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Old 12-07-2011, 12:07 PM
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Doug Young Doug Young is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: Mountain View, CA
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Fran makes some great points. You have to know what your shooting for. If you identify a problem, you can fix it, whether that means different gear, different acoustics, or different techniques. One way to go about that is to assemble some reference recordings you'd like to sound like. If you want to be really thorough, pick something that sounds great that you can actually play, even if you just learn a few bars. Then record yourself and compare your sound to the reference. I've spent hours (years?) doing this, and comparing my sound to my references with various analysis tools as well as just listening, trying to understand all the components that go into the sound I'm shooting for.

I have to say, the 1st thing I usually discover when I go thru this exercise is that the biggest thing I have to change to match my goal is my own playing - nailing the phrasing and tone of someone else's performance is often 90% of the difference and the challenge. But once you get that, you go on to the next step. It's an iterative process. At the end of that, you might discover you need some gear - most likely do to some feature, (say for example, you realize after much analysis that your reference is recorded with a pair of omni mics, and you don't have any, or maybe the recording has a spectacular reverb, etc), but more likely, you'll learn about mic positioning, EQing, and so on.

I don't think I've heard any of your recordings, so this might be off the mark, but it's how I've approached trying to learn to record better, so perhaps it will help.
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