Christmas Music, Christmas Song by James Limborg

Get this Christmas song at http://www.jameslimborg.com/music-songs-instrumentals-videos.html

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[TantrumJas]

Hi James, thank you very much for all the details you provided. We use Cubase for recording. The most number of tracks we have used was 3 - one for piano, one for lead vocal and one for backing vocal, for Family Portrait video. We tried to add drum but it didn't go very well so we didn't use it in the end. Even with three tracks we still mucked up the final mix:) That is very kind of you to spend so much of your precious time to answer my question!!! I really appreciate it!

[JamesLimborg]

@TantrumJas - Well... You should try and make your music sound as professional as you can... It's a lot of work, but very rewarding when you finish. For the lead vocal on the verses use one track, for the pre-chorus and chorus sections use two tracks over-dubbing the lead vocal part (which means sing the lead vocal part two times)... Then you can try them both in the center, or pan them out a little for the pre-chorus, lots for the chorus.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... Pan them out means to take lead-vocal track-1 and pan it to the left, and lead-vocal-2 and pan that to the right... It creates a natural chorus-effect type sound... Very pleasing to the ear. And instead of 1-note harmony... do at least 2 or 3-note harmonies... and over-dub each-note you sing (so you could have 6 tracks of backup vocals)... Then have fun panning each harmony so they sound full and wide and beautiful... Just like you hear on the radio.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... The piano I would record on two (maybe 3) tracks if it is a real-piano... place one microphone close to the bass notes, one in the middle note area, the 3rd microphone by the high notes. Then pan the low-note mic far left, the middle-note track leave center, the high-note track pan far-right... And now you are starting to get an awesome piano recording mix.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... Reverb sounds great with a piano so you'd probably want to add lots of reverb. I would recommend music software that includes these effects that you can use to make each track sound good: Noise Gate, Compression, Limiter, Reverb, Delay, Chorus mainly. Noise Gate you add first which MUTES in-between your singing or playing. Compression raises the volume of quiet things and at the same time decreases the volume of very-loud things making the track more equal in volume

[JamesLimborg]

continued... Limiter chops off the loudest notes (the spikes) allowing you to get the volume of a single track or the whole song louder by chopping off maybe 2dB to 4dB off the top of the music... and after doing so... allows you to increase the volume of that track or full-song 2db to 4db making the track or whole song much louder (in your face) like you hear songs on the radio. Multi-band Compression helps with that as well. You can use the internet to learn how to use all this

[JamesLimborg]

Continued... I am 41 years old. I started on drums in 3rd grade, guitar in 5th grade, keyboards and writing music in 11th grade, bass guitar after 12th grade... and have been casually writing and recording music since. Over the years I have learned how to produce my music (which means after recording all the instruments... editing them by adding noise gate, compression, effects like reverb, delay, chorus, etc.). Even removing parts (or muting them) to make the song sound different.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... So you can see there is LOTS of information when it comes to recording a song like this. I spend lots of time on each song rather than write and record a song in a week. I spent 2-years tweaking the song I wrote with my friend Steve Laws Anderson titled How Come I Don't Have Anyone. It's called producing... when you take the music you recorded... and edit it, making it sound different by adding effects, removing parts, adding more parts, changing things, etc.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... guitar goes on two tracks (one track panned left, the other right), same goes for keyboard parts... each keyboard part on two tracks (one track left, one track right). Lead vocal on one track, each backup vocal on a track. But for lead vocal during the chorus section of the song you might overdub the vocal which means record the same vocal part 2 times (one on each track) which creates a cool natural CHORUS effect... You can put both vocal tracks in the center or full left right.

[JamesLimborg]

continued... I'd want 30 or more tracks available to me because I always use 30-tracks at least when recording a song... drums take up lots of tracks (kick on one track, snare on another track, each tom tom drum on a track, I usually put all the crash cymbals together on two tracks stereo with one track panned left, the other track panned right, the hi-hat I put on its own track, and somethings there are sleigh bells, maraca, other percussion instruments that need to be on its own track).