One of the things that I really love doing is recording “safe and character” sounds at the same time. Here are a few examples of what I mean.
I like to record keyboards through guitar amps to get the character of the amp. It saves me adding digital distortion later.
For an alternate snare bottom sound I will sometimes set up a feed of a snare mic into an iso room with a speaker and put a snare on it upside down. I then mic the chain side of the snare. This gives me a clean snare bottom without the bleed of the rest of the kit. I do this while I record live drums.
In addition to an sm57 or whatever else I am using on a great sounding amp. I will sometimes send a guitar signal to an alternate amp or even a bass amp and record it with a ribbon mic. This gives a hefty low end that even though most of it will be cut I can compress it and it gives the feeling of lows without actually having a ton of them.
What are you doing to record unique a cool sounds?
I always double mic the top snare. I generally use an sm57 and an m160. I usually gate the sm57 to really get the transient and then compress that and then blend it back into the m160.
I always do a DI bass and Bass amp which is most of the time through a guitar head and cab for distortion.
For anything I close mic, when I have time I also like to throw up a stereo pair in the room and use the reverb of the room instead of using a plugin or hardware.
One of my favorite drum mic techniques is to place a mic facing down (to help keep it in phase and eliminate cymbal bleed) around the top of the kick and by the snare (a 90 degree, short mic or a mic with cable coming out of the back works really good) to get the sounds of the drum shells and tones and then crush that mic. I call that my trash mic, and its different than a room mic because of the proximity to the drums but has a similar affect. I usually really get it pumping and nasty and then bring in what I want. I generally don’t go crazy with room mic compression and prefer this.
I also like doing keyboards through guitar amps, a lot of times I record the clean and distortion through separate amps at the same time and don’t even use the DI, but depends on the keyboard sound.
Occasionally I will run the vocal through a guitar amp/ cab or overdrive/distortion pedals.
I also will run 2 separate different guitar amps with different mics and settings for a single guitar to give a stereo effect with out having to double track.
A couple of Iphone things…
Record gtr thru an amp sim app and mic the tiny speaker . I’ve done this live and also “re-amped” a DI with BIAS on my old iphone.
I was recording a band and the drummer (my niece) set her iphone on a floor tom and recorded the same take. I lined up the iphone take with the rest and blended it into the mix. It was a cool effect.
I tried “re-amping” a vocal thru an iphone to get a true “phone” effect. But I ended up having to do my same phone eq to it anyway…
have fun
rich
I usually end up splitting the signal to an amp and to the daw then blending them later. I’ve seen Dave Pensado use amp sims on synths. I’ve also seem him run a horn section through an amp sim. Was pretty crazy, but it worked. I tried it. And it made stuff sound frickin huge. Check it out. (This is a real horn section, not a midi plug).
I like to use pedals a lot while I’m tracking on mults of signals. With drums as well, I sometimes use the ‘trash’ mic that @Thunderhouse mentioned and send it on an aux on the desk through a reamp box to a pedal board, overdrive pedal then a delay with a mix knob, and try and dial in roughly a nice 1/8 triplet delay to tuck in behind the drums. It’s one of those things that doesn’t always work, but when it does it can really make a drum sound. Level-loc on the trash mic can be great sometimes as well!
When recording guitars, I like to split the signal before the amp then send one straight to an amp an another to a Chorus Echo that I can drive the input of, even if not using the delay. It sounds great when you hit it hard and drive the preamp of that unit, then that signal to another amp and record both. Sometimes things need just a bit more hair on 'em!
One of the things I miss by recording live gigs is the extra time to try things. I either don’t have the control (nationals carry there own gear so I don’t get to set the mics or pick them), or the time (2 to 3 bands in an evening doesn’t leave time to move things around). I do try to split the guitars and take a DI signal along with the amp. I want to be able to control stereo efx on guitars like delay and verb and can’t do that with a mono amp mic.
Usually I don’t have the gear to spare to do parallel experimental gritty captures, but thinking about it I have done some stuff in the past. My favourites;
Recording drums with a £3.50 karaoke mic from Maplin to mangle further in the box
On my work in progress album, I pointed the room mic at the ceiling rather than the kit to get a bit more trashy, splashy ambiance.
The usual DI/ Amp combo on bass, though I have to admit I almost always use the amp track and ditch the D.I. which is just for safety, or occasionally re-amping through a cranked guitar amp.
Actually, thinking about it when I do record gritty/character tracks I’m liable to not bother recording the safety track, I have recorded synths through amps before. Then you’re really living dangerously!