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Mark Stanley Recording tips

• A basic PC recording set-up can cost under a grand. I personally use one gig of RAM and a 2800 processor which allows me to record at a higher sample rate. I record at 96k which I personally feel makes a big difference in quality but also takes up more hardrive space and processor power. I would generally advise on recording at 48k/24 bit as opposed to 44.1 and 16 bit and this is more than achievable on a mid range computer.
  
• There are lots and lots of mixer options with Behringer and Mackie to name a few brands that provide affordable quality. My advice is to use your mixer only for monitoring and keep your signal path as clean as possible. I like to avoid using the pre-amps on my mixer even though they are quite reputable and prefer to use a stand alone pre-amp which I think can really improve the overall sound.
  
• From my point of view, two amazing microphones are better than eleven crap ones. Many's the good drum sound that has been recorded with just two mic's. Microphones are a subjective thing based on budget, places like Factory Sound and Billy Hydes have incredibly competitive prices on microphones and fantastic staff, so it is a matter of outlining your budget and your recording requirements and they will steer you in Mark Stanley continued the right direction. The Sure Beta series are great mic's and if you are taking baby steps a 58 and 57 would be the way to go and Rode make brilliant affordable condenser microphones.
  
• Reverb is an effect that can make something sound absolutely amazing or absolutely dated. Generally if you listen to music that sounds really dated nine times out of ten it is because of the particular reverb applied on the track. The music I gravitate to is what you would call "organically recorded" and I kind of tend to use reverbs to a bare minimum. Generally if I am using reverbs on a particular drum sound or vocal, I tend to use them very subtly. I tend to find a reasonably generic reverb and bus it slightly over 6 or 7 tracks rather than using on just one track and this will save you a heap of cpu power.
  
• I use Emagic Logic Audio as my main recording software and I get really good results on vocals using the Tape Delay Plug In and I also find some interesting results using the Sample Delay on Drum room mic's and some guitars. I generally use plug ins because of the nature of my studio and the quality of the hardware I have available. I prefer using plug ins simply to keep the signal as pure as possible as opposed to compromising the path through a crappy pre amp or effect unit. A really interesting tip I got a few years ago from a guy at Steve Albinis studio was that when you are using a program like Logic Audio the track EQ's can tend to be a little brittle and that the plug ins like something out of the Waves pack would be a far better option if you have a little bit extra CPU power. So if you can, avoid activating the channel EQ's and use a reputable EQ plug in for a better result.
  
• When recording acoustic instruments, say an acoustic guitar, I run the risk of looking like a bit of a weirdo because I actually get down on my hands and knees and move my head around within a 30 cm radius of the instrument and try and find a sweet point to put the close microphone so I actually listen with my naked ear and try and find a nice spot and use that as my start point. Recently I have been using Rode NT 5 microphones as ambient room mic's as well so I am using say on an acoustic guitar, one mic close to the hole and a stereo pair out in the room probably about two and a half meters from the guitar. So I get a triangular stereo spread configuration. So it is great having the choice of the ambience of the room and the direct sound of the close microphone and blending them. The great thing about this technique is that you capture the natural reverb of the room, especially if it is a nice room and you really don't need to artificially process the signal with reverb plug ins and the like.
  
• Phasing is one of those things that I didn't hear for years but since I learnt this tip in Logic I have gone back and checked heaps of my recordings and realised that I was serial offender. Phasing is a tricky one, it can occur in a grand fashion or quite a subtle fashion. If you have a snare drum and you have the luxury of having a mic on the top of the snare drum and another on the bottom of the snare drum then you will almost certainly encounter some phasing. What Logic has which lots of equivalent programs have as well is the gainer plug in which is found in the helper menu and underneath the gain fader you will see a small box that says NORM or if you click underneath that small box it will say INV which stands for invert. What you can do there is check the phasing on the microphones that you have just recorded and sometimes you will be absolutely astounded at the difference if something is phasing or not phasing. If your signal seems to be thin or lacking in body it probably is phasing, so this a great and easy way to check.
  
• I personally think that a really good pre-amp can make an enormous difference, especially to a vocal so if you are recording something that may end up on a final CD it is worth considering hiring a pre-amp and there are places around that hire amazing pre-amps out at very, very affordable rates and it can make an outstanding difference to the end result. You can get pro quality vocals at home for a hundred dollars a day outlay and get yourself a $20,000 signal path.

Mark Stanley

Red Room Recording Studio/Red Room Records 0407 521 405

Played drums in many Australian bands in the eighties and early nineties

Moved to Ireland in 1995 and joined the Mary Janes and released acclaimed cd's and toured extensively. Worked with people such as Kevin Maloney, David Ohdlam and the Frames.