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comment by flac
flac  ·  2759 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Benjamin Fraser - You Drank Some Darkness (flac's first album - it's finally done!!)

<3 thanks! I'm going to start looking for gigs in a week or two once I've gotten some practice in, maybe some open mics til then? Going to get it printed to cassettes in a bit and maybe make some merch once I figure out screenprinting.

I have a picture of my recording space somewhere on hubski, I'll add it to this in a bit. It's, uh, not ideal.

Technical shit

Everything's recorded in Reaper through a Focusrite interface. My main mics are the AKG C214, and the Shure sm81 and sm58. Bass and Guitar are mostly DI with amp sims after the fact.

To get really technical about my acoustic guitar setup: I use the sm81 angled towards the soundhole from about 1 ft away, and mix that in with a Dean Markley pickup. I'll usually cut a lot of the low end off of the sm81 track and run the DI through an amp sim with some widening delay.

The only paid plugin I use is Addictive Drums, which is a really solid drum programmer. I tracked some live drums when I was back east, and mixed those in to give it a bit of grit and humanize the sound. Everything else was done with free plugins, mostly stock plugins from Reaper.

I got a TON of mileage out of the MDA ePiano plugin, which is a free electric piano VSTi. It really helped to get some lower mids, and to give the live acoustic piano some shine.

If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to answer them!





ghostoffuffle  ·  2759 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Love those Dean Markley pickups. I'm surprised that you didn't run into more phase issues mixing the mic with the pickup that way- these guitars sound crystal clear. On a related note- the fact that "And Became Invisible" has 200 tracks and still sounds as focused and coherent as it does speaks volumes of your production chops. Gaddamn.

Never worked with Reaper- how's the learning curve? More importantly, is it affordable?

flac  ·  2759 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Thanks, it was quite an ordeal.

I actually shifted the guitars to match eachother phase-wise after recording. There was a slight difference on time, but it wasn't too hard to fix.

Reaper is awesome, I can send you some good resources for working with it. It's also FREE (or $60 for the full version). I love it. I think it's a lot like pro tools, but its the only DAW I've used, so idk if thats true.

flac  ·  2759 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Here's what my space looks like. It's just an untreated garage, but it suffices.