Attention Home Recording Geeks!

Mar 28, 2007 at 8:50 AM
5 comments

For more bang for your buck, try the Apex 435 studio mic. Even with the lower price, you get warmth and response that is just right for home recording. Cannot recommend this mic highly enough. Plus it comes with its own shock mount! And it's purty!

Set up everything yesterday and did a few naked mic tests and no mixing. Not too shabby. I will start fulfilling requests soon! But with mixing.

I have had "Aquamarine" by Geese in my head all last evening and this morning. Damn! What a catchy tune!

Question: Garageband users, a.k.a. Grubi. Though I see no clip on my interface, after the mixdown to send the song to iTunes there is a lot of mess in the guitar sound. Might be a mic thing and easily fixed, but was wondering if this is a common problem. Should I set to less than 0db while recording? For now, I am recording voice and guitar to one track.

5 comments

Comments

Oi. This is tough, because I have been so bad at mixing my songs, until very very recently. If you relisten to "Aquamarine" (yea!), you can tell that it's muddy in a lot of places, overdone in the volume, etc. When I recorded "Nothing Left to Apologize For," I decided, in spite of what I did in the past, to err on the side of quiet rather than loud. It certainly made a difference in my opinion, and in my wife's. Since you have a decent mic (which I need to get) and not the crappy Radio Shack mic like mine, you should be able to make more of the mic's capability to hear subtelties in your performance. Keeping the volume down might not be a bad idea.

Like anything else we do, experimentation is key. And don't be afraid to walk away from a mix and come back a few hours later with fresh ears. That can go a long way in helping out.

Ok, I'll do that. I noticed the muddiness but because of the rowdy nature of the song, I thought it might be intentional! How many vocal tracks did you lay down for the chorus? Just curious.

And, yes, get the Apex 435. I was going to get an M-Audio Nova, but the Apex has better response and warmth. All the ratings said 5 stars for Apex and 4 for M-Audio. That and the eensy beensy price (in comparison to the M-Audio and all others) was all I needed to make up my mind.

I noticed the muddiness but because of the rowdy nature of the song, I thought it might be intentional!

Not really. But there's so many tracks, it was intended to have a huge wall of sound, but not be muddy necessarily.

How many vocal tracks did you lay down for the chorus? Just curious.

I think there's six vocal tracks.

And, yes, get the Apex 435.

Oh, it's on my Amazon Wish List right now.