So this series of posts is going to cover the processes of recording, editing, mixing and mastering and any other things along the way. I realise this post may not be for everyone but hopefully it gives an insight into why things take such a long time to come to fruition and what I've learnt over the years. I'm very much a novice with all these techniques so if anything, this will be more for me to look back over in the coming years to see where things went. Hopefully upwards and forwards! We will have to wait and see.
Back in 2012 I had the idea (very stressful but fun) to arrange all the music for the wedding breakfast for our wedding in 2013. I took 20 tunes Kate liked and 20 that I liked and set about creating fairly relaxed piano versions of these pieces of music. The problem was I had never recorded anything properly before and I wanted the recordings to be at least half decent for the guests to sit through!
I first of all tried an old shure microphone but I found that I wasn't happy with the sound quality. Instead, I bought an audio input/output cable to connect my digital piano to the computer. Although I would have loved to use my acoustic Chappell piano, I wanted to make sure the recordings were all in tune and I could at least rely on the Roland digital for that. I downloaded a free audio software program called audacity. With the wedding coming up, I didn't want to pay more money for something I could do for free!
Audacity is a very easy to use recording package but has some surprisingly good features for the free technology.
Now for a big admission. However much I tried to get a full recording I would always go to pot as I put too much pressure on myself to get things right and would mess up. I think this is quite common with other musicians but I'd have to ask them for their opinion. Even with no one else in the room, the pressure to try and play perfectly always gets to me!
Second big admission. Using an editing technique called cross fading and splits/cuts I was able to stitch together multiple takes of audio to create what seemed like one continuous good play through. (So what you're hearing is all lies! MWAHAHAHAHA!) I digress.
My first recordings were put together using a harsh cut from one piece of audio to another. The problem with this is that because it has been cut harshly the audio creates a snap or popping sound so you can tell where the joins are. Towards the end of the recordings I learnt how to cross fade one track over the other which creates a much more natural effect. This entails fading one track out whilst fading the other in. If you get the timing right it works very well.
In the end, I managed to get 38 tracks completed which was still more than enough. However, this recording process had one major issue that always annoyed me. Because the cable was plugged directly into the computer it created an audio static loop where all the tracks had a continuous mechanical hiss throughout. (Not background hiss, that's different.) It bothered me a lot but I had the time constraint to worry about.
Although I had this niggle about the sound quality, I used the same process for my first two charity albums as by then we had had Grace and Amber would shortly follow. I wasn't too worried about learning something new. That wouldn't happen until during the lockdowns. But that's a story for another day.
Thanks for reading