Howard Bilerman’s “Fortune Cookies”

by electricmask

If you’re into studio and home recording techniques, and you missed the free talk with producer, Howard Bilerman, you’re a fucking idiot. Howard, engineer and producer at Hotel2Tango, is most well-known for bringing do-it-yourself recording to the world stage with the Arcade Fire album, Funeral, (though his entire resume is impressive, to say the least) and pioneering the DIY path by proving that it’s not so much the equipment you use, but the people behind the tools.

Twenty years of recording and six hand-built studios later, in an intimate setting at Green Room, much like forming a half-circle around a kindergarten teacher on the carpet, Howard took questions and departed wisdom (little ‘fortune cookies’, as he called them) at a free POP Symposium, open to the general public on Thursday morning. He individually asked every single person there what questions they had about home & studio recording, then went on to the basics of frequencies and the all-important tool, the microphone.

Instead of boringly blogging, I’ll just write some of his quick-tips for recording:

Recording tools are less relevant than the know-how.

The single most important element in recording: a good song.

Work with a recording medium you feel comfortable and fluent in (his preferred choice is analog tape).

Clearly know your involvement when recording a band. Don’t get too involved in someone else’s art for the sake of validating yourself. Do what’s best for the recording.

“Found” spaces can oftentimes bring more character to a recording than a treated studio space.

Don’t make reverb choices for a mix while listening to the recording through your headphones. Do it through speakers.

The smaller the recording/control room space, oftentimes, the bigger the problems.

There was tons more, and got quite technical, but you had to be there. I’m not gonna sit here and write a bloody essay…