Studio Noob

October 6, 2010 4:41 PM

I have never been in a studio, and have only been concentrating on pure software synths and trackers. I have been wondering if the following scenario is realistic or not to expect, and if you have any experience doing something similar.

I have enough raw material for an experimental harsh noise project. Right now it exists as various rough multitrack wavs, pure data scripts, and some rough mix downs. What I'd like to do is find a studio that would let me come in and feed a laptop signal DI into various preamps, acoustic spaces, and mics, recorded to an analog multitrack, which they would then give me as a high quality wav.

I don't care what software they use to do it, that's their domain, in getting me the sound I want. The extent of my knowledge in that area is pretty limited to reading Tape Op, and very simplistic fashion. I've experimented with building string reverbs, and contact mic pickups.

Is this a common scenario now? Advice/experience?

posted by pemdasi to Media & Arts (11 answers total)

Not too common, but not too far out there, either. Any studio with a good selection of preamps, compressors, etc would be happy to take your money for what is essentially a big re-amping project.

Just call around with a brief précis of what you'd like to accomplish and see who bites and/or sounds interested about the project.
posted by Aquaman at 5:56 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Unless I'm misunderstanding things, this is what studios do. So find one with a good reputation in your area and give them a call.

I'm not entirely sure what you intend to gain from it, though. Are you looking for someone to do the mix for you?
posted by Magnakai at 5:57 PM on October 6, 2010

Response by poster: Magnakai, Not the mixing. I would like them to record my samples as though they were a normal instrument. Instead of a master, I want the raw recordings, in wav format. I'd like to be able to tell them what sound I'm going for, and then they would decide how best to achieve that.

I suppose from their point of view it's exactly like a band recording a session and taking the session with them.
posted by pemdasi at 6:07 PM on October 6, 2010

So, essentially, you're looking for your samples to be put through a high quality signal path and EQ tweaked/compressed to your liking? Interesting. I'm genuinely curious - I've done some re-recording at home and not found it very useful, finding that I could get everything that I need through software. If you do go ahead with it, I'd be really curious to hear some before/afters.

Good luck, and I hope you get something cool!
posted by Magnakai at 7:12 PM on October 6, 2010

Why wouldn't you just 'record' these yourself by opening garage band/protools/ableton/whatever and mixing these samples all together there? If you've never used any kind of home recording software, learn, they're a lot cheaper than studio time. As it is any studio will kinda look at you funny if you want to play your laptop like an instrument (which won't sound great by the way, a laptop DI isn't a fantastic audio out) they might do it, but could also just take the files and help you mix them like samples instead. If you want to go lowfi, get a four-track or a friend with a four-track and run the laptop into that like an instrument instead.

Anyway, this isn't the best way to get the sound you want.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:39 PM on October 6, 2010

Are you using poly BWFs or something? I'd just record them sequentially to stereo 2-track. One sticky bit you'd want to check up on is whether the studio has a mechanism by where you can output your laptop signal in the recording space, i.e. an amplifier or speaker of some kind, probably with an adjustable stand and with sufficient fidelity. Just a detail to ensure.
posted by rhizome at 7:40 PM on October 6, 2010 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Potomac Avenue: I live in an apartment where have no space to do what I am thinking of without getting us evicted. I don't think you properly understand the motivation. While I don't use any of the software you mention, and have gravitated towards simply writing code and building circuits to make music, given time I could come up with some imitation of a real space. It'll still sound synthetic. I just want to play some raw waveforms, out of an amp and cab in a nicely treated and live room, with quality mics to capture the details.
posted by pemdasi at 9:35 PM on October 6, 2010

You could try to play around with some professional effects.
Take a look at Sonic Timeworks ReverbX.
posted by mitocan at 12:15 AM on October 7, 2010

Another datapoint you might want to add to your search is a reverb chamber. I'm not sure how many still exist, but Back In The Day, I believe that people would seek out well-regarded echo chambers and even send their tape to the studio for playback and recording in said room. Just a thought.
posted by Magnakai at 1:54 AM on October 7, 2010 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Followup: you WILL get much better-sounding audio stems by doing what you are thinking about doing.

Overdriving really nice preamps, slamming some quality compressors, routing signals into some boutique pedal effects, re-amping a signal through some cool amps and capturing the result with great microphones: all these things will definitely add a lot of of unique quality and "vibe" to your existing sounds.

Messing around with plug-ins on your laptop isn't the same thing by a long shot. Do some reading up on "re-amping" and then start calling around. No studio engineer worth his or her salt would have any question about whether or not this is worthwhile. I bet lots of studios would be psyched to work on this with you.
posted by Aquaman at 8:41 AM on October 7, 2010

Aaaand just to tidy this up, you can certainly record your stems in the studio, take them home to arrange your tracks, and then once you have tracks you like bring the whole batch into the studio and book time with an engineer to do the final mixdown on a nice mixer and outboards. This may require some technical coordination with whatever setup they have, but you should be able to set something up.
posted by rhizome at 5:29 PM on October 7, 2010