I love it when this subject comes up! I like to do post on my recordings. The more I record, the better my skills, the better my gear, the less I do. The is a lot to be said for a recording that requires no post work. There is a certain purity to a well done recording that is un touched. That all being said, there are times where post work is warrented. I do a lot more matrix recordings that ambient so my mindset is a little different than most. My goal in doing a matrix is to make it sound better than it did at the show or as it did in the best spot of the venue. Something as simple as light compression can really even out some of the inconsistancies in the engineer's mix, and it can help blend 2 sources together. However an uncompressed recording often times sounds best fedelity-wise.
One of the biggest things I do in post on ambient recording is to take out the room-boom. Reflections and standing wavs can really muddy up a recording. Sometimes this is as easy as running bass roll-off, but sometimes you have to find the room/pa's resonant frequiencies and manually pad them down with a notch filter. Viewing a spectral anaylizer while playing back a wav where there is obvious bas abnormalities will allow you to see about where that resonance is. (ie every time the bass player hits a certain note it sounds very boomy and out of place) Then you can (in most software) loop that one little section and then open up your eq and start making adjustments to take it away. A good parametric eq plugin will allow you to do a very narrow notch where you are almost singling out a particular frequency. Pad it down a bit then back up and play the passage again to see if it sounds more natural. This is what I spend most of my time doing post-wise on ambient recordings, and can make a world of differance. Sometimes you will find 4 or 5 resonancies and sometimes you can't seem to find any, in thoes cases I will do a general eq or a lhigh-pass filter and call it a day.
After doing this type of post work, if the room boom was a big factor in the recording you may notice your levels dropped 3 or 4 db! Then I will most definately normalize and bring the recordeing up to the level it should have been recorded at. It is for this reason that I am a proponant of using a low-cut while recording if you are sure the situation warrants it. If you set your levels hot (but not overdriven) to the part of the music that you are keeping, you will have less noise in your recording when completed. Keep in mind you can bring the bass back up just as easily as bringing it down in post, but best case scenario is to get it right on the original recording. Obviously setting up in the perfect spot (being a good taper as stated earlier) and chosing the right config, etc makes all the differance in the world as well.
A little light compression can help sometimes to even things out, but keep in mind while bringing down the louder passages, you are also bringing up the quiet ones including the noise that is underneath the recorded music.
As for noting the text file. Yes. I have been guilty of not noting some of mine, but I have gotten back in the habbit. I don't list everything I do but I may say "typical effects added" or "only sample rate conversion" to let people know that I did or did not do post work on the show. I don't feel the need to list every step I took. Especially since most of the recording I do anymore are post mixed multitrack/matrix recording and the act of mixing them in post alone is a ton of post work. ALWAYS keep your original masters. I have original masters on every show I ever recorded.
As for information on how to do this stuff... good luck! Most of the information out there is for live sound production or studio recording. People trained in thoes two areas without actual experience in ambient or live recording typically have no clue of how to do it. Unfortunately there isn't much good information out there on the subject.
As brian says, less is more. Do an extreem change to hear how it works and then go back to zero and slowly ad it in.
Matt
Topic: How much post production work does everyone do ? (Read 33,803 times)