Canadian Musician - September/October 2020 | Page 59

RECORDING
This column has been edited for length with permission. For the full version and other columns like it, go to
Sonarworks’ blog at www.sonarworks.com/blog. Other recent topics include: “Parallel Recording Using a
Microphone Splitter Transformer,” “When Is Your Mix Done?” and “The Secrets of the Hit Songs
of the Summer.”
By Eli Krantzberg
The 5 Best Things to Spend
Money on for Your Studio
The subject of how best to spend
your money to improve your productions
will be different for everyone.
Maybe you are a weekend
warrior who wants to jam with
friends every Friday night, or perhaps you are
running a post-production business with clients
coming by regularly. Maybe you are recording
bands in a large space or beat-making
in your bedroom. Here, I’ll focus on a handful of
aspects of enhancing your production workflow
that will benefit anyone and everyone.
1. Reflections Aren’t Just in Mirrors
Room acoustics affect the quality of what
we hear more than our particular choice of
monitors, microphones, preamps, or converters.
A modest amount of money spent
on a combination of absorber panels, diffusers,
and ceiling clouds goes a long way
to tracking and monitoring in more neutral
environments.
One of the most noticeable problems in
small room acoustics tends to be in the bass
response. Commercial bass traps are readily
available and often placed in corners so they
remain out of your way while smoothing out
the lumpy low-end problems that lead to
poor translation and muddy or lean low frequencies
in your mixes.
To deal with reflections, there are a wide
range of absorption panels. Don’t overdo it,
though, as too much absorption can make a
room sound “dead.” Acoustic diffusers work in
conjunction with absorption panels by scattering
reflections so sound doesn’t get focused directly
back to any specific area. Diffusion helps
retain a natural sense of space and a smooth
frequency response. Strategically placed bookshelves,
for instance, can act as low-cost natural
diffusers.
2. Make Good Monitors Sound Great
It’s essential to calibrate monitors so they
work optimally with the unique frequency
response curve of your studio space. Most
modern speakers include some onboard DSP
to compensate for things like reflections. These
simple EQs are often just two- or three-position
dipswitch adjustments. While useful, these EQ
controls don’t compare with accurately calibrating
your monitors using software-based
analysis and correction. This calibrates or
“tunes” your monitors to your room by taking
a series of acoustic measurements around
the listening area and calculating a correction
curve so that you can mix on your monitors
with confidence.
Besides frequency issues, many studios have
simple-to-fix problems like unbalanced volume
between left and right speakers. Be sure to measure
the volume using an SPL meter or room
correction software to make sure your levels are
perfectly matched. A subtler problem occurs
when the left and right speakers have slight
timing differences and the sound that reaches
your ears is not perfectly in phase between the
left and right channels.
3. Ergonomics
We spend a lot of time in our studios — most
of it seated in front of our screens and monitors.
The chair we sit in is undoubtedly the most used
piece of gear in our studios. A good chair is crucial
not only to our comfort but our health as well.
Buy yourself a good; make that a great chair. In
20 years, you will look at that chair as the best
purchase you ever made.
A good studio chair needs to be comfortable,
adjustable, and mobile, since we need to
move around while we are working to reach
patch bays, outboard gear, etc. Most importantly,
we need a chair to support our backs and
arms. Good posture is critical to preventing back
injuries, as well as carpal tunnel and tendonitisrelated
problems. An adjustable armrest is vital
to ensure your arms are at a 90-degree angle
with your keyboard.
4. Upgrade Your Skills
Never before in history have we had such good
tools for creating music as readily available and
as affordable as we do now. But we have to
learn how to use these tools in order to get the
best out of them and out of ourselves.
Do yourself a favour and invest in professionally
authored and curated training materials
from one of many respected online resources
like Groove3. These days, videos are ubiquitous.
YouTube can be hit-and-miss not only in terms
of quality but also in continuity.
Services like Goove3.com and Puremix.com
host industry professionals and skilled educators
who share their techniques and knowledge in
structured, organized, and complete courses that
cover all the bases. For those who prefer reading,
Groove3 also provides access to Hal Leonard’s
curated production library in easy-to-use digital
ebook form.
Online education centres are not particularly
expensive in the grand scheme of things
and will help you bring your skills up to a professional
level much quicker than endlessly
trolling through YouTube.
5. Listen, Listen, Listen
We all need to derive inspiration from somewhere.
Spend some money on a good streaming
subscription and access the best music in
the world. Given that we all strive to create
high-quality material, it’s worth paying a few
extra dollars for a premium service like Tidal or
Qobuz, where you can stream music at high
resolution.
Most importantly, make sure to set aside
time for listening. Listening to music stimulates
not just musical ideas, but production
ideas, too.
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 59