Bad Recording

So, I had a brief go at recording my acoustic last night.

As it's a simple, yet lovely tune I decided to use "Lesson Learned" by Ray Lamontagne. If you've not heard then I strongly suggest YouTubing/LastFM-ing it. Ray's songs are all very simple but really well written. The guy has a way with words, that's for sure.

Anywho. The track starts out about as simple as can be. It's just a bit of a strum on Am, C & F with and a little melody line over the top. I thought it'd be easy to get a decent sound. It wasn't.

The first problem, and, I guess, the fundamental one, was that I couldn't get a decent dry recording. For whatever reason, there was loads of noise and way too much low end. Interestingly, I used the exact same techniques (mic placement etc) that I had in the past. The main difference was that instead of recording using Goldwave, I used Reaper. Switching back to Goldwave I got a much cleaner signal, BUT, there's no way I'm going back to recording outside a DAW, so... I guess I need to tinker with my configuration. The two programs clearly use different audio drivers. Goldwave works alongside anything, whereas if you run any other audio prog (even YouTube via IE), the sound output from Reaper cuts out.

On top of that, I made the rookie error of trying to compensate with effects, ending up with an artificial sounding strum-a-long and heavy-handed reverb on the melody.

Still, this blog isn't about getting it right every time, so, here's what I got, warts and all.