Recording

Recording: ‘Your Shoes’ – recording a song mostly without a mic

By ronanfitzgPosted on
Time to Read:-words

IT’S BEEN FOREVER SINCE I’VE POSTED ANYTHING! The day job is for a clinic and there’s a pandemic. Your Shoes was written in about 2008.

In truth, I finished recording this in December 2019, but I haven’t had the chace to sit and write about it.

Also: I hate it. Like, of all the songs I’ve recorded as projects, I hate this the most.

But, more on that later!

Your Shoes: rig run down

Scratch track

As always, I started with a scratch track: simple acoustic guitar and vocal. I don’t feel like it’s worth getting into that any further.

Drums

So, the title of the post says Your Shoes was “mostly” without a mic. Surely this means drums was one of the things that was miced up?

No. Actually it wasn’t.

If you remember when I was struggling the drums for Seven Shades, I tapped out the drums in my head on an app called Real Drums, from Kolb Apps.

light audio recording real drum your shoes

While in that case, it was to test the idea in my head, for Your Shoes. Now, I used it for the actual drums.

The app has a feature to record what you play. Although it only exports it as an MP3, rather than a higher-quality WAV file that you really should work with in audio production.

Obviously, this sounds nothing like real drums. There’s obviously no touch-sensitivity, so you either hit the drum or cymbal or you don’t. There is not a single nuanced aspect of this drum performance.

Aaaand… the timing is iffy too.

Bass and guitars

While I normally give full posts each to bass, acoustic guitars, and electric guitars… not today!

You probably guessed that everything in this section was DIed, straight into the audio interface, via an instrument cable.

If you’re a regular reader, you’ll know I usually create a separate project for each instrument section.

But, not today.

Firstly, I just recorded the bass and acoustic guitar on the project I created for drums. Instead of micing up the Taylor and the Hummingbird to pan them wide left and wide right, this is just DIing the Taylor – the Hummingbird doesn’t have any electronics, so including wasn’t an option.

light audio recording axe bass
it's not happening taylor

However, I did create a new project for recording electric guitars. You know how ropey BandLab can get with too many tracks, so it just seemed like a safer option.

I played each of them in the usual way, but DIed them. Of course, this meant that all the guitars had a flat, clean sound. Doing things mic-free meant I was going in with BandLab’s built-in amp sims.

It went like this.

Micromixing this was a challenge. I ended up bouncing it down and recording the solo in a separate project, just because the lag was so bad.

Vocals and percussion

And now, we’re at the bit where I used my mic!

Similarly to electric guitars, I created a separate project each for vocals and percussion.

Because I usually record six vocal tracks -three each for lead and backing vocals – it seemed like the safest approach.

There’s not a lot to say here – I just rattled through them like I do.

Completing Your Shoes

Finally, with everything tracked, it was time to bring it all together.

I followed my usual process. It was a pretty straightforward edit, mix, and master, so there’s not a lot to add.

Additionally, it’s 12.10am, I have work in the morning, and I’ve dropped a melatonin gummy.

Your Shoes: conclusion

In summary, I hate pretty much everything about this recording.

I hate the flatness of not micing up drums and guitars. And I hate the patchiness of the finger-tapping drumming.

My dear friends: please… get an audio interface and a microphone.

your shoes

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