Detailed Guide on Home Studio Setups for Bluegrass Recording (PART 1-4)

[Music] hey guys Jeremiah here from the tugboats Timbers here - I'm at his home studio right now and we if you don't know here on the channel we record track mix and master or on bluegrass music and we upload it some of the stuff we write sometimes it's covers recently we've been doing a lot of cover stuff but we realized that there is not a lot tutorials online for home studios and moving into you know twenty nineteen twenty twenty into the future home studios are going to be the thing of the future so we want to get ahead get you guys a head start on your own home studio if you'd like to record with us because we record together most of the time but we also get guests to come in and record stuff with us they can record the tracks in their homes send it to us we mix and master here so if that's something that you're interested in then you're in the right place this video is going to be broken down into four parts the first part is going to be all about gear and and we realize that gear and equipment is a huge part of it because of budgeting and cost but we're going to give you some alternatives as well as some of the higher end stuff and we're going to show it off and remember just do your research when you're buying gear look up tutorials online or listen listen logs to different recordings for different mics and find something that suits the sound that you want the second part is going to go over mic placement the third part is going to go over tracking and recording order and the fourth part is going to be a song from start to finish so that you can see an example of everything talk about the first three parts put into practice if you like this video and it's helpful please leave a thumbs up we would really appreciate it and subscribe here on the channel for bluegrass content from the tugboats so thank you guys for watching the video that's enough for the intro time cards will be in the description below so if you want to see a certain part you just click it there and let's get started with some of the gear that you're going to need to record [Music] okay so this first part is going to be over the year that you need now the first thing we recommend of course is a computer because you have to have a computer and you have to have software to record I remember when I started getting into music they had special devices just for recording but that's a thing of the past now you need a computer to mix to send you need probably internet access to get a lot of this stuff but yeah a good computer is a good start tell me about the computer you have here what is this this is yeah Dell XPS you bought it on Amazon I got the best part that's fine how much was it breathless okay about $1200 so there are cheaper alternatives but here's what here's the rundown of what you need I'll put some suggestions in the description and on the screen right now but Amazon will have some laptop and some desktops for you you want an i7 processor the i5 SR slow the Andes are fine make sure you get an AMD equivalent of an i7 processor quad core is the perfect thing it will run superfast dual core will get the job done you want eight gigs of RAM that Ram is going to be helping you run these programs so eight gigs of RAM is is a necessity the rest of the things don't really matter the graphics card doesn't really matter you want probably a good monitor you can get a good set of speakers like what do you have here you have the the KRKs yeah the Rocket fives which are just good overall speakers great for mixing they've got a good base good high end yeah so that's that's what you want to take into consideration you need need a good computer good monitor the next thing you'll need is a way to connect your mics to the computer and and you do that with and we do that honestly with the the interface right we have the Presonus audio box I - I have one as well I bought a mine on Amazon and it's great it cuts latency it's super clear it's got two inputs and it allows you to hear yourself back through the headphones as well so it's a good way to record you get to hear yourself while you're recording and with every thing that we're doing all the tracking that we're doing we're using two inputs left or right or like a top or a bottom and that gives it that dynamic sound so the the Presonus audio box I - is perfect for that a lot of guys in bluegrass and a lot of guys and girls that record the bluegrass use it because it's good tell me about this thing right here that's a that's a preamp ok so tell me about like what what does it do to help and what where's it plugged into the process it's plug them to the the to interface interpose ok though yeah the signal runs through the preamp before it hits the difference right like the interface has its own 3 amps but external freeing up some ok so this is a one that you got from Ron Stewart and it's kind of a older preamp right right so there's a lot of different types of preamps that you can run through but this is a necessity in fact when I record at home I don't have one I just use the interface but there are some preamps out there that can really help enhance the sound crispness and the sharpness of it yeah the dynamics of it can help it a lot so take that into consideration it's not a necessity but if you really want to get sound that you hear from professional Studios that's that's what they have that's what they use the next thing you'll want is headphones so when you're listening back to things of course we have the rock and fiber speakers here which are great but headphones are great too you want to mix with both of them usually if you are doing some mixing and mastering so for headphones we have to actually I use at home for everything that I do I use these send Hauser's they're the HD 598 I got them on sale on Amazon again and I have loved them I've had mine for four years they sound so good we're not sponsored by anything here but I'm just telling you they they are going to have phone soon Houser makes great stuff so they're really great my only complaint is that they don't block the click track sound they they do let sound xscape but that's just the type of headphones that they are they're open back so you get a really great dynamic sound but you're not going to walk out the sound of the world around you and you're not gonna block out sound from inside the headphones so they're not good to record a click track with however we have the cent Hauser HD 202 is over here that we use when we're using a click track they are closed back so they do cancel out the sound both from outside and inside so they're a lot better for the actual recording process but the 598 yeah I really like them highly recommend them for headphones super comfortable to I wear mine for up to 16 hours a day sometimes when I'm at work and it doesn't feel like I've had minutes long so they're pretty nice alright so now to the other big dollar items are going to be the microphones the microphones are crucial part of the recording experience and there are a lot of different types of microphones out there but we recommend some condenser mics that are low in range and in close and dynamics I use the audio technica Pro 37 I is one of my favorite mics have taken so all my shows I play and it gets a great sound and it's actually really similar in tone and dynamics to the mic that we have here they're cheap alternatives and what we have here that's probably my would be my go-to suggestion remember when you're buying a mic for an instrument we have two tracks we need two of them so you would need two audio technica Pro 37s or whatever you want to record with in this case like I said looking around listening around find something that has the sound you want what do you what are you using here these are K and 184 yeah Newman km 184 he got them also from Ron Stewart a lot of guys use them like all the boxcars recordings are done on them they're excellent mic they run 850 bucks I just saw it a piece yeah a piece so you know it's pretty penny but these are the like top-of-the-line mics really there's only one or two above it for what they are for the condenser mic yeah for that type of mic the next thing you'll need is stands doesn't really matter boone stands are good you want something with a key or positioning that can hold it and then you want some chords don't buy bad words by nice cords that aren't going to have shorts because the courts if you have a really nice mic in a cheap cord you're just limiting yourself so go ahead and buy a nice quality doesn't have to be super long cord but you know a nice quality cord and then if you're doing a vocal we recommends a surround sound surround I'm sorry it's around Mike yeah large diaphragm Mike Samsung makes a few good ones Audio Technica of course makes it a few good ones new would make some high-end ones we actually use what is that ml engine MXL MXL which is a a good pretty job yeah it's like what fifty dollars probably think it's yeah seven eight the samsung i use for all of my vocals is like seventy as well so it doesn't take a whole lot of a mic to get that done especially because you're going to be recording at is basically gonna be mono anyway so yeah it works pretty well so that is the basic gear you need you need the cords of course you might need something like a headphone cord or like an eighth inch to eighth inch or a quarter inch to quarter inch to actually plug your computer up to the input USB a lot of the stuff is going to come with the correct course but just keep in mind that you might get it all set up and be like I'm a course short I'm an eighth inch to a thumb short so just be aware of that run to your local Best Buy Amazon it two days shipping you got it so that is it for the gear we're not going to talk about mic placement and mics set up and we'll begin to talk about some of the tracking steps [Music] all righty so it is time to show you a little bit about mic placement Denver and I were talking in between these parts and we were talking about how important it is to have good mic placement you can have $20,000 equipment and completely ruin it in execution so the execution of this part is really important we're going to talk about my placement for each instrument were going to start with the mandolin even though this is in the order usually you're going to record but yeah we're gonna start with the mandolin so tell me about how you're gonna stop the mandolin here usually above the right hand so this one is gonna point right above about right here right more like the top of the hand okay top of the hand it's like a foot yeah and then the bottom one is bottom of the hand and a foot roughly so a different right and yeah it depends on the tone of the player and the tone of the mics I when I usually set up mine I tried to do the same thing but I get closer with up the probe 37 I usually do like 8 inches but it's gonna be different every time you set it up and every time that you play but for one more time yep for the mandolin we're gonna be pointing this one pretend there's a line drawn here at the top of the hand and this one to the bottom of the hand and about a foot away for each one alright let's go ahead and go to the next instrument okay next up is the guitar the guitar is a little bit different but you will notice a pattern here this this mic right here whether this is your one or two for us it's going to be alright because it's going to be his right is going to be a foot away and again it's going to be pointing at the hand where the hand is going to be playing the guitar so roughly this the back part of the strings here and then this mic is going to be parallel to the fourth - to where the body meets the neck here and then it's going to be pointing to rate here correct at the edge at the edge of the sound hole there so yet again parallel to where the neck meets the body and then at an angle to the sound hole alright so that is how you set up the all right so the banjo is really similar to the mandolin unlike the guitar you'll see here that we're going to be pointing the mics instead of being flat they're gonna be pointed down and this one is going to be pointing up and yet again it's going to be a foot away from the top of the hand and a foot away from the bottom of the hand and they're basically stacked on top of each other just like that that way they capture all the sound that the banjo is going to be making okay so onto the upright bass okay we're just finishing adjusting the bass mics now we sometimes take five to ten minutes to really adjust the sound mics the mics for the sound rather will listen and say like this is muddy this isn't crisp enough this is too close this is too loud you got to get the games right but let's see exactly what we're doing here for the bass we're pointing this top mic into where the hand is going to go usually on to tomorrow my right foot a little bit more sometimes because it is boom ear and it's kind of louder and then this bottom mic is going to be pointing basically directly at the bridge about eight inches yeah so you're gonna get a little bit closer four for that one and yeah that's it step back get an idea of what it looks like okay so we don't have a fiddle setup because neither of us usually play fiddle before a fiddle setup you're going to be basically pointing let's pretend this is the fiddle for a moment it is a bass fiddle I suppose but these mics are going to be really close to the bridge and then usually overtop pointing directly into the bridge stretch about away yeah about a foot away pointing maybe one here going into the bridge here and then and then another one here going into the bridge so that's kind of what you would do for a fiddle okay guys we're here at the computer and we're going to talk a little bit now about the process you've got your mic set up and you're ready to start recording the first thing we record is the guitar track but before we record a guitar track we get a click track going so can you go ahead and play an example of a click track real quick so for what in in the software that we're using here we're using Cubase elements it's what Denver likes to use I like these about Adobe auditions just because I have it basically but a lot of people use Pro Tools but denver likes Cubase because he feels like it's a little bit more intuitive a little bit more user friendly yeah so really it just comes down whatever you want to use and as you see here we've already got the some of the tracks already recorded and this is a song that's going to be out kind of sooner on our next volume but the metronome track down there in the in this case on the bottom right is called a click track is what we use to keep our timing so what you want to do is find the speed of the song in this case what was it it was those 266 it was so was 133 1/3 133 beats per minute which is kind of fast it's kind of fast song and then we multiply it by 2 or we put it over 2 we do this so that we get a up beat a in between a down and in between and up and in between that way it helps the bass in the mandolin have something that they can keep their time to both the chop and the bass note we'll have a something they can keep timing too so let's go ahead and just listen to the mushroom for a second so the base is going to be in boom boom boom so every other one or boom so the ups and the downs and then the mandolin is going to be in between those Bing boom so yeah so that's how you would play around that timing like that so you'd find the speed of your song multiply by 2 that would be your metronome speed or ear click track speed in this case the first thing we're going to record which you got your software open you created a new project you got your click track set is the guitar so let's go ahead and see go ahead and see the play a little bit of the guitar track that we did here so this is with the click track okay you can go and stop it there so what we did was we set the mics we've got a left and a right channel or the left mic and the right Mike as you can see here we've got the the guitar 1 and guitar to the guitar one is in this case the left one right and then the guitar 2 is the right one and so over here and the input we changed it to right stereo in and left stereo in and then it's got just a standard stereo out and so that way we get that dynamic sound so go ahead and start from the very beginning from zero zero and you will hear what we do to get everything time together so go ahead and start it there so it won't be anything for the first a little bit and in this case what we usually do is we do a count down so do one now this requires you to be able to understand what the song is going to sound like in your head you have to be able to say okay it's gonna have this intro you have to know the arrangement of the song everybody that plays need to know the arrangement of the song but by having that count down it kind of helps everybody fall into place and you've got to pretend like everybody's playing along you have to play dynamically but that's just part of the process so we do the guitar track after we've got a guitar track we'd go ahead and once we got the mic set up we do the guitar break so go ahead and slide down there and do the guitar rhythm and the break at the same time you can see it there yes go ahead [Music] so if you'll notice here we don't have the levels adjusted yet but this should give you an idea of what it's going to look like so next we do base so we do like the chord progression and then we're going to do our timing corn X which is going to be based in mandoline so we do bass next go ahead and play all of them with the bass there okay so yet again here we got left stereo and right stereo and for the bass we have that left and right and then we do the mandolin so go ahead and do the mandolin we do the chop first usually as a track and then we knew the the break as a separate track so go ahead and play that and then go down here to the break in a second as well [Music] that's a fill there in the back and let's go and go to the break real quick do the mandolin break and then the last thing we're going to do is the band right now we don't have the banjo actually done yet because Denver likes to take his time doing it so this is just me coming over here and doing this in a day and we do a group of songs in a day and so what he's gonna do is in the same process do that left the left stereo and right stereo in just like we showed and do the banjo and then we start adjusting levels and then we can basically master it which is adjusting the overall volumes and overall eq's and then we release some music for vocals we would usually just do a mono or a mono in right yep so just one track and then we would use that dynamics around line for that and so it would just be instead of having you know here we can see two for each one it would just be one it would be one vocal and then if it was a harmony the harmony would be at the same way it would just be one mono vocal track as well so it's gonna open up one that we've done here on the channel so we can take a look at what it looks like when it's all done some of the effects we can talk about some of the effects and some of the mixing in it okay to walk you through this process one more time we're going to show an example of a song we released a little bit ago which is Birmingham turning around turn around Keith Whitley tune so you open up a new project you're going to select the record button on it helps if you know the software but you're gonna select the record for the two tracks and you're gonna record them at the same time you can see here we've got a mandolin a mandolin right a mandolin left guitar right guitar left and these I actually recorded at my house and sent to Denver when you record or when you send something like this to someone else like let's say you're sending the guitar to us what you're going to do is send a mp3 of the guitar left so everything is muted except for the guitar left and then you're going to meet everything and send the guitar right and so that way we can import both of them and edit them both both of them separately and so when I send stuff to Denver I do that for every instrument for every track for every vocal part so let's go ahead and play a little bit of this and we'll talk about some of the mixing stuff that we do here so you can see here Denver put in as his van der track is the one that has a higher gain on it his mics are way more sensitive than mine way more dynamic so the gains are very different so he's got to adjust the volumes on mine a little bit differently than he just the volumes on his and you can see here is the the vocal track that you can see that it's got the harmony part coming in here so the rest of it I just leave blank Excel the rest of it just for that part when you come in with the harmony so that's basically what a break track would be is that before and after it would be blank or mute and then you would actually just play the break that way you don't muddy up the sound any anything like that you crop it at the front in the back you mix the volumes get it the way you like it and yeah you're good to go when you export something if you know how to use the software you just usually go to file export and then save it as an mp3 or audio mix down is what most the software's call their mp3 exporting [Music] all right so for the fourth part we're going to talk a little bit about our process we picked the song we said we want to do leaving it's a James king song we heard it on YouTube and we want to do it in this very similar arrangement and - a fiddle break so I decided we're gonna do in the same arrangement three versus three choruses three breaks it's going to be guitar mandolin banjo kick guitar mandolin banjo then turn around at the end where we'll go to a five so I figured out the arrangement I wanted that I did a scratch guitar track to just get an idea of what it's going to sound like altogether I did the actual guitar track I did the actual bass track I did the mandolin track and then I would usually go ahead and just do the vocal track what I'm going to do is go home and do the vocal and send it to Denver and he'll import that later he's gonna go ahead and do the banjo track and then he's gonna mix it I had every thought all the effects he needs it's gonna EQ it which is going to take out some of the notes that are off too often and they're too often being played or too loud and sound that's mudding up the sound and then we're gonna add reverb and other effects like that and we'll talk about that stuff maybe in a future video a little bit more about that but that's a really lengthy process and it usually takes a long time to mix and master and then we would once we got everything mixed mastered we would export it I slap it on a video and we put it on YouTube [Music] [Music] strange [Music] you're way [Music] so that is how we release our music I hope this helps you guys in some ways and gives you an idea of how to set up a home studio for bluegrass music and how we get our sound if you want to record with us let us know in the comments below obviously we're not gonna be able to record with everybody but we do plan to record some friends in the near future and may even be able to record with you so from for Denver Smith and myself thank you guys so much for watching catch the tugboats I should shown your use in and make sure you hit that subscribe button if you have enjoyed until next time guys keep picking [Music] [Music]

Channel: The Tugboats

Views: 2,309

Keywords: the tugboats, the tugboats bluegrass

Id: 72Xq6CTm2CM

Length: 25min 55sec (1555 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2019