The Steel Guitar Forum

Recently I recorded with a friend for his new gospel CD. This was his first try at recording with Pro Tools which is a computer program. He talked with someone who told him to record the steel dry and add effects after the fact. I feel like that takes way from the player and loses the sound they are used to acquiring. Is recording dry the way to achieve the best sound for a project? Do you guys use your effects when recording? I just need some advice since we are going to record a family CD in the near future. I know it will not be Nashville quality but I sure want it to be as good as we can get it.

Hi Paul, I have to agree that in a lot of cases it's a good idea to get the original tracks dry to tape or hard disk but there are may ways around this.

I myself have an effects box that lets me send a dry signal to be recorded while still monitoring it with all the effects I want to hear. While this is probably the best and easiest way to do it not everyone's effect box will let them do it so there are other ways.

If you have extra inputs on your mixer and a preamp with multiple outs like one of the tubeworks that a lot of steel players use you could send one set of the stereo outs from the preamp (the ones without effects) to your mixer to be recorded and then the other set of stereo outs (the ones with effects ie wet) to the mixer and just monitor the wet ones.

That way you can record the dry signal and monitor the wet signal so you can still hear all the effects you want to hear while recording.

Now there are many other ways and I'll try to explain one more. There are little preamp/headphone mixer/more me boxes. You can call them what ever you want but what it does is give you a control of what you hear while recording while sending another (dry signal) to be recorded. That's sort of like the last way I explained in the last paragraph. Unfortunately most of the ways to do this requires buying extra equipment.

There are other ways but I'll let some of the other folks explain them to you

bob

I thought maybe you were talking alcohol-free...

Another way is to have the engineer give you an effects send off your track with delay/reverb which you can hear while playing, but isn't being printed to the instrument track. Very easy to do in Protools, and most other hardware recording setups.
The main thing about not printing reverb or delay to the track is that, while it may sound good to play to, it may be out of time with the track itself. One of the main tricks with blending instrumental (or vocal ) tracks is using reverbs and particularly delays that are timed to the beat or meter of the song. Much easier to adjust that in mixdown.

Perhaps a best of both worlds approach might be to have your engineer insert a direct box
somewhere in your instrument’s signal path prior to your fx, and record the whole
3 track enchilada. (4 if your ax is stereo)

Thereby providing both a faithful representation of your intended sound and performance,
as well as discreet control of your dry, (aka teetotaler) tracks should you desire
further tweaking down the road.

When I'm mixing I have to admit that I like my sounds going in dry (natural room reverb can be okay...) because when I begin to mix I want to hear the "naked truth" of the track. If the track sounds excellent as is, then I know it'll be great in the end with just a touch of verb.

I'd say Pat's got the easiest idea. Since with Pro-Tools you can record as many tracks as you want, I'd plug into a DI right after your volume pedal, then take the parallel output into your amp, so you can sound "like you" in the iso booth. Experiment with good microphones until you find a good sound through the board. Then record the dry signal from the DI and your amp's tone through the microphone. If it's good enough with a mix of your live tone and doctoring the dry signal, you're good to pack up and go home! But, if your live tone isn't quite what they're looking for, they can add effects to, or even reamp (send the dry signal back through an amp with different settings (or microphones) as many times as needed. As long as the notes are what you want to play, reamping a dry signal is a very powerful tool.

Good luck, relax, and have fun!

Thanks so much for the much needed advice. We will give it a try on the next redording.

Follow a lot of good advise given above ....Always have a dry track recorded , and keep the EQ flat ( no added lows, mids, or highs ) .....You can always add what you want later including EQ, and effects ...You don't know how your recording will sit in a mix, and might have to change things later ...If you print your effects , you won't be able to change things later ...You will be stuck with what you have ...You can try so many other effects and EQ settings later to a dry track ....Mix and match to taste ...When you find what you want, THEN print it ....You're way ahead of the recording process leaving things dry until you finally mix down ....Jim

I got a tip from Lloyd Green a few years ago that has worked for me. He said he likes to record with just a little amp reverb. Very little, so you WILL have to add more in the mix. What I hear as a difference is the amp reverb sits in the mix in the center, then I hear the reverb added in the mix tail off to the right and left in the stereo image. It's a larger sound overall.

It would probably be hard to convince some engineers to let you record this way, however my little bedroom studio is very "steel" friendly.

Randy--I've always been a fan of some amp reverb, like you said, just a touch, though sometimes a lot if the song calls for it.

While all of the above is good advice, I am never hesitant to print with whatever effects, eq, compression I like. It has been a rare moment for me that I have ever wished I had a dry track to redo. I hire players for their sound, and always go with what they give me unless I really feel it will be obtrusive to the artists final vision. I have a reamp box, but have pretty much just used it for adding some amped sound to a direct bass--sometimes to crunch up a too clean guitar track. Good guitar players with well done pedal boards know what to and what not to give you--trying to duplicate their sound later from a dry track never excites me very much. The one thing I am a bit careful about is reverb, but most players are not sending you much of that anyway...

I think the hard disk world has given many people too many options. I see engineers all the time sorting though 20 takes of everything recorded dry and trying to sort it out and make it work. Heck, my mixes would already be done and at the mastering lab....

Bottom line for me is if it works, print it and get on with it ....

I pretty much always go in dry in terms of reverb or time based effects. The studio usually has a better sounding reverb, and I play without reverb 95% of the time anyway.

I don't use any effects to speak of except for the wah pedal. That of course does need to be tracked, as does the sound of my amp. There's no way that the engineer can take a direct signal from the steel and go back and get the sound of one of my tube amps being squashed.