minutes later. And people love that.

Absolutely.

Good players can tune their instruments

properly, make them sound good. They've

already spent a lifetime trying to make

themselves sound good, so

they arrive with a good sound. You can

assume that.

Taking the example of drums, if you have a

drummer who's got good internal balance,

then-

Yeah

... yes, you can do that.

Yeah.

I've spent a lot of time recording

much, much younger, less experienced

drummers, and

actually just saying to a drummer, if you

think that you're dealing with one of

those or you know your way, you've heard

it,

just tickle the cymbals, hit the drums

will get you a long way.

Yeah.

But

yeah, you can go a long way, and building

a kit,

there is a temptation certainly to

overcomplicate drum setups and to build

drum sounds from close mics up rather than

the other way down. Clearly-

Oh, yeah. I totally start with

overheads.

Top-down. Same here. Yeah.

Yeah. 100%.

I can't think of the last time I close

mic'd a hi-hat. I really can't.

I don't think I've probably ever done

that. [laughs]

Yeah. I have done it

because-

Yeah

... the drummer was so unhappy that I

hadn't, but I didn't use it, and he

didn't-

No

... notice, so you know.

No.

So that kind of spill is great. Spill

between-Horns,

individual mics, if you've decided to do

that, that's great, too.

Spill between-- I suppose the most

damaging spill, potentially, is anything

going into the vocalist's microphone,

and because the chances are you're going

to be applying some sort of compression to

that-

Yeah

... to the voice.

If it's bad now, it'll be worse later.

Yeah.

Exactly. So, I think that's probably the

only area that I would be concerned about.

Although, I suppose if I'm recording

everything in the room with the drums,

then

it's the top end of the hi-hat cymbals

getting into everything.

It

can be an issue, but then again, you can

flip that and say, okay, well, if

everyone's in a room and it's a small

room, and let's say you've got two

backing singers, I don't know.

But anyway,

vocal mics can either point at the kit or

away from the kit.

This is- Yeah.

And they can be equidistant from the kit

or not. So, make them equidistant. They

could be your overheads.

Oh, I see what you mean. Okay. That's not

where I was going.

In a band environment, yeah, if you're

using a cardioid mic

to maybe two singers, set them up as if

they were room mics,

and then you can either have the singers

facing the drummer or facing away from the

drummer, depending on how much spill you

want.

Very often, I was talking about

asking the band to change as little as

possible what they usually do.

But what you touch on there is a really

good point.

Left to their own devices, a band will set

up as if they're playing to a room.

Yes. Yeah.

And because of that, singers will have

drums behind them, which is precisely

where you don't want them. And that's

worth playing with if people are good with

it. That being said, overdubs are to be

avoided generally, but if you're going to

do an overdub, a vocal one isn't

that much of an ask. I've yet to come

across a singer who minds-

No

... doing their vocal again.

And I think in that scenario, if you have

any kind of separation, separate the

singer, even if it's to the point where

they're not in anyone else's mic. If

they're not spilling into anything else,

you're pretty much good to go. If they can

be singing live and it's going into the

monitors, let's say, assuming everyone's

got cans,

and

it's a performance, and then they can redo

their vocal afterwards, then you're kind

of in a sweet spot, because in most

setups, no other type of spill is going to

be impossible to deal with. I wouldn't

have thought. I've done things on another

session I did,

which had

keys,

two guitars, but an acoustic guitar as

well. So basically, the keys and,

I think it was a Nord or something, and an

electric guitar and bass. I put all the

amps in the corner, all literally right on

top of each other,

and just mic'd them up individually as far

away from the quiet instruments as

possible, including the singer with a

figure-of-eight. And all the amps, because

they were all in one little place-

Mm

... they could go into the null point of

the

ribbon mic that I was using for the vocal.

Mm.

And

drums were at the other side

in the other null point.

Mm.

So basically, the singer back front,

everything's in a line in terms of the

noisy boys.

Mm.

And everything's in the nulls, and it was,

I think it was an RCA 44 anyway, but

yeah, it came out great. It came out

absolutely great. It sounds like they were

in a room a long, long way away, but it

was actually quite a small room.

Oh, okay.

So,

if you've got the situation where you do

have to have a singer in the room with

loud things,

my approach is always to put them in a

line-

Mm

... and

use the nulls,

either the nulls of a figure-of-eight,

or if you've got a cardioid, obviously,

have it pointing away from the

noisy things.

But if you've got a range of different

instruments that are from very loud to

pretty

subtle,

just put them all in a line

if you've got the right shape room,

loudest at one end, quietest at the other.

That's always worked really well. In fact,

if you look back at some

recordings from the '50s, they did that a

lot.

We should reference this, actually,

because it didn't say it in your bio, but

anyone who's been on the Sound Of Sound

YouTube channel,

I didn't realize until I looked it up, but

the most popular video on that channel is

you-

[laughs]

... doing '50s-style recording,

which has big numbers. So, it's a great

video, so if anybody wants to check that

out-

Well, I think the thing with that-

This is him.

Ah. [laughs] Well, there you go.

Yeah.

I think the thing with it that I like

about that

approach to recording is that it didn't

stop them making really successful records

that sound fantastic.

Yeah.

And also, you can pick holes in their

stuff sonically all day long,

but

Buddy Holly records are great.

And Buddy Holly records were

groundbreaking at the time, and you need

to look at what happened before them-

Mm

... to appreciate how different they were.

Yeah.

Some of them were recorded on tour in

gymnasiums and stuff.

Mm.

The mixes are

arguably terrible.

[laughs]

But that's not really the point. The point

is that the performances are great,

and that's what people like.

So, this is the jumping-off point of the

whole thing, is that

there's something about people playing

together at the same time in the room

together which is worth

changing other things to not change that,

if you see what I mean.

Yes, 100% agree.

And

while that doesn't apply to some styles of

music at all, obviously, these are

outside of that remit, but if you're

talking about people

hearing each other through air, playing at

the same time, seeing each other through

space,

there's something that's just inherently

immediate and not in any kind of romantic

sense. What I mean is that it just works

because it has to, because it's a result

of things happening at the same time

together, and all of the things that we

encounter when we take that away are

basically trying to replace something that

happens on its own if you let it.

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, I should just have said the last bit

there because that's actually my point.

So

because of that, we don't want to change

things too much.

We've mentioned most of them. I've

mentioned sight lines, we've mentioned,

well, actually, you referred to cans and

using headphones,

which

increasingly I just don't do. People don't

want them. There's a nice thing,

actually, which I think I might mention in

the article, which is

just using open-back headphones in the

same way as you might use a spot mic on an

instrument that needs bringing out of an

ensemble if somebody wants to hear more of

something. Yeah, if somebody wants to

hear more of themselves and what's

happening in the air, pop a pair of cans

on them,

give them what they're asking for, and

they can still hear everything else, but

you're not isolating them from the room.

Yeah. I think the thing with headphones is

the same as with clicks.

Ooh.

It depends if you're used to them or not.

I

love both,

but then again, I've spent a lot of time

doing this. So

for a lot of people, they just can't deal

with it because it's just not their normal

environment, and then you have to find a

way around that.

Playing to a click is a skill that

requires practice, and if you assume

somebody will be comfortable playing to a

click, you'll find out very quickly that

they're not if they haven't done it

before.

Yeah.

I think this is a thing that's less

prevalent than it used to be just because

generationally things have changed.

Yeah.

And so many players have grown up

learning, using online resources, playing

online, and inherent to that is playing to

perhaps to backing tracks and all of

that. Which certainly people our age, we

just learned to play in rooms together

with other people or on our own.

Yeah, that's right.

Occasionally getting out a clockwork

metronome-

Yeah

... or something. But yeah, I think that

might be less of a thing now.

There is

even a kind of a, let's call it a

guerrilla approach to that, which I've

found has worked over the years, is a lot

of people hate the click, and that's fair

enough.

Mm.

But you'll find that if you

quickly record eight bars of

shaker and hand claps-

Mm

... of them doing it or their drummer

doing it,

and just make a little audio track, and

that becomes the click, then they're

absolutely fine with that.

It takes 10 minutes to do, but it

can make a big difference.

Yeah. No, I've done it. Absolutely, I've

done it, and

I

used to teach and

I had a student who was struggling with a

click,

and

the quick solution was

trying to

build the right number of subdivisions.

Anyone who just uses a quarter note click,

unless it's relatively quick and simple-

Mm

... is probably barking up the wrong tree.

Get some subdivisions in there. It's much

easier.

But

the solution was just that, well,

what should you be playing to? And

somebody just played on their knees,

and we recorded a loop of that, and they

were happy as. Which takes me back to

Buddy Holly, actually, because I'm just

thinking about-

Yeah

... if you want records with percussion

tracks of just someone playing on their,

slapping their legs-

Yeah

... there you go. Look no further than

Buddy Holly.

We should talk about options in post. So

we're talking about capture here.

Yeah. Sure.

Something that has really encouraged me in

the last few years is classic, for want

of a better word, studio techniques to

avoid.

We can actually fix them in post now using

software,

and

while that's not as good as a pristine

capture,

it does open up options that didn't used

to exist, which are definitely worth

investigating. Top of my list is

there are a few different options now for

using AI-based tools or machine learning

tools to de-spill things, and the issue

we're talking about with vocals and spill

on vocals. It can be

quite

destructive if used incorrectly, but

anyone who's ever tried to gate stuff out

using a level-based gate

will know that that's just not a solution.

It doesn't work.

No.

But these things, they kind of do. Only

yesterday-

Yeah

... I was

taking

entire band spill out of a vocal using

VoiceAssist by NoizeWorks.

Other solutions exist. That's the one that

I'm using, and I'm plugging just because

I really like it. But

there's a Waves alternative. You can use

stem splitters. There's all sorts of

alternatives, but as long as you don't ask

them to get rid of the spill completely,

it's the same problem again. You'll

compromise performances by trying to

eliminate spill. You'll do the same using

software's, but I was just pulling it down

12 db possibly, and what was previously

not very usable became extremely usable.

Is there anything similar that you've

found that

you've got options

in post, so fixing things later, which you

might otherwise have to?

Yeah. There's loads of things you could--

I've not actually gone down the AI route

at all, but

that's never been a problem.

So in terms of, let's say the idea here is

that you've decided you're going to

record with an emphasis on performance,

and you've got a great performance, but

something happened.

Mm.

Something went wrong. There was a noise or

a crash or something wasn't quite right.

You've got your Wave editing, which is

brilliant for that kind of stuff. You've

got iZotope, things like that, where you

draw stuff out.

Oh, spectral editing. Yeah, of course.

Yeah. That kind of thing, which is

extremely useful.

Mm.

Because if you can do these things, it

means you're not-

Yeah

... saying in the room, "Well, that was

absolutely brilliant, except for the fact

that on bar 38-" [chuckles]

Mm

... "this happened," so you're now going

to have to do the whole thing again.

Exactly. And if you-

Because you're not going to get the same

performance.

And in the same way, spectral editing is a

great example of everything was fine

apart from somebody got a message alert on

their phone, which wasn't on silent.

Yeah, something like that. Yeah.

You can take that out and-

You can totally take that out

... nobody will notice.

Yeah.

I steered away from

editing, so I'm glad you picked it up,

just because-

Yeah

... if you're talking about what do people

do when they're recording

orchestral music, say, there's not much

they're doing within the tracks, but the

amount of cutting and splicing that

happens-

Mm

... is absolutely there. And most of what

I've been doing the last week or so with

some live stuff is mostly fixing mistakes,

just little slips that could be better,

and just taking stuff from elsewhere in

the take-

Yeah

... or from an alternative take and

popping it in. And all of that stuff is

absolutely workYou're

augmenting the performance rather than

augmenting the sound-

Yeah

... but it's still making the recording

better.

Yeah. One of the things that I've

massively gone down the route of is

dynamic EQs to do this sort of thing.

Oh, go on. Examples?

Instead of gates,

because like you say, the reason that you

want to isolate a vocal, let's say,

is because chances are you're going to

want to compress it. But it doesn't mean

you have to have zero spill. It's only a

problem if it's a problem.

And the spill that you've got is unlikely

to be white noise. It's likely to be

certain frequencies, certain things.

So,

if you've got a dynamic EQ that

aggressively shuts down at four kilohertz,

for instance, but the mid-range of the

vocal is pretty much left alone, if

there's a nasty, annoying hi-hat click in

the background, it's going to really help

with that.

If you can sort of isolate the thing that

is the problem and attenuate it as much as

possible at a speed that doesn't affect

the vocal, so i.e. it's basically

invisible,

then you

can get a hell of a long way with that.

Bearing in mind, you've got things like

FabFilter that you can have, I don't know,

15

EQ points, and they could all be doing

something different

at different speeds and different times.

And the chances are, this is why you'd

still want to get it right on the way in,

because you're trying to eliminate as many

problems as possible.

But if

there is something that's popping up,

a dynamic EQ will usually grab it to the

extent that you need it to.

Really good point. Something that I'm very

aware of at the moment is

there's a

relatively new generation of gating tools.

Boz Digital did the Big Beautiful Door, I

think it's called.

Oh, right.

And basically, it's

taking elements of dynamic EQ to gating so

that you can control what's being gated

out spectrally rather than just based on

amplitude.

Yeah.

And really, really useful tool and doing

pretty much what you're talking about-

Yeah

... but taking it further, saying, "Hey,

you could have an expander or a gate."

And the gorilla even more than that is

from when I very first started, before

these things were even available,

is that in any door,

you can duplicate your track as many times

as you like, pretty much.

Mm.

So

if you've only got the basic EQ and a

basic gate or compressor or whatever

that comes with the software,

if you split your vocal into

low, mid, and high, and get them into an

auxiliary and get them so that

taken apart, they sound the same as the

original, so you get your crossover points

right-

Yeah

... you can then treat those different

areas differently.

And depending on the singer, the sibilance

is a rapid thing.

So you can

gate that much more aggressively than you

can a gate around

sort of 600 to 1K because that's where the

singing is. That's where the notes fade

away and stuff.

Yeah.

So you don't

treat that very aggressively at all. But

if you've done your recording right, it's

unlikely that you've got significant spill

issues in that area. The spill issues are

usually going to be in the top or the

bottom,

unless you put the singer right next to a

trumpet player, which you wouldn't have

done because you'd have read this article

on guerrilla recording. [laughs] But do

you see what I mean?

I do, absolutely, yeah.

This great gift with digital recording is

limitless tracks.

Mm.

And once you get into the routine of it,

I've always found the fastest way for me

to deal with things is to duplicate the

track and find out which bit's the

problem,

deal with it in real-time,

and then put it back together, put the

track back together

via an auxiliary, mix it down back, bounce

it down into another track. And if you're

just judicious with

your release times, attack times-

Mm

...

it's incredibly natural way of doing it.

But it's probably what most of these

plugins are doing now anyway.

Yeah. You are very much rolling your own

when there's something. But I've done it.

I remember doing that using

one-band EQs-

Yeah

... in Pro Tools.

Something

that a lot of people don't check out,

again, I'm in Pro Tools world. Apologies

to users of other DAWs. It's just what I

know best. But the Pro multiband plugin

has a multiband splitter counterpart that

lots of people never check out, but it

does exactly that. It's just a

rootable crossover-

Yeah

... so you can split out to other tracks

and do

tricks with which-

Yeah

...

can be huge fun. Even though I've built

things that I and nobody else will ever

need that way. But this is what we do.

Yeah.

That's been a really good talk around the

subject. We should

wind things up. We've gone relatively long

on this. It's hardly stuff that nobody's

said before in terms of capture the

performance because that's the important

bit, but it's good. Everybody needs

reminding of that occasionally, and there

are lots and lots of options that are

available to us, both at the capture stage

and options that weren't previously

available in post when we come to mix-

Yeah

... which mean that we've got more choices

than ever, and you don't have to do it

this way, but choice is a good thing, and

you can make your technique fit the gig in

lots of ways that we haven't always

necessarily been able to. [upbeat music]

Thank you for listening, and be sure to

check out the show notes page for this

episode where you'll find further

information along with web links and

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before you go, let me point you to the

soundonsound.com/podcasts page where you

can explore what's been playing on our

other channels. This has been a Julian

Rogers production for Sound on Sound

magazine.

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