RECORDING IN IMPROPER SPACES
By Ray Jeffrey

Ray Jeffrey has been working with bands for years. He has worked with the likes of Dropkick Murphys and Taking Back Sunday, doing everything from guitar tech to pre-production and live sound to midnight demos in cramped rehearsal rooms. Over the years, he estimates he has done 40 home and guerrilla-style recording sessions, including laying down vocal tracks in an abandoned apartment for Dropkick’s The Meanest Of Times CD. Jeffrey recently opened his own fully functioning DIY studio, called Liberty & Union Recording Co., in the Band Stand Live in Taunton, Mass. With Liberty & Union booking up fast, Jeffrey prides himself on their ability to give hard working bands the chance to make great sounding albums at affordable prices. Performer recently caught up with him for a quick crash course on how to get the most out of a non-professional recording in your house or practice space.

Today, anyone with a couple thousand dollars, a few friends and a decent ear can make a great sounding record. We could spend days debating the pros and cons of this method of recording, but that’s not the purpose of this article. Personally, I feel we are in a great time for creative music and recording. Being able to spend time in your home studio, not worrying about an hourly rate, gives you the ability to try out different song arrangements and experiment with instrumentation you probably wouldn’t try if you are staring at a clock all day thinking about the bill.

The downside of this environment is there are a lot of great musicians forced to work with little or no budget, often in less-than-perfect recording conditions. Working in a house or rehearsal room that hasn’t been built or zoned for recording purposes may limit the hours you can record loud instruments. And without proper acoustic treatment there is the ever-present danger that you aren’t going to get the results you are looking for.

In my opinion, the best way to make a great sounding record on the cheap is to record basic tracks in a proper studio, then finish in a home studio type of environment. There is definitely no substitute for a great sounding room with pro-gear and an engineer who has the experience and ability to get the results you are looking for. But once you have the basics done in a great sounding room, it can be easy to finish your project elsewhere. Or if a studio is too far out of your price range, with a little treatment you can get some very good results from your home or rehearsal space.

Before you even begin recording, make sure you have all the materials you need. Nothing kills the momentum of a session like realizing you’re a mic short or having a cable cut out without having a back-up. Also, make sure you have a long enough snake and a few extra-long instrument and speaker cables. A lot of times, when experimenting with tones in a non-studio environment, you will want to set up in out-of-the-way places — having the freedom to do so may come down to having the extra footage of chords to set up far away from the console.

When I first started recording, I would just pack up my gear and head over to a friend’s house without giving it much thought. Only through trial and error did I learn to plan ahead, anticipating the needs of each session separately. A basic rule of this type of recording is that it’s always better to have too much gear than not enough. I once had a drunk singer dump a beer onto my keyboard, which stopped the session for an hour while I went to buy a new one. It was a tough way to learn a lesson, but ever since I have brought a back-up for every crucial piece of gear needed for a session.

It’s also a good idea to bring several rolls of gaffer’s tape to any session. Gaff tape works much better than duct because it won’t leave much residue and doesn’t rip finishes off of most things you need to tape.

I always have a lot of packing blankets anytime I do a house recording, which you can buy at most local hardware stores. Having a bunch of these blankets lying around is great because you can hang them on walls of rooms to convert them into makeshift vocal booths, or if arranged right, they are perfect for controlling unwanted sound reflections in a room. Blankets also work great if you want to build a tunnel off the kick drum or stuff them inside the kick with the front head removed.

Picking where you set up your control station is almost as important as picking your recording spaces. When laying down tracks, it’s vital you have an environment where you can clearly hear everything being recorded. I’d recommend an office or bedroom that’s adjoining your live room. This will allow you the shortest possible cable run while offering a little bit of isolation, shielding your ears from a direct assault from the live music. Sometimes just a little distance from the amps or drums will give you some much needed perspective on what’s being laid down.

You also don’t want to be running up and down stairs every time you need to move a mic or talk a drummer through a take. Finding a place that lets you get a few good takes is easy, but a guerrilla recording situation never gives you a proper-sounding control room for final mixes. My recommendation is to get some good-sounding takes in the house or practice space and, if possible, mix the project in a more professional environment.

The live room is by far the most important aspect of the home-recording process. My favorites are large living rooms with hardwood floors and cathedral ceilings. If you only have use of the basement, you will need to do some treatment to the walls and ceiling. If this is a temporary set up, packing blankets on the walls should help control the room’s sound a bit. You can also try placing some acoustic treatment on the ceiling above the drums to help control some of the reflections from the ceiling. If you will use the space for multiple sessions, I’d recommend RTS acoustics or realtraps.com for some great tips on proper room treatment.

When recording drums, I like placing the microphones down a hallway or in an adjoining room. It’s nice to have options while mixing, and a mic placed down a hallway with insane amounts of compression might be the perfect sound for your song. Depending on the tones you are looking for, it may be interesting to experiment with closing the door of the drum room or leaving it slightly open. Every aspect you change in the drum room will vastly change the sound of the recording and I think it’s important to experiment. In my opinion, it would be a real waste not to explore the subtle nuances of your recording area.

For bass, I almost always use a DI and mic the cab directly, usually after I have isolated it either in a closet or under a makeshift fort constructed from moving blankets. The DI gives you plenty of options to play with, whether it’s re-amping the track at a studio with a killer bass rig or not using the bass cab at all. This helps cut down on one of home recording’s major setbacks: angry neighbors. A bass plugged directly into the console lets you go back and do bass overdubs at 2 a.m. without risking a call to the cops.

For isolation purposes, I record most of my guitar tracks in a basement as well. I have found over the years that concrete walls make for an interesting room sound. If you aren’t digging the sound, you can always deaden the space with a few packing blankets. I also like the sound of a guitar track recorded in an old tiled bathroom. For some reason, the reverberations add a kind of excitement to a guitar sound you don’t always get in conventional studios.

When tracking vocals, I like to find the most comfortable space away from outside noise. Vocal mics are more sensitive and can pick up a lot of outside interference, which can ruin an otherwise great take. After you think you’ve found your ideal spot, hang out in there for a while and listen for sounds. Is there a pipe that rushes if a toilet is flushed elsewhere in the house? Does a bus roll by every 30 minutes and rattle a window pane? It’s not enough to have a quiet room for vocals; you need a room that stays quiet. If you like a room’s location but are worried about interference, try hanging some packing blankets to set up a vocal booth. A mattress flipped up in the corner of a bedroom with the mic and singer placed in front of it could kill most unwanted reflections and save that warm vocal sound.

Most importantly, you have got to get creative. Try tracking a vocal take outdoors or in a room with different acoustics. Like with all other aspect of home recording, the freedom this setting allows is the fact that you aren’t hindered by cost limitations. Try tracking everywhere and anywhere; you might find an interesting effect that you didn’t have to create using a plug-in.

In some ways, I feel this style of recording is more honest or natural. And if you do discover a special tone that was created only through trying various spaces, it will give your record a unique sound all its own. The ability to stand out in today’s oversaturated market may be worth more than the cash you’d spend doing the whole record at a big-time studio.

To learn more about Ray Jeffrey ’s home studio
visit his website at: www.libertyandunion.com