studio tricks

[mikegee]

on the Beatles song "revolution" i heard the Beatles got that distortion tone on the guitars by plugging the guitars straight into the board and overloading the gain on the channels. It seems like a "wrong" thing to do in a studio, yet it achieved the sound they wanted for the song. anybody else ever hear of any other convenient mistakes bands have made in the studio that made for interesting sounds? just wondering...

[mikegee]

i also read recently that marilyn manson mics headphones a lot to get that crackley noisy distorted tone on some of their songs... another cool trick

[Chaorta]

Originally Posted by mikegee

i also read recently that marilyn manson mics headphones a lot to get that crackley noisy distorted tone on some of their songs... another cool trick

I've done that. I'm a fan of weird mic'ing. When i was still living with my mother, i set up our basement shower as a vocal booth. Instead of padding it, i hung a long, hollow metal pipe with a hole drilled in it and mic'd that.

Oh, but uh, on topic: Preverb rules.

[dagosto]

A friend of mine had a chorus pedal that became a contact mic somehow. This happened just once and i have no Idea how it happened. We had it plugged right into his 8-track cassette. At first we had no idea how it was happening so we unplugged all the microphones but we still heard the room in the headphones. Finally I picked up the pedal and knocked on it. We both heard it in the headphones and he was like "we gotta record a song with that."

Very quickly we wrote some words and recorded a live take followed by a few overdubs through the chorus pedal. It seemed like no matter where you went in the room it picked up sound about the same. It sounded like a really cheap mic that sounded really good.

So my trick is to have weird stuff plugged in at all times and if something out of the ordinary happens be ready to record it.

[Nubus]

Originally Posted by dagosto

So my trick is to have weird stuff plugged in at all times and if something out of the ordinary happens be ready to record it.

Last weekend I had a similar happy accident. The guitar was mistakenly overdubbed through a mic pointing at the floor several feet away. Since the song called for the guitar to be in the background it completely worked. I had this strange feeling like that may have been the case, and when we finished tracking the part I went to check. Yep, it was this mic over here. I didn't tell the guitarist until the next day, when he comented on how good that guitar track ended up sounding.

[Bellringer]

I love using cheap headphones (the kind you get with a generic discman) as overheads on drums. You can overdrive the mics and use these tracks in a breakdown or get a great lo-fi sound on about anything with them. Who doesn't have a half broken pair of these around!

[JCI]

A technique for recording lo-fi guitars, I set up a click track & my guitar tone & listen through headphones with a small mixer, I'll put my cell phone to voice recorder & stick it in front of my amp. You get really lo-fi tones & very interesting distortions if you're lucky. Then, you could mike the cell phone, or you can put the earpiece next to the pickup. Once it's in my DAW, I just align it to the bpm. A bit of work, but I have a lot of time on my hands.

-JCI-

[dagosto]

Originally Posted by JCI

A technique for recording lo-fi guitars, I set up a click track & my guitar tone & listen through headphones with a small mixer, I'll put my cell phone to voice recorder & stick it in front of my amp. You get really lo-fi tones & very interesting distortions if you're lucky. Then, you could mike the cell phone, or you can put the earpiece next to the pickup. Once it's in my DAW, I just align it to the bpm. A bit of work, but I have a lot of time on my hands.

-JCI-

That's a really interesting idea. I can't set my phone to record so I may just have to leave myself guitar voicemails. ha!

[limon68]

The band ZZ Top using wireless microphones duct taped to a cieling fan for a rotary speaker tone on guitar.

Also transmitting from an actual radio station and recording the tones from an old vintage car stereo.

I am guessing they needed the trip to mexico and the hotel for something else??? (LOL)

[Spazz12835]

I've heard of placing plastic cups on microphones in order to get a grittier, lo-fi guitar sound.