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I'm fishing-for and sharing ideas concerning recording synths.

I've been playing around a lot lately with recording synths. Many of the synthesizers today come with their own built in effects and they make the patches sound oh so pretty. In many cases, the effects make the sound.

But I've found that the effects on the sound don't always fit into a song. In those cases I'll disable the synth's effects and record the sound dry and effect it ITB. For the most part this works but I'm not always impressed. Also, there are some bands who don't want to disable the effects so I have to record this pad or lead with this ridiculous reverb or chorus on it and try to get it to fit into a mix.

One thing I've found that was helpful was to take a stereo patch from a synth, remove the effects and record only one channel of it. Then I can add effects to that mono track and it's made dropping the sound into a mix MUCH easier. It seems like doing that is a lot easier than working with a stereo track.

Just wondering if anyone has had any experiences with this sort of thing.

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UncleBob58 Mon, 11/14/2005 - 23:40

Since the digital age allows us to record multiple takes non-destructively (how many of you remember 16 track 2" tape?) and MIDI allows us to store patch data with the sessions I now tend to record both, using the effected version as a template for processing at mix time. Or, just modifying the patch at mix time if the synth is still available.