noise problems when recording

[mbengs1]

do all guitarists that use high gain use a noise gate? how do they take out the hiss and hum from the recording? like van halen. i don't hear any noise in any songs on the first album. how do they do that? Is a noise suppressor the only solution. did they have that way back in the 60's?

[WRGKMC]

First, the gain levels you hear on most pro recordings aren't gained up nearly as high as you think they need to be.

 

Second, if you have noise playing live you'll have it recording. Back it down till the noise disappears and you'll get the tracks you need. Remember the mic on an amp is only an inch away from the speaker. Dial both the drive and volume down and you'll get better results and either use headphones to monitor the amp or raise the amp up to ear level so you hear the direct sound, not the sound reflecting around the room.

 

Third, quality gear and cables are a must to avoid noise.

 

4th a mic and speakers roll off allot of that noise with its high and low end roll off.

 

5th If you are going to use insaine amounts of drive (which record like crap by the way) Then using a Hush box / Noise gate will clamp the signal down to silence when you stop playing notes.

 

Lastly, Guitar is a midrange instrument and you shouldn't be pushing allot of frequencies above 5K where all that noise exists (even recording direct). As you record and mix more you learn to target your frequencies tracking so you don't have all that noise to begin with. Proper Gain staging is the key item. Its not just tracking it's also the steps used mixing and mastering as you layer effects.

 

Recording is a chain. Clean guitar can sound like a Vintage rock guitar with no drive boxes at all by the time you add the proper amount of compression, EQ and limiting and time based effects. Even the mic itself when tracking adds its own layer of sympathetic harmonics.

 

Overdrive winds up sounding like Fuzz, Fuzz winds up sounding like distortion and heavy distortion winds up sounding noise with very little musical content left.

 

Consider this. AC/DC used Marshall amps cranked half way up. By the time the mixing and mastering is done you'd think thay had those amps cranked on ten with a line of drive boxes running in front of them. Van Halen only used a Marshall head with a hot plate to get his tones. No drive boxes at all. Most of that driven sound you hear comes from the head and speakers cranked.

 

Because there aren't a bunch of gain boxes bringing up the ambient noise floor, you don't have to deal with that in a mix. The cleaner drive is gained up so its in your face using Comps and limiters and the sound winds up being super transparent because it isn't driven up so far it covers up all the silence between notes.

 

Its very common for guitarists to over use drive. They find it more comfortable to eliminate the string dynamics so when you pick soft notes they are driven the same as hard picked notes.

 

This is where you have to retrain yourself to a great degree. I remember having to do it myself when I first started recording and it wasn't comfortable at all but it has made me a much better player.

 

It begins with dialing up your drive so you get the maximum amount of drive needed when you pick the strings the hardest. Picking the strings lightly, the sound may wind up being almost completely clean. That's the key item right there. You then have to pick your strings hard to get driven tones and hopefully your guitars set up well so you don't have strings twanging sharp or getting fret buzz when you do pick them hard.

 

Because that balance between Drive and Pick attack is vary narrow, it weeds out many players from achieving good tracks. Many will gain the signal up to make picking easier and in the process they sound awful. You want those big rock guitar tones, back the drive down to where you're on the edge between clean and driven and drive occurs by hitting the strings hard. I guarantee you wont have the noise issue with those setting.

 

Like I said it can be very uncomfortable playing that way at first, but no one ever said recording is easy. If you want great tones you have to work for it bit tweaking and performing. If you aren't breaking a sweat in the process eeking out notes with sound that feels too dry for your comfort then you probably wont get the best tracks possible.

 

One thing I can tell you is you'll be amazed by how much better the tracks do sound when you do go cleaner, and once you learn to compress it properly with the right plugins and settings you'll be absolutely amazed at what you're hearing.

 

I know this sounds counter intuitive. You will experiencing overdrive withdraw at first but its something you must do. The last guitarist I worked with was older and had played guitar a good 40 years and had no recording experience. When we first started recording together it was a battle getting him to dial back his drive to get better tracks. On top of that he used .008 strings and ultra light picks. At times I felt like I had to tape his knobs in place so he wouldn't automatically habitually tweak his settings. It took a few years and he cussed me all the way but he eventually "Got It" and we started getting pro grade recordings. It surely wasn't an easy process to get him to abandon old habits but I have the proof in the recordings we did.

 

Keep this in mind too. Dialing back the gain doesn't mean you play less aggressively. If anything you have to play more aggressively to get the notes to come through and you hear that emotional passion in the tracks as the key element in the music.

 

You can still have tracks that are highly driven of course. I'm not saying you have to abandon it all together, but instead of having chords and leads dialed way up so it all sounds like white noise, try keeping the chords clean. This will give the driven leads a big contrast and the parts will be much better separated.

 

Try it and see if it works. You'll eventually find sweet spots that have minimal noise vs dynamic tone to work with.