Denver Recording Studio

Final Cut Pro

JesseTheRiley — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 23:25:44 +0000

This week in the studio, we finished editing a video for Darren’s music project. The video will be used as an online promotional tool for Skanson and Hansen. As this was essentially a music video, it was very important that the audio and video matched up. The audio came from a recorded studio session, but the video was shot in the middle of nowhere. Luckily when they shot the video, they played along to a recording of the song and everything sync’s up easily. During one of my sessions, I accidentally threw the video off sync, but I was able to find a dramatic point in the music and match the visuals up, and got back on track.

EZ Drummer, Easy and Valuable Software for Recording Studios

ellrado — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:29:35 +0000

At CCM Recording Studios in Denver Colorado, we find EZ Drummer to be very effective and easy to use software instrument. Once installed in your studio recording system, just open up the ad-on through your I/O and you’re ready to go. Here at CCM Recording Studios in Denver, EZ Drummer is a great substitute for a live drummer and a valuable asset to recording studios. Tones and beats were actually recorded live in a studio by some of the best drummers in the industry, making the sound so acoustic and organic that many people won’t know the difference. Select the tempo, time signature, and quantize to have a straight pattern or even a swing rhythm. Also great for throwing scratch beats to provide a basic feel for your song. When recording at a studio, EZ Drummer can easily be used to write a track to temporarily fill in for a drummer so that you can record guitar, bass, vocal tracks, or any other instruments included in the track.

It works with most production and recording software and at the expense of Toontrack® Percussive Compression (TPC), system requirements are kept to a minimum. For PC users, Windows XP SP3 or newer, Pentium 4 or Athlon processor with 512 MB RAM, and Mac users need OS 10.4.11 or higher, G5 or an Intel processor with 512 MB RAM. You will find a variety of kit sounds that you can use to write in the drum parts on your track. The extensive drag and drop MIDI library (featuring 8000+ MIDI files) enables users to create a great drum track in just a few clicks. Files are divided into categories and moods to find drum beats and fills to find the sound to best fit your project. And it’s as easy as drag and drop. For more advanced handling, users can control microphone bleeding and levels between drums using the internal mixer. EZ drummer is just one of the many software ad-ons that we use at CCM Recording Studio in Denver and we offer all of these assets to you at the best prices in Denver.

Getting Started on ProTools

JesseTheRiley — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 07:13:59 +0000

This week at the studio I got to sit drivers seat and run Pro Tools on one of Darrens sessions. I have learned how to turn on all of the gear and set up the system for recording. I now know the difference between mixing boards and pre-amps; mixing boards are fine tuning devices for mixing together audio tracks, more as you would in analog recording. Now with computer editing systems, mixing boards have become primarily digital. Pre-amps are generally single input devices with effects to help get cleaner better audio recordings. Unfortunately I only had one day at the studio this week, but luckily it was a good one.

Protools - Aux In VS. Audio In

JesseTheRiley — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 02:00:37 +0000

Audio tracks let you record to the hard disk and play back from the disk any recorded or imported audio files.

Auxiliary Input tracks can be used for effects sends, destinations for submixes, as bounce destinations, as inputs to monitor or process au - dio (such as audio from external MIDI instru- ments), and for many other audio routing tasks.

Senatorial Canditate Jane Norton Records at CCM

Mike — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:26:34 +0000

Conservative Republican Jane Norton was at CCM’s Denver recording studio today recording voice advertisements for radio play. Topics covered in the studio session ranged from national security, President Obama’s proposed spending fees, credit bills, and Congressional needs for reform. Jane Norton recorded with the Neumann U-87 mic through the Universal Audio LA-610 pre-amp. We exported the audio clips to Jane Norton political team’s ftp site. Be listening for Jane Norton ads on local radio to hear her views on political hot topics and how Mrs. Norton would benefit the United States as a member of the Senate.

Lieutenant governor, 2003-2007. Assistant secretary to the 2004 Republican National convention. Regional director of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Filled a vacancy in the state House, 1986-1987.

Compression: How Much Is Too Much?

Head Engineer — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:36:36 +0000

Compression is one of the most common things you will find in a studio, right up there with mics, amps and computers. Compressors are often built into preamps, but more and more often they are used as plug-ins after recording has taken place. You’ll likely see compression on individual tracks, in bussed groups of tracks, on overall mixes and in mastering sessions. In basic terms, compression pushes down dynamic levels so that the overall level can increase without clipping (the distorted sound that occurs when a signal is too loud). In other words, the very loudest part of a track is made quieter so that the entire track can be louder. But how much compression is too much?

Too much compression can suffocate a track’s sound. While you want your song to be as close to radio-level as possible, over-compressing will only ’squish’ your sound, making it sound unnatural and dull. Use your ears to determine how much compression a track needs. An acoustic guitar track for a folk song, which would need to sound natural and dynamically rich, will obviously use less compression than a speed metal rhythm guitar, which needs only to be as loud and tight as possible.

Use compression in master tracks to ‘glue’ your individual tracks together. Striking a middle ground among your song’s dynamic levels is crucial to making the song sound cohesive; this is where compression comes in. There’s a galaxy of compressor plug-ins out there, and like anything else, experimentation, an open mind and a trained ear will make all the difference in creating a successful song.

-Rex Anderson

CCM Studios

Denver Recording Studio Blog

An Introduction to Mastering

Head Engineer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:58:16 +0000

Everyone knows mastering is an extremely vital step to creating a radio-ready track, but few know what mastering actually entails. Contrary to popular belief, it is not simply a matter of making the mix louder, although that is one of its functions. A mastering session accomplishes not only a radio-level volume for a track, but it is also the final stage at which dynamic ranges are determined, attack is properly adjusted, final levels among specific bands are achieved, and the track is given its final polish. Wave Burner, a program that comes with most Mac setups, is excellent for mastering because of its ability to use plug-ins on what you have imported, which makes it easy to apply compression, limiting, and other tweaks across an entire album in order to achieve a more streamlined, similar sound. Proper mastering requires an experienced set of ears and a good deal of patience, but the results can make or break a recording.

-RSAnderson

CCM Studios

http://denverrecordingstudioblog.com/

Reamping: Make Your Guitar Come Alive

Head Engineer — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 22:54:54 +0000

Reamping is the process of sending a recorded guitar signal through an amplifier to receive that amp’s signal back in a new track. For example, say you have recorded a clean electric guitar (via a direct in box and a split signal between it and your amp) that you wish to have the tonal properties of a certain amp. You can send that signal out to the amp through a preamp, set up a mic to capture the amp sound, and “reamp” your guitar track. This is great for guitarists who want to blend digital and analog tones together (great for thick rock and metal rhythms and standout leads), or to give acoustic performances a little extra oomph. If your signal feels too thin or empty, try reamping to build a bigger, fuller sound without resorting to re-recording on top of your original track, which can be very difficult and time consuming to perfect.

-RSAnderson

CCM Recording Studios

Denver Recording Studio Blog.com

How to Use ReWire With ProTools and Record ReWire Audio

Mike — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 22:08:27 +0000

Using ReWire with ProTools is easy!

To Use Reason Within Protools:

- Start fresh without any programs open.

- Open ProTools first, then open Reason. This is important in establishing the master/slave relationship between the two softwares.

- Now open a new file in both ProTools and Reason; or just a new Reason file if you are using Reason for an existing ProTools session.

- Within ProTools, create a stereo audio track.

- In this new track, under inserts, select “instrument” –> “Reason.” This will automatically route the master output of your Reason interface to ProTools. (To route individual channels from the Reason mixer, you must route the individual mixer channels through the Reason Hardware interface. Then within ProTools, select the channel input that corresponds with the Reason interface routing.)

- Now you should be able to hear a signal from your Reason file running through ProTools.

- When you are ready to record your Reason file into ProTools as a stereo audio track, simply route the output of your Reason track to the input of a new stereo audio track. i.e. Within ProTools, the Reason track’s output can be sent to channels 19-20 while the new tracks input is 19-20.

- Activate the record button on the new Reason print track and there you have it. If you have routed the individual Reason elements to individual ProTools tracks, simply activate all of their “record” buttons to record them to ProTools at once.

If this tutorial didn’t help, do what I did and read the Reason user’s manual! ;-)

- Mike with the Mic

CCM Recording Studios

Denver Recording Studio Blog.com

A Brief Introduction to Beat Detective

Head Engineer — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:21:54 +0000

If you have a live, imported, old, or otherwise off-time session, you may want to add elements to it. In these types of cases, Beat Detective can be used to create a “tempo map” that follows the changes within the song, which can then be used to create new MIDI elements or a unique click track.

Here at CCM Studios in Denver, we often use Beat Detective to create more options with our work.

Step one: Enter conductor mode.

Step two: Under Event, select the Beat Detective.

Step three: highlight a small section of a track with which to work. When starting out, it is best to highlight one or two bars and slowly work up from there. Make sure to highlight from just before to just after the bars you wish to map. Make sure the Beat Detective has only selected the bars you want to work with by looking at the Start/End Bar/Beat boxes.

Step four: Select which subdivisions you want to capture. Altering the division from 1/4 to 1/8, 1/16, etc will alter the way Beat Detective looks at your track. Also, changing between Bar, Beat and Subdivision will alter you’re anchoring points.

Step five: Press Capture Selection, then Analyze. Things can go one of two ways here. More on this next time.