Recording with or without effects relates to the external audio you are recording. The recording of external audio was reviewed earlier in this chapter and relates to vocals, guitars, keyboard synthesizers, turntables, and any audio that is recorded with a microphone. When you are ready to record external audio in FL Studio, you can adjust your sound before recording. This means that your sound inside FL Studio will then hold the parameters and audio signal you tweaked before recording. The audio will be rendered inside FL Studio and may be difficult to change and adjust. The other method is to record your audio signal dry. This means that you will not have any compression or EQ changes on your signal, and you can then edit your audio after the recording. This gives you more freedom and flexibility to shape and change the sound you want inside the box, which means inside your computer program—FL Studio.
However, there is a slight middle ground here. You want to have the clearest and cleanest audio signal possible before recording audio in FL Studio, especially for vocals. This means that you can use an external preamp or compressor, which will amplify your sound, give you a lot more gain, and provide more character to your tone.
You want to follow the same principles that were reviewed in Recording external audio earlier in this chapter.
- Engage a mixer track on the FL Studio Mixer.
- Select your audio input from the upper right-hand IN dropdown in the FL Studio Mixer. This will correlate directly to the inputs on your audio interface.
- Select the disk icon at the bottom of the FL Studio Mixer on the mixer track you have engaged for recording. You may right-click on it to save it to a path you specified or simply left-click to save it in the FL Studio default path.
- At this point, you can add effects directly on your effect chain while your mixer track is engaged for recording. This will adjust your sound before it is recorded and your adjustments will play back once the recording is complete.
- Engage the record button in the FL Studio transport controls and then press the play button to begin your recording. You can also use the 3 2 1 countdown before recording.
Before recording, you can add effects in your effect chain to shape your sound. If you are using an audio interface, you can adjust your gain and get your level suitable for recording. If you are using an external preamp or compressor, you can adjust the settings on your hardware before recording. Most of the time, the raising of the gain is well practiced. The question that comes into play is whether or not you are going to add extra compression and EQ to your recorded signal directly before recording it in FL Studio. Generally, the adding of the EQ and compression is practiced before recording vocals. If you have vintage or external analog gear with quality EQ controls and electronics, you may want to give your EQ a try.
Tip
All audio interfaces have an onboard preamp; if you are using a vintage piece of gear as your preamp, you will turn your audio interface preamp gain all the way down. In this manner, your gain/EQ will be handled by your vintage preamp; the interface is simply the place for your signal to travel back and forth on your computer. Look for audio interfaces with a good analog-to-digital converter, which will provide as little latency as possible. For example, a great microphone preamp is the Daking Mic Pre One. You could use this piece of gear to amplify your vocals before recording, but make sure to turn your audio interface gain all the way down. Find out more about Daking at www.daking.com. The same principles apply when working with external EQs or compressors.
You can also monitor your recording with reverb in order to enhance your vocal performance, but the reverb will not actually be rendered in the audio recording. The reverb is set up only to add a nice sonic quality for your vocals during performance. Usually, a vocalist or performer can perform better with a slight reverb effect on their audio signal. You can also do this with other effects. This is referred to as monitor routing.
Fig 6.27
Take a look at how to monitor your vocals using the following steps:
- You will want to engage or faintly highlight a track for recording. In this case, it is INS 1, which is titled To Disk. Select your audio input from the IN drop-down box in the right-hand corner in the FL Studio Mixer while the To Disk track is engaged.
- While the To Disk track is still engaged, send this track to the Monitor track (INS 2). This is done by engaging the To Disk track and then clicking on the area above FX on the Monitor track. The small circular button will appear as shown in Fig 6.27 on the Monitor column.
- Now engage the Monitor track.
- While the Monitor track is engaged, use one of your send channels on the FL Studio Mixer to send a reverb effect to the Monitor track. (This was reviewed earlier in this chapter and is called Using send tracks in the mixer.) You will have to add a reverb effect on the send track, but be mindful of what track is engaged. To actually send the reverb to the Monitor track, the Monitor track will have to be engaged; you can use the send knob on the reverb send mixer track.
- You can also add compression or any other effect to the actual Monitor track. This is done by engaging the Monitor track and selecting an effect slot plugin (1 to 8 in the vertical effect list).
- Your input will be recorded dry, yet you will hear the input routed through the Monitor channel, which contains any effect you want and any send effect you desire (usually reverb).
- The Using send tracks in the mixer recipe
- The Recording external audio recipe
- The Sending a channel to a mixer slot recipe in Chapter 3, Working with the Step Sequencer and Channels