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Mike Rivers
 
Posts: n/a
Default Recording in a Remote(ish) Area


sav wrote:

I hate to try to give advice to someone who starts out a posting like
that, but I didn't want you to feel like you were being ignored.


Well, thanks for replying... what did I do wrong?!


Nothing overtly wrong, but when someone starts out in the "I used to
know what I was doing" and then says he hasn't done anything in the
field for years, often the posting gets passed up. Some of us get too
quicky accused of being "condescending" when trying to give advice to
one who on one hand appears to have some knowledge and on the other
hand seems to be a complete novice wanting to start on a big project.
Forgive me if I sound condescending, whatever that really means.

Most of the music is already westernized, (though they might think
otherwise--the missionaries' bad taste) 'island beat' is similar to
reggae. I reckon we could use 'modern' methods and do something really
interesting. There are singers who travel round the islands doing gigs;
the ones I've met are pretty well familiar with (or open to) working
with overdubs and so on.


Well, that's a different story. I've heard recordings of music like
that from places like you're going (I can't cite specifics because I
don't own any but you've probably heard them) and most of them are made
in studios. I guess somehow or other the artists find the way to get to
a studio instead of waiting for the studio to come to they.

Are you familiar with the project that Henry Kaiser and David Lindley
did in Madagascar 20ish or so years ago? They brought down Yamaha's
digital multitrack workstation of the day (tape based, 8 tracks, cost
about 5 times what this Korg costs) and, actualy brought two of them.
Henry Kaiser has lots of money. It was quite an involved project with
David and Henry playing with the local musicians.

I like computers for making web pages, doing
email and other stuff, but I never really got to like them for audio
recording. I'd still need a half decent desk,


I completely agree. But a computer makes a pretty good recorder with
some nice editing capabilities and some processing if you need it. The
combination of a computer and an analog console gives you a lot of
flexibility, and also gives you more work-around paths if something
goes wrong. While it's a little more trouble to set up than an
all-in-one workstation, troubleshooting is easier (hell -
troubleshooting is POSSIBLE). If you lose a channel in the console,
there's almost always another one you can use. If you use a Firewire
A/D/A to interface to the computer and that goes south, it's a lot
cheaper to get another one shipped in than to ship your Korg back to
the US for service. You can do a quick "all the faders up all the time"
bounce to stereo in the computer while you're coiling up the mic
cables, and hand the musicians a rough CD. And if you're working with a
partner, you might be able to split the workload with one of you doing
editing and cleanup work on one computer while the other is laying new
tracks.

the automation is attractive. Maybe a separate
desk and HD recorder? I've seen some you can hook up to a computer, and
get similar features (but better) to the all-in-one, but this looks
expensive.


Stand-alone hard disk recorders never really caught on - they were
always on the tail end of computer technology, which was always
cheaper. I have a couple of Mackie recorders here and I love them. The
HDR24/96 with its graphic interface lets you do all of the editing
tricks that you can do in ProTools (easier, I think, probably because
I'm used to it) and it's dedicated to the task so you don't have to
build it from assorted computer hardware, digital audio hardware, and
software packages. But if you want one, you need to find a used one.
They're not that hard to find, and they're cheap enough so you could
take an extra one as a backup. Fostex still makes one, as does Alesis,
and while they all sound as good or better than each of the others g
I don't think any of them are as slick or well thought out as the
Mackie.

You can do some volume automation on the Mackie but I rarely use it
other than to adjust the level of a punch-in to match the rest of the
track or to mute short passages where I might want to pull the fader
down but am likely to forget.

Am I right in thinking that to get similar performance to a
dedicated HD recorder I'd need a pretty expensive computer system, and
thus would be in much the same price bracket as with the separate HD and
computer used only for control?


The Mackie hard disk recorder has a 400 MHz Celeron motherboard at its
heart. That's not very fancy. The computer is the cheapest part of
putting together a computer-based recording system. You can make do
with inexpensive software and many people do, but there are good rasons
why some people spend $2K for Nuendo or Sequoia, or go with a $25K
ProTools system with its dedicated DSP hardware. And of course the
audio interface to the computer is very important, and that goes from
trivially cheap to outrageously expensive. But at least you have some
choices and you don't have to live with what a single manufacturer says
you want. It does take some research, and the cooperation of a good
dealer in order to get what you need. You may have to buy some stuff,
try it out, and exchange it for somthing more suitable. A good dealer
would let you do that.

sorry, I really should have had more concrete ideas before posting, but
that is half the problem. We could probably allocate about 5000 dollars
on gear, maybe 6 if you include mics and all the bits.


Hmmmm . . . . Well, that's about one mic, or maybe two or four. You'll
need monitors, and don't forget mic stands and cables. That's stuff
that you can't get along without. Perhaps you should start making your
budget from the outside going in, and see how much you have to spend on
the actual recording and mixing gear. With a budget like that, the Korg
for $3K makes more sense, but you're limited in how you can work with
it. Have you seen one in the flesh? Maybe you should visit a dealer
who has one on display, look at all the gozintas and gozoutas and
mentally plan out out some sessions to see if they'd work. And then
look at how the controls work and see if you'd be comfortable working
with it.