by Ronny North.

Ronny North. Photo by Jim Morris.

After I write a song, I email it to my band for them learn it. My demos have a basic drum machine pattern for tempo reference and all the bass, keyboards and guitars on them. After my guys learn the song, we go over it at practice to make sure everything sounds okay.

After we have it dialed in, it’s time to record. I have my own home studio where I record my projects. This is great for two reasons: (1) It allows me to record whenever I want , keeping my recording budgets way down and (2), It also allows me to have control over the entire process and experiment while recording and no one can say anything.

I also produce and engineer all my stuff. The first thing we track is drums. I have my drummer track drums to the demo that he hears in his headphones. This way he can play to the drum machine on the original demo and he can also hear what the other instruments will be doing during the song. I’m getting pretty good at recording drums these days and have a good idea where to put the mics for great drum sounds.

After we have the drums, I have my bass player come in the next day and lay down his part. It’s just me and him in the control room. I almost always record both a direct and a mic’d bass amp to get a blend of the two for the track. After my guys are finished, I go to town with the guitar parts.

I always do my guitar tracks alone and I engineer them myself. I have a few different signal paths that I use for tracking electric guitars. My main one is an SM-57 mic, up on one of my 4x12 Laney cabs. I put the mic a couple of inches from the grill. Sometimes I even take the grill off and put the mic right in the speaker. I place the mic in the 2 O’clock position on one of the lower speakers. Then, I'll tweak it until I find the sweet spot.

The cabinet is sitting on an Auralex Grama stand. I have a lot of amps. But, I almost always use Laney Tube heads and alternate between the GH-100, VH-100R and a older Mark Cameron Modded Laney Anniversary head, that I’ve had forever.

I record very loud! I also use a Groove Tube's Speaker Emulator and an Axetrak device. The Axetrak is a great secret weapon in the studio. My signal path is SM-57 into a Presonus Blue Tube Mic preamp, into the board. I like to keep the signal right at the edge of the red on the meters for guitar tracks, but clean. I EQ the guitar sound by moving the mic around on the speaker. I record the tracks dry and add processing in the mix stage. I use whatever guitar I’m using that day and now, more often than not, it's my new Tregan RN signature guitar.

I have many guitars that I use when tracking, including a great older Les Paul Custom, that sounds great on rhythm tracks. I’ve been using it on my CD’s forever. I sit in the control room and listen to the monitors, instead of using headphones. The guitar cabs are on the other side of the house.

I find that I can get my best performances if I’m by myself and I’m hearing the actual drums and bass that are going to be on the track.This is also a great way to do it if I’m not "on" that day. I can step away and go do something else and come back to it, either later that day or the next day. I'm also not making anyone else wait around.

Sometimes just pulling out some pedals and the sound can inspire you to play what works for the song or even take it in a whole different direction. I have so many pedals and guitar gear in general, so I have lots of options to choose from. I’ve also found that recording using less gain on the amps helps give the guitar tracks more definition. This really helps if you are layering guitar tracks.

If you have all the tracks with full distortion, everything turns to mush once you start stacking tracks. I almost always double my rhythm guitar tracks and pan them hard left and right. When I do this I sometimes use a different amp for each pass, going through the same cab. Sometimes I will just switch guitars. This helps the track. Combining different amps or instruments with their different frequencies definitely helps make the track sound bigger. I’m sure it has something to do with phasing of the combined sounds.

I also like to have the two rhythm guitar tracks to be playing their parts a little differently from each other. This really gives the song some character. When I need to record an acoustic guitar for a track, I use a cool Groove Tube Mic into the Blue Tube Mic Preamp. Sometimes I’ll compress it a bit to tape. I place it 6 inches from the guitar, in between the sound hole and the end of the fret board. I’ll tweak the mic position depending on if I’m doing a finger picking thing or a strumming thing.

I usually record in my control room and turn the monitors off and wear headphones. If I’m going for a more of a reverb type sound I’ll record the track in my bathroom! This is great for tracking nylon string classical guitar type stuff. I always mic up my acoustic guitars and I rarely use the onboard pickups unless I’m going for a specific "in between" type sound that I’m layering with something else. My recording medium is the Alesis Adats. I’ve been using them forever and they work great for me.

Someday, I will eventually have to move up to Pro-Tools. But, for now I’m cool. After I’ve got great tracks, I do a quick mix myself and burn a CD to listen to for a day in the car. If all is well, I then have the tracks mixed at a friend’s studio and we mix and master in Pro-Tools. He mixes the tracks and I come in a couple days later when he’s done and we tweak things. It’s usually small stuff, like this lead has to come up a hair and the bass is too loud. You know guitar player stuff!

It’s also great to step away from the material and have a fresh set of ears mix the music. The thing is to use a method that best works for you. This is how I record my music. I hope it was helpful to everyone.