Ever felt less than enthused about posting your home recorded arranger playing? Ever wondered why something sounded great while you played it, but fell a bit short on playback? Here’s a few tips to help you post something you’re proud of...

Probably the #1 problem I repeatedly hear with home demos is the lead sound utterly dominating the backing. Naturally, we all want to hear what we actually PLAY nice and up front so we are sure what we play is correct and easily heard, and in a real live band or studio recording situation there is a monitor system to localize that volume where you hear it best, and hopefully no-one else does!

But that’s not how arrangers work... Even the TOTL ones with a couple of extra line outs can’t put a different mix of everything on both pairs. Most of the time, the direct out Jack’s lose the effects, both send effects and usually the inserts too. So you can’t use these to jack up your own sounds for a monitor mix. No, you have to hear your playing WITHIN a mix.

Now, there’s a couple of ways round this. First and easiest but hardest to get used to is to simply record the full mix, listen back, and if the lead is swamping the backing (listen to a well mixed record for comparison), turn down the volume of the lead sounds, store the registration, and try again. Keep doing it until the overall balance sounds professional. You’ll be hearing yourself far less, but hopefully by then you’re playing comfortably well enough to not need to...

Another way is to deal with this afterwards. We’ve all pretty much got MIDI recorders in our arrangers that will record the entire piece, so record your demo with the lead as loud as you like 🤯 and then go into the sequence edit afterwards and turn the leads back down until comfortably sitting IN the mix, not ON it. Pretty easy, pretty effective, and it also gives you the option at this point to adjust effects levels a bit. We always tend to want a bit more reverb while we are playing because it gets ‘masked’ by the backing, but playback usually exposes this overabundance.

But there’s one weakness to the ‘fix it afterwards’ approach, and it concerns my #2 problem I hear with many home demos... Timing.

If you swamp the backing, you swamp the drums. And hearing the drums loud and proud, right in your face goes a LONG way to getting you in the groove, sitting in the pocket, swingin’ with the rhythm section..! So, all in all, why not try as hard as possible to play as quietly as you possibly can and really concentrate on the drums and bass? Here’s the opposite strength of the ‘fix it afterwards’ approach. If, to lock in with the drums you end up TOO quiet in the mix, running the sequencer while you play gives you the chance to bump up your solos a hair louder to get that ‘perfect’ mix.

I’ll come back to some other techniques in a bit, but I hope that some of you can benefit from this, and feel better about posting music you are proud of!

Any other hints and tips? Got anything you like to do to polish up a home recording? Let us know...