Studio Time This Evening! Questions...

A

AlexGuitar

Inspired
Everyone,

Luckily, my band gets to go into a recording studio this evening and record one of our original songs for free due to our success in a battle of the bands competition. Less fortunately, the recording must be done from start to finish in about 90 minutes, there's not really any double tracking, it's recorded straight off the floor, etc.

I am hoping to use my fractal fm9 for my guitar tone, and I have a great 80s hair metal tone dialed in. A couple questions just for my sanity:
1. The tone I have dialed in sounds AWESOME, and whenever I use it with a band I love it, but it sounds just a little too thin / fizzy on its own. In my mind, I know that this will help it cut and sit in the mix better, but I still can't help but feel a little anxious. Any ideas on how to ensure the eq is right in advance of the session? We don't have much time to tweak once we are there.

2. Ideally, any stereo stuff would be done by actually double tracking. However, given that there isn't time for that, I have a stereo chorus, stereo delay for solos, and the enhancer block on the preset. Should I plan to record in stereo? Would this cause any issues that I'm missing? Obviously the engineer's preference will reign supreme, but I just wondered everyone's thoughts. (And yes, I am prepared to take off the enhancer, reverb, and delay, and run the chorus in mono, if the engineer wants a dry signal).

3. Finally, any final pieces of advice for someone who has never used fractal products in a recording environment before?

Thanks so much in advance!

P.S. I would have included the preset, but I don't have my fractal with me right now.
 
The simplest answer is just record your stereo output to a left and right track in the studio.

Record it "wet" unless you are comfortable without having your effects active while recording.

That leaves less flexibility for mixing but many great recordings have been done that way.

Alternately, depending on your preset layout and where your effects are placed, you could add Output 2 to your preset after your Cab and before your effects.

Then send both Output 1 and Output 2 to the console.

Ask the engineer to record Output 2 (or even both) but only put Output 1 in your monitor mix.

That way you will hear the effects after the Cab but they aren't recorded.
 
AlexGuitar said:
Everyone,

Luckily, my band gets to go into a recording studio this evening and record one of our original songs for free due to our success in a battle of the bands competition. Less fortunately, the recording must be done from start to finish in about 90 minutes, there's not really any double tracking, it's recorded straight off the floor, etc.

I am hoping to use my fractal fm9 for my guitar tone, and I have a great 80s hair metal tone dialed in. A couple questions just for my sanity:
1. The tone I have dialed in sounds AWESOME, and whenever I use it with a band I love it, but it sounds just a little too thin / fizzy on its own. In my mind, I know that this will help it cut and sit in the mix better, but I still can't help but feel a little anxious. Any ideas on how to ensure the eq is right in advance of the session? We don't have much time to tweak once we are there.

2. Ideally, any stereo stuff would be done by actually double tracking. However, given that there isn't time for that, I have a stereo chorus, stereo delay for solos, and the enhancer block on the preset. Should I plan to record in stereo? Would this cause any issues that I'm missing? Obviously the engineer's preference will reign supreme, but I just wondered everyone's thoughts. (And yes, I am prepared to take off the enhancer, reverb, and delay, and run the chorus in mono, if the engineer wants a dry signal).

3. Finally, any final pieces of advice for someone who has never used fractal products in a recording environment before?

Thanks so much in advance!

P.S. I would have included the preset, but I don't have my fractal with me right now.
Click to expand...
You can always get a backing track without guitar and then record it with your guitar to give you some idea how your tone sits in a mix.
 
I would suggest focusing on getting the most difficult things to track (drums and vocals) down. Assuming the studio will have access to much better mics and a nice space to record in and that you will take ownership of the raw tracks which you can then import into your DAW and add more of whatever you like.
 
Don’t overthink it man. Trust your sound. If it’s worked in the past and people have complimented on it, let it ride brotha! The amount of times I’ve tweaked something on my presets hours before a gig while not at gig volume, I wish someone would’ve slapped me out of it! It’s like changing your answers on a test and then getting it wrong! Congrats on your victory by the way, that’s really cool
 
90 minutes? Do you know any of the gear they have on hand?

Try a take or two with the fractal. If its not working in 15 minutes, switch to something else and get it done.
 
unix-guy said:
Alternately, depending on your preset layout and where your effects are placed, you could add Output 2 to your preset after your Cab and before your effects.

Then send both Output 1 and Output 2 to the console.

Ask the engineer to record Output 2 (or even both) but only put Output 1 in your monitor mix.

That way you will hear the effects after the Cab but they aren't recorded.
Click to expand...
^That’s like what I’d do^ except I'd take it from immediately after the In block.

That way you’ll have the unprocessed dry signal if you want to re-amp or apply additional/different effects/EQ, and you’ll have the wet to use as is or as a reference.

PS - you can do that using the USB channels out of the modeler also, but XLR is probably what you'll be allowed to do. Channels 5 and 6 are good for re-amping.
 
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Greg Ferguson said:
^That’s like what I’d do^ except I'd take it from immediately after the In block.

That way you’ll have the unprocessed dry signal if you want to re-amp or apply additional/different effects/EQ, and you’ll have the wet to use as is or as a reference.

PS - you can do that using the USB channels out of the modeler also, but XLR is probably what you'll be allowed to do. Channels 5 and 6 are good for re-amping.
Click to expand...
True but that gets only the DI so unless he's got a way to reamp later it won't be very usable.

But if so then that's a great suggestion, too.
 
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