Performance

Technique matters more than the whole chain after it#

People correlate famous microphones, famous consoles and celebrity mix engineers with famous records, and cheap gear with bands who play to three people and a dog. But correlation is not causation. There is a much bigger factor than any of that gear, and it is technique.

By technique I do not mean the music itself. A good song is a good song regardless, and I am not talking about notes, timing, lyrics or production. I mean the technical, physical part of playing that an experienced recording engineer can coach. If you get that wrong, the debate about one microphone against another becomes pretty meaningless, because the difference technique makes swamps the difference the microphone makes.

You do not need a great room to hear it either. I demonstrated it with a cheap kit, cymbals that sound like toys, a big reverberant room and a single dented SM58 as the overhead. Same instruments, same mics, same preamps, same mix settings. One take sounds right and the other sounds like crap. The multitracks and the video footage are public, so you can check there is no trickery.

A good recording starts with a good performance#

A good master starts with a good mix, a good mix starts with a good recording, and a good recording starts with a good performance and a good source.

Technique and the mix#

Accenting the snare with a Moeller stroke and playing the hat gently (instead of leaning into the hi-hat like amateur rock drummers do), can make or break the sound. That is true with ghost notes and without them. Once a part is recorded with bad technique, even the best mix engineer usually cannot make it sound like the good take.

It's not just drums. On guitar, picking confidently towards the bridge sounds like a record, and so do confident fingertips on bass. Thumbing the bass, or playing guitar with a bog standard pickless finger technique, can sound rubbish in comparison. Fingerstyle players like Jeff Beck know how to get a good sound without a pick.

Ironically, the celebrity mix engineers play on easy mode. A great multitrack from great players in a great room almost mixes itself. The local engineer mixing a local band with bad technique in a bad room is playing on expert mode.

Great players can sound great on poor equipment#

John Bonham is one of the best sounding drummers of all time not because of the recording equipment of his day but in spite of it. If he was brought back to life and recorded a new album on an iPhone, I would buy it.

The recording engineer is the coach#

Recording engineers are now producers by default. So it is our job to tell the artist when the technique is wrong, so that what comes through the microphone already sounds good. Every recording engineer, especially in rock, should know what a Moeller stroke is and be able to demonstrate it.

Lighter sticks can give a fatter sound#

The common belief is that fat sticks give a fat drum sound. When I A/B tested sticks, the thinner and lighter ones gave a bigger crack and a livelier sound, because they let me get more whip and more Moeller motion. With the heavy sticks I moved my hand less and was literally late on the snare.

I expected a difference in feel. I did not expect it to translate into the sound so strongly. I was trying to play consistently, but I may have been psychologically biased despite my best efforts. Either way, the recording chain was the same for every take.