On Friday, January 30, 2015 at 4:00:24 PM UTC-5, Mike Rivers wrote:
On 1/30/2015 9:10 PM, JackA wrote:
So, isolate the drummer in some room, give him a pair of headphones
to follow the rest of the band.
This is the way it's done sometimes, but not all bands like to record
that way. Often the vocalist is isolated (have you ever heard the term
"vocal booth?") or the vocalist sings live while the rhythm section is
recording, but that track, the one that has the whole band recorded
through the vocal mic along with the singer, is replaced with an
isolated track later on. The singer isn't going to leak into the drum
mics because it's must quieter than the drums, but the drums will leak
into the vocal (or acoustic guitar or sax or piano) mics because they're
much louder than the source.
Multitrack recordings that are made one track at a time, or with the
mics acoustically isolated from one another don't have leakage problems,
but it's no fun playing like that. The tradeoff of eliminating leakage
is that some leakage adds a sense of space to the mix that you lose with
isolated tracks.
Most groups haven't a clue what they want to record, so track by track recording is sometimes a dream. I feel it would be difficult to build a song track-by-track. Tom Dowd (engineer - RIP) wanted "live" recordings while less professionals, like Al Kooper didn't care about overdubbing. You heard of The Knack, I'm sure. Their leader (RIP) wanted to sounds as good live as in the studio, so he/they kept any overdubbing to a minimum! PLUS, early on, many real times recordings cost a fortune, getting everything correct from singing to sound recording more or less forced the industry to overdub! This stereo separation problem sounds like an afterthought!!
Jack
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