Tracking Tips

YES! YOU CAN F–ING DO THIS!!

The goal of good tracks is to get a great performance. The better, cleaner your tracks are, the less work you have to do editing.

Always

Turn down your buffers in Prefs > Audio to reduce latency
Try to keep gain/input to average -18db. Try to peak around -10db. No higher than -6db
Turn on low latency recording mode in toolbar.
- Note that sometime low latency mode will disable a key plugin - like an amp sim. If that happens then you have to take other steps to reduce latency.
Write down your guitar type (if any), mic and amp type, guitar volume and tone knob settings, real amp knob settings, and input level for tracks in the track notes
Disable (and mute) tracks you dont need to use while recording a track. Muting a track still puts load on CPU while disabling track does not.
Freeze guitar and bass tracks when not using. Freezing essentially does a bounce-in-place on the track behind the scenes. It includes plugins on the “printed” track but not volume/pan info. You are free to pan and adjust volume on a frozen track with out the playback performance penalty.
If you are using a recording interface that lets you save presets - use them! Save a preset for recording each instrument.

TIP: Try to keep 3 good takes of each region you record. It will be helpful during editing for comping together a good track or if you want to double a track
TIP: Use punch-in to fix tracking on tricker regions
TIP: Use a time keeping device - either a scratch drum track or a metronome or both
TIP: Keep a set of track notes open in a text file and if you have ideas/todos put them in this notes file.
TIP: I like to do a preliminary comp on a finished region section because its really easy to forget which bits I thought was the best part of the performance.

TUNE YOUR BASS GUITAR!
Use drums and vox or RG to track with.
Its ok - even preferrable - to use amp sim during tracking as long as you have the latency low.
Try to reduce noise or over picking if possible. Goal is to keep your volume consistent while playing.
TIP: Turn down volume pot on bass if hiss/noise. It doesn’t have to be much.

TUNE YOUR GUITAR!
Find the right angle and distance. For a small diagphragm condenser the reference point is 12” away pointed at a spot where the body and neck meet.
- Play with distance
- Play with height. You can aim slightly above or below the sweet spot on the guitar
- Play with angle. You can raise it up and point it down at 45deg toward guitar. You can raise them above guitar neck and point down parallel to neck/frets
Position the mic so you dont breathe on it
TUNE YOUR GUITAR AGAIN!

Order of other tracks to listen to is important. Its known that if you have too much bass (from bass and drums) you will sing off key. Try to keep the bass guitar volume down. Use a single “pad” to set your pitch.
Find the right mic height. Slight above your lips pointed down towards you helps to reduce plosion and accentuate a higher frequencies in your vox (which older gentlemen need)
TIP: If you cant hear yourself in the monitors - this happens when recording no louder than -10db - feel free to raise your fader as high as it will go if you need. If this still isnt loud enough to monitor - go ahead and throw a gain plugin at the END of the plugin chain.
TIP: Some people like hear some reverb on their voice while tracking. Throw some reverb on from a Send. If you use a heavy processing reverb it may not be used if you have low latency mode active.
Performance! Remember to hold your pitch at the end of a phrase
Performance! Remember to end sung phrases (for multitracked vox) at the same time.

Get tracking… …Remember…YES! YOU CAN DO THIS!