This is a lesson I had to learn the hard way recently. First, last summer my trusty audio drive crashed. A solid Seagate barracuda hard disc with all my music projects on it. This was not a cheap bargain brand drive, nor was it very old, just 12 months give or take. But it died anyways. And it was the first time in 10 years that I had a drive go down on me.

Now, I did have backups, but not in a very organized fashion. In an ideal world I should just have a time machine backup or similar and have it automatically backup everything every hour. But my mac has 10 TB of drives in it, and that means I would need a drive array of at least 20 TB in size to automatically back up every thing. So I, like so many others, just used external drives, mostly older drives, which I wiped clean and used as backup storage. These old drives however are just 750 MB maybe 1TB, so my safety copies were spread out over 10 to 15 individual drives. So when the drive crashed I was looking for days through old drives for the information I lost. 90% of the files I found right away, but the last 10% were a nightmare. One of the brand new songs I was working on was not backed up. I was so mad at myself and went through a vigorous backing up of all my music projects, which took me another week, since the files were spread out over so many disks. But finally I had it all together and promised myself that I would back up every night, just like brushing my teeth.

Then when I came back from Europe this January, I turned on my computer copied all my vacation photos into my iPhoto library and left for a short tour to Arizona. When I returned and turned on the computer, nothing happened. I freaked out. This time my main system drive had crashed. I stayed calm. It’s just the programs or applications, most of which I could reinstall in a day or so. It’s a pain in the butt, but I can deal with it. At least my music stuff is all meticulously backed up. So no big deal. Boy was I wrong. First of all when I restored the drive from an old backup, the programs did not want to run until they were updated to a newer version. When I went online to download the update, I was told that my operating system was too old and the update could not be installed in this machine. I was prompted to update the operating system itself. My computer however turned out to be too old to run the new operating system, so I was stuck.

Then I noticed that the system drive also housed my documents and photos. Business correspondences, e-mails, contracts – gone. When I realized that my iPhoto library on my backup drive was two years old I got scared. Yes, my daughter College graduation was gone, so was our last Christmas etc. When my wife found out she threatened to divorce me, but she would kill me first, if I did not get these files back.

I knew I had backups, just where? I finally found an iPhoto library file and proudly called my better half into the room. I opened the backup library file and stared in disbelieve at the only 2 photos that were in there. The file had been corrupted. My lovely wife went into the kitchen to look for a knife or another suitable weapon. So I broke down and called disk savers, a disk recovery service which came highly recommended. They quoted me a measly $3000 for a chance to keep my testicals and recover our family photos. They offered no guarantee that they could recover everything, or anything. I told my wife that I rather buy a new computer for that kind of money, which could run the new OS and I could reinstall all my programs, but she would not budge. So I sent off the drive and a week later I get the call from disk savers. “We are sorry, but nothing could be recovered, the drive is too damaged” In fairness I must say that they did not charge me for the unsuccessful attempt. But I could not let my wife find out. So I went through all my drives again, when all of a sudden there it was. I knew I had it, the photo library with all the photos. My life was saved. I took 3 grand and bought a new computer, and a 4 disk raid that is backing up all my files as I type this. I use raid type 1, which means all the backup information is mirrored onto two drives. In case one backup drive fails the other one can recover the information. Because I know, nothing in the digital world exists until you have at least 3 copies.

But that doesn’t mean we are getting the same results. Here is what I consider to be the main differences:

The first there is the acoustic space. A proper recording studio is always going to sound better than your bedroom or garage. This can be counteracted somewhat by proper acoustic treatment, adding bass traps and acoustic reflectors to the walls etc. Then close miking an instrument, so you don’t get much of the room sound, and applying of a good reverb plug-in can produce good results.

Secondly, not everybody is an engineer. Many musicians have a hard times switching from the creative right brain mode to the more analytical left brain. when trouble shooting a signal flow in the recording chain. You can say you’ll loose the vibe when you have to figure out why the guitar sounds distorted due to a bad patch cable. I feel fortunate to have had the experience to work in a proper studio as an engineer. So I am quite comfortable with equipment. However, I always prefer to have a setup day, where I get the amps and microphones placed, dial in the right tone, set the right recording level and balance the headphone mix. When I come in the next day, I just start recording and that frees up my head to concentrate on my performance.
But what we are mostly missing is the live interaction of musicians who play together in the same room. This, by necessity, has been replaced by carefully overdubbing individual parts one by one. And there it gets tricky. I heard too many recordings that sound clean but sterile, just for that reason. As a music producer I pride myself to being able to create tracks that have that live feel even when parts are overdubbed one by one. Just to share a few tricks:
A) hire the right musicians. There is no substitute for a great player, But be aware, that the best player you now might not be the best player for a particular track. Getting the right musicians is the key.
B) I often record parts more than once, especially my parts. I may lay down a guitar track to programmed drums, then record live drums and bass. I find what magic happens between drums and bass and redo my guitar part to emphasize it, just as if I was reacting to it when we play live. Then when I add keys, I listen to the voicings used and I might re-adjust my rhythm guitar parts to complement the keyboard parts. I might go back to edit some bass or drum notes in order to catch some accent I played on the lead guitar track. So I move back and forth until I arrive at a recording where each part is reacting to the other’s performance. It’s more work, but until I get a recording budget, that allows me to hire the players I want, rehearse and go into some of the big studios left in town to record my albums, that technique works quite well.

If you want to check out Nils’ productions, you can listen to samples of his music on his album page and on this page of featured artists he produced.

More and more we are producing commercial tracks in our bedrooms.
Most of us have a computer and more than likely some basic recording software. When it comes to taking the next step in improving your recording setup you should consider these guidelines:
1. Start with software:
Logic Pro (my choice), Cubase, Protools are great programs that will allow very advanced music production with out putting you into major debt. They also come with a vast variety of software synths and sounds, built-in drum machines and loop libraries.
2. Invest in the front end:
Spend your first money on a good mic preamp, a microphone and then AD converters, before investing in major outboard gear, speakers or plug-ins. You can always go to a commercial studio to have your production mixed, but you can’t fix what you did not capture in the recording.

I recommend Neumann and AKG Mics. For Pre-amps see if you can get a hold of an Avalon 737, Millennia STT-1, a original Neve, or one of their modern reissues.
A decent mic pre with compressor is going to put you back roughly $2000 or more. If that is out of your budget right now it is worth saving for it.
As to the AD converters, I swear by Apogee. I really heard a difference when I bought my first Rosetta 200.

3. If you need to record more than 1 or 2 channels at a time
As you can see the front end can be quite expensive. If you want to track your whole band playing together at the same time consider renting a studio. Then bring the tracks home for further overdubbing and editing.

4. Ask yourself if you are really into the recording process.
Not everyone has the mindset to be a producer and engineer. It might be better to build an alliance or hire someone who is.
This is an important point. I know a lot of songwriter/artist who got very frustrated because they just don’t have the technical mind set for being an engineer. It kills their creativity having to think about busses, routing and recording levels etc.

I first got introduced to it when I brought my amp in for maintenance. Jörg at Bogner gave me an Alchemist as a loaner, while my treasured Ecstacy head was re-tubed and fine tuned. It came with an open back 2×12 cabinet with one Celestion Green back and one Celestion Vintage 30 in it. An unusual combination you might think and so did I. But when I plugged in my guitar, I was simply amazed by the tone it produced. The clean tone was warm and transparent. It felt like I could touch every note. It was less aggressive and not as funky as the Ecstacy, but it had a certain softness, that worked well for Contemporary Jazz. The combination of my guitar, a Valley Arts Custom Pro, the amp and the cabinet just worked beautifully.

I started recording with it and I ended up using it for the entire album, my 2011 release “What the Funk”. It was used on the 2011 Smooth Jazz song of the year “ Jump Start”, after “Pacific Coast Highway”, my biggest number 1 Billboard Hit to date.

The guitar tone I had on “Sarah Smile” is my favorite sound I was ever able to record. I used the clean channel with the lead boost on and placed one microphone in the front of the speaker and one behind it.

I did not even ask for my other amp back until I was almost done with the CD, out of fear I would have to return it. And actually I told Jörg and Reinhold that I did not want to give it back and they gave it to my as an endorsement gift. I made a video as a thank you promoting the amp showcasing some of it’s features.

Basically the Bogner Alchemist is a tube guitar amp with two channels, one clean and one overdrive. There is a boost switch, which effectively turns that into four channels, by changing the volume from a rhythm to lead level. One of the things I like about it too, is that it has a built in reverb and ducking delay. So I can take this amp as it is to a jam session without bringing anything else. The lead channel can be adjusted from full shred to a more bluesy sound. But there is also a special lead setting I used on “Detroit Strut”. By switching the punch button on the lead channel off, I got this clean lead tone, but with a lot of sustain. You can check out the Video here

If you like the sound you can get two of my songs as free downloads, just for signing up to my mailing list at nilsguitar.com
Bogner amps are made in California. their web address is www.bogneramplification.com