How this CD was Recorded
For all the talk about DIY that we throw around, there is still no way to make a good, cheap DIY recording. Recording takes expensive equipment, there's really no way around it, though I say this with many caveats: You can record your band live, with just one or two microphones, and it may sound cool, but it won't sound full and big the way your favorite records do. It will sound sloppy and trashy, which may also be what you're going for. For the sake of this article though, I'm assuming that you have a band with amplifiers and drums, and you want it to sound like a record you might get in a store.
If you are going to hire someone to record your CD, that's going to cost money. A lot of money, if you want it to sound good. If you do it yourself, it will cost money. I made the Trabant recording myself, and I did it for less money than it could have cost. I thought it might be interesting to explain how the recording was put together. It's not the best recording ever made, but we did it all ourselves and I'm really happy with it.
The software I use is nuendo. It runs on my PC, which I put together for about $400 by buying parts online. Nuendo costs $1600, unless you find a cracked version of it online, which I would never do because I believe in the law. In order to get sounds into the computer, I needed an input box. I got a Motu 896, which allows me to record up to 8 mics at a time. I think they cost about $900 now, but when I got it a few years ago, they cost $1600 and I got it on ebay for $800.
The first step in recording was the drums. I got a mic set from musician's friend that cost $200 and included all the mics I needed for a drum set. To make the drums sound more real, I took the one nice mic I own, a $200 vocal mic, and put it about 15 feet away from the drums to capture the sound of the overall set. It turned out to be a good trick to have that room mic, it made a lot of difference.
I played the drums along to a click track. This isn't necessary, but it's a good idea. If the drums stay in tempo, it will allow you to do all sorts of stuff later on, like editing out parts or adding computer-generated synthesizer sounds. In fact, when the computer fucked up part of Jayme's guitar part, I took the part he'd played in the first verse and copied it into the second. I wouldn't have been able to do that if I hadn't recorded to a click track. It's tricky for the drummer, and our drummer isn't very good, so you should have your drummer practice playing to a click track before you record.
I've almost never used a microphone to record bass. A good mic for bass is expensive, and it usually works much better to just run the bass directly into the computer. You can either use the line-out cable from the amp, or you can use a direct box. I used a direct box that my brother loaned me. The bassist plugs into it, then that goes to the computer. She then listens to the drums and her bass in headphones as she records. Again, this can be hard for the bassist, so she should practice playing with just the drums before you record. The nice thing about recording on a computer is that it's very easy to punch in - that is, record over parts of the song that you don't like. You don't have to play the song perfectly the whole way through, and no-one will learn the difference.
To record the guitars, I use one mic (my nice $200 one) and put it right next to the speaker. Then I put another one about 8 ft away pointing at the amp. That way I get a big room sound. When I mix them, I make the room one quiet, but it makes a big difference. We have two guitar players, but I recorded each of us separately, since the guitars are loud and I don't want to have the sound from one guitar bleeding into the other one's mic. When I mixed the guitars, I put one part way to the left of the stereo mix and one part way to the right. That gives the recording a bigger sound, and it makes it sound like there are actually two guitars. I do that with the drums too, I put the crash cymbal on one side and the ride on the other. It gives it a sound that is more live than just having everything in the center.
Vocals came last. Most punk bands seem to think that vocals are unimportant, but they are really important. Vocals are what people listen to. I know it is embarrassing to stand in a room with headphones on, screaming into a mic, with everyone else laughing because they can only hear the screaming, but it has to be done, and you should do it until you're completely happy with how the vocals sound. Don't just do it once and then say, "ok, good enough." Spend some time, practice, kick everyone else out of the room, but give it your best performance. More than any other instrument, vocals are great for doing punch-ins. I often record only one verse or chorus at a time, keep doing it till I like it, then move on. The only technical trick I know about recording vocals is that you should always put a stretched piece of stocking or something like it in front of the mic. If you don't, when the singer makes P and T noises, it make a horrible popping noise in the recording.
After doing vocals, I have it all in the computer, and it sounds like ass. Most time recording is spent mixing. Expect to spend at least as much time mixing your music as you did actually recording it. Mixing is really complex, and it takes a long time to learn how to do it, but I can tell you how I do it and maybe it will help.
I start by just listening to the drums. Once I've got them all set the way I want, I put their output to one channel so that I can turn the drums up or down as a whole later on. I also set up a reverb channel and send some of the drums to that so that they sound like they're in a live room. I don't send the cymbals to reverb usually.
I also set up a group channel for the guitar tracks, so I can move them up and down all at once. As I said before, I pay attention to where things are panned so that all the tracks are not just in the center of the stereo field.
I always put reverb on the vocals. It sounds strange by itself, but when the whole band is mixed together, it sounds good. Not a lot of reverb, but enough to make the vocals sound better.
One of the nice things about recording on a computer is that you can automate things easily. I make the volume go up and down throughout the song, I turn off the gate on the floor tom when I'm doing a crescendo on it, I fade out the ends of songs. You can get mixing boards that have automation, but they're much more expensive. Computers really do make recording cheaper, even if it still isn't cheap.
Once I'm don mixing, I put compression and eq on the output. Compression is good for loud bands. It makes your recording sound louder. You can also do some amazing things with the eq on the output channel. You can use it to pick out individual instruments that might need a little boost.
I know this isn't nearly enough to explain it all, but I hope it helps. Recording is complicated, but it can be really fun, and it's a totally different but equally important part of being in a band from playing shows or practicing.