Hands-On Practice

Try these suggested activities to practice what you’ve learned.

  1. Make a recording that demonstrates echo, reverberation, and leakage.
  2. Make a recording that demonstrates clean sound and distorted sound.
  3. Record a band in a room with no acoustic treatment, and then the same band playing the same song in a room with acoustic treatment.
  4. Set up some nearfield monitor speakers. Play a CD track, and listen to how the tone changes when the speakers are against the wall and 3 feet from the wall. Play a CD track loudly and very softly, and listen to how the bass and highs become weaker at low volume.
  5. Record an acoustic guitar with a variety of different microphones at the same distance, announcing which mic was used each time. Repeat for a lead vocal. Describe the differences you hear.
  6. Record an acoustic guitar with an SDC microphone in a variety of placements near the guitar, announcing the mic position each time. Describe the differences you hear.
  7. Record a vocal with two mics following the 3:1 rule, and then not following the 3:1 rule. Listen for the difference.
  8. Record an orchestra in stereo with a variety of stereo mic techniques. Listen for the differences and describe what you hear.
  9. Record a musical instrument with a mic technique of your own invention. Try another technique and describe the differences you hear.
  10. Make a multitrack recording of a band. Try a variety of effects (or no effects) on each track. See which effects work well with the song and which ones don’t. Also try a high effects-send level and a low effects-send level, and note which levels seem to work well with the song.
  11. Using a CD playing through a mixer, set up proper gain staging from the input all the way through to the monitor speakers.
  12. Listen to several commercial CDs. Compare their sound to the sound attributes mentioned in the chapter on Judging Sound Quality with Critical Listening (Chapter 17). Do the same for your own mixes.
  13. Record and mix a band with a DAW. Follow the session procedures noted in Chapters 16 and 19. Report on your procedures and processes.
  14. Master an album following the procedures noted in Chapter 20. Burn a CD of that album. Make mp3 files of each album track.
  15. Create a song using a MIDI controller and soft synths. Create a song using looping.
  16. Record a band live concert, following the procedures in the chapter On-Location Recording of Popular Music.
  17. Record a classical-music ensemble, following the procedures in the chapter On-Location Recording of Classical Music.
  18. Convert CD tracks to mp3 files and upload them to a website.
  19. Listen to how the volume of a track changes as you change its level by specific dB amounts.
  20. Optimize your computer for multitrack recording, using the procedures in Appendix B.
  21. Explore a few websites mentioned in the “Learn More” tab on the companion website. Report on a particular audio topic that interests you.