D.I.Y Band recording - how to record band rehearsals, gigs, videos... micing drums, guitar and bass

[Music] recording and capturing crate sound with your band is easier than you think in this video we're going to show you how we mark the drums hook the bass and guitar to our recording mixer we've developed a very straightforward way to do this because we want to do this every band rehearsal and every gig our setup gives us a very nice in-ear monitor mix but also we are able to capture multitrack audio that we can use in videos and recordings and also to kind of fine tune our Arrangements we can listen back to our rehearsals during the week and it's a great tool in every possible way [Music] [Applause] [Music] we begin with the most mysterious part miking the Trump's recently we got a great level up with our drum sound as we received this back from Louis it's got everything that we need to get a great drum sound kick snare three Tom mics and a pair of overheads the fact that all the mics are from the same kit makes our job even easier as these mics were designed to work together we use six microphones a couple of clips three microphone stands stereo bar and a bunch of XLR cables that are not in the picture we have a very short mic stand for the kick drum we place the microphone slightly inside the hole and point it towards the beater bus bus our own kick mic from Louis is kind of special it has both dynamic and condenser capsules inside you get a cable and a separate output for both of these capsules for us the condenser capsule gives a little bit more punchy ER sound and we prefer to use that this is our zone recorder let's give it some color here's the kick microphone we just simply hook the microphone cable to our mixer make sure the gain is right it doesn't clip and that's just about it [Music] l12 has eight Mike briefs and two stereo inputs and that's just about enough for a small band like ours oh what's really handy is you can create individual headphone mixes to each and every one so plus you can have more bass and I can have louder guitar and Thomas wants a little bit more click when we play with backing tracks [Music] we capture the snare with MTB 440 and that gives us that full punchy close-up sound to be able to reduce the snare we use a short mic stand beautifully de Rivoli beer belly [Music] [Music] the less microphone stamps you need the better we use clips to mount the microphones for the Tom's Pico Tommy big Tommy isaw told me he's not on me he saw Tommy [Music] overhead microphones are very important for the overall drum sound you can mic the overhead see various ways many times you see a bond microphone on the right side and one on the hi-hat side to drum kit what we found out after some experimenting was that we could use a stereo bar and hook both microphones to that and place that over the snare drum then point the other microphone towards the right cymbal and the other one towards the hi-hat what we get is a very good stereo image it picks up the hi-hat very well and the snare just sits perfectly in the center of the story image over it over it over it [Music] [Music] center of my guitar rake is of course the deluxe 40 from choosing catherine the amp is the main source for all the tone but this pedal board gives me all the control and all the effects that I need to fill all this space there's just one snake that carries all the cables back and forth and also MIDI and power so it's a solid unit then of course I got the rock honest guitars cracking frog and frog green guitar Dora katara deluxe 40 has a red box direct out that I use to send the signal to two notes torpedo cab M which is a virtual cabinet it also does power M simulation and EQ it allows me to custom tailor my final tone here the signal runs straight and the channel one of the user [Music] [Applause] [Music] avec de Lawd you lasses bass rick is very simple he has a pedal board with tuner october and a fast bus bus so when we play live lasse uses an amplifier but here we don't need it this pedal board goes to a DI and this di then goes to the mixer [Music] [Music] one thing that is surprisingly important when playing with in-ear monitoring is ambience we have only close mics and bass and guitar direct if you don't have any ambience there in the mix it sounds very odd so we have a separate lexicon rack here that gives us a little bit of room so we can have we kind of have our own venue in our ears when we play so whenever during the rehearsals or when we're working on a song when I feel like it I can press the REC button and this captures the audio on a SD card that is very easy for me to carry to my studio after the rehearsals I just take the SD card and I import the tracks to Cubase once you're done and mix for your band rehearsal recording you can always use this same mix as a template or a starting point for the future recordings just make sure you drag and drop the right tracks to their right places and you get the more or less ready sounding mix already [Music] and now starts the mixing part of this video I encourage you to watch this if you are any interested in sound might give you some ideas even if you are not into mixing in general now while I still remember this remember to watch our five track recording in our band rehearsal place to hear all these sounds in real music and now let's get deep with tweaking the sounds and mixing the audio here's how the kick drum track looks like on my cue bass this is the signal which is a little bit of limiter to boost up the volume dry as it was recorded what I like to do is EQ some of the frequencies around 180 these sound like this cutting away those frequencies clears out the whole thing a little bit then another EQ that boosts high and low frequencies quite a bit with this EQ it sounds like [Music] so it becomes something quite modern already that high low frequency really helps to kick to really be heard in the final mix then I do something that it's really handy with all the clothes my king of drums this is expanding not compressing but expanding this signal so when you have low volume stuff it cuts that even lower and when you have high attack then you hear it as it was originally so without the expander this is what the expander it can also clear some of the boom if you have some long sustaining frequencies with the kick drum [Music] here's snare drum as dry as it was originally recorded with the EQ it sounds like this I don't do much anything except I cut away some frequencies around 250 but the original sound is so great already it doesn't really need much anything then also like with the kick drum I have expander so this will especially be very useful again when other Trump's are starting to play together let's listen how the kick and snare work together one thing we forgot the snare needs some some reverb and gate gate hole [Music] right now it might sound little weird but after we add the overhead microphones he'll sound way much more natural you'll see his rectum and floor tom you might be wondering why I have them on one stereo track it's a long story our mixer has limited amount of inputs blah blah you should record them separately and well anyways here's the dry sound of the original Tom's I just have a little bit of limiter to make it sound loud again and there are little things that I like to do with these is I add again some expander on both of these and focus more on the attack of the sound and then I EQ these a little bit this is the rectum without the EQ and with the EQ [Music] there's some seems to be some frequencies here that sound little nasty yeah it kind of creates strange this is frequency that kind of adds dissonance to the sound of this tone but that's it I don't do anything else for that and same thing for the floor tom well here's a little bit more complex EQ I guess there are some frequencies yeah that I have rather cut out a little and then for their getting a little bit more powerful sound I have some low end and high end boost and then once we add some gay tree bourbon and room to these sorry they may sound again a little wet but these once we get the overheads and whole set together these reverbs help these all these fills with Tom's kind of stand out a little bit more and sounds kinda nice that's it [Music] for the overall drum sound the overheads have a huge impact and this is where the main sound tends to come from this is why the microphones sound without any treatment what I like to do is this is very subtle ich ewing around 2.6 kilohertz I like to cut those a little bit so it sounds a little smoother I [Music] also have here my favorite plug-in soothe which searches for any resonating frequencies and taint those down if you use this too much or aggressively [Music] so had to be a little careful with it and yeah that's it for the overheads finally let's hear it all together let's start with a kick snare and this together with the overheads a couple of things I like to have with the whole drum kit is is some master compressor for the whole thing nothing heavy just add a little bit of punch with that not too fast attack and then some room that's it with the drums let's take a look at the guitar track this is the actual track hidden here we have some automation minor tweaks mostly and well pam a driver is an example where I I I faded the guitar lower and I wanted to give losses slap solo more space so this is basically a live recording kind of thing so I'm doing the kind of things that front-of-house mixer would do in life situation my guitar single is sent to a group where the actual effects are done and there's a little bit of EQ around 2.5 and 5 kilohertz there are some little dips and without the EQ it sounds like [Music] these things are matter to a taste I prefer to cut a little bit of those high mid frequencies out then some parallel compression which I also used to pump up the volume of the guitar a little bit this is mainly to make sure that there's if there's some dynamic things the guitar will sit better in in the mix and it doesn't disappear so easily so that's the point of the compression then there are well the guitar is a mono recording so I have some in places I have some Cathedral kind of reverb I guess here but most of these tracks just have a little bit of delay well this it's quite loud but it's automated so at times it's makes it lower and sometimes louder then we have some room without it it sounds like [Music] delay is kind of it kind of is disappeared in the overall mix and it kind of creates more dimensional sound and so does the doubler this kind of creates a doubling kind of sound kind of adds a little bit of detune kind of things so if I'm a little bit out of tune they the pitch isn't so critical it works really well for other library coatings because yeah it's a little bit of mess and another thing to create some dimension to the guitar sound and also a little bit to the bass as well is a secret thing that I use it's I just realized how incredible this is it's called symphonic it's a classic Yamaha effect from SPX series of rack effects and I actually have it I found it on my mixer I recorded that effect here a little bit sounds like this [Music] [Applause] [Music] in the mix it kind of sounds to me like the band is really playing in the room and creates this kind of a more natural kind of environment sound and I think it's very nice especially for a live in a room kind of recording Lhasa is kind of a wild man so sometimes I need to tame his signal just a little bit here's how the bass sound one of the very first things that I do that is single is I have a plug-in called spiff and this is for the transients the very beginning of the attack there are some clips and I this is a plugin that can control those so basically without it this sounds like you hear those clicks and with the spiff I get to control those so this is the part that we are actually touching [Music] just need to be a little careful not to take all of that out you want to control it not cut it out completely soothe I have here for one reason and that's for losses fuss sound which is kind of steals a little bit too much attention in especially ginger Fox with the soothe it sounds like [Music] you could do the similar kind of thing with an EQ as well but I guess I just like the suit so much the idea is that the bass doesn't steal the whole song in that spot leave some room for the guitar and drums as well then the actual processing is done here in the bass group where I have amp ik plugging from Ike a multimedia I've been using this for 15 years in all my recordings when there's bass there's always this and I have a collection of presets that I've done for all other recordings great blue waves effortless mystery you can see so many songs there and I tweaked and I might say the preset if it sounds good and sometimes I take these old presets as a starting point and here I use the cinnamon valley song bass preset for the starters and without amp ik this bass sounds like it gives volume but it does a whole lot more as well and then there is a little bit of compression some EQ it looks like there's some lower around 90 Hertz there's a boost then there is some cut [Music] and some of the very high frequencies are cut away as well and then there is finally a limiter that might tame some of the highest peaks if there is some left after these plugins and I feed and I add some room reverb and also like I explained in the guitar segment bass is also the symphonic effect it kind of spreads this sound a little bit like it's reverb being in the room and yeah and that's the bass one element in all these songs here is also our backing track we use an iPad to play back our backing track videos and it comes with a stereo output so the left side of this signal is actually click especially Thomas likes to hear the click so we all stay in sync with a with the backing track songs and the right side of the cable comes with a mono backing track mix and it depends on the song sometimes there's very little elements sometimes and more but this is how the backing tracks sound when we play with them for this video mix I actually replace those mono mixes with original stereo mixes of the backing tracks so it sounds a little wider [Music] it's also well thanks to that our playing sounds a little bit bigger without the backing track this part sounds like [Music] [Music] in this session you can see that have the effects here catherdral 1/8 note dr. to delay which I didn't use for the whole project I think one quarter note delay plate reverb room reverb and a dabbler so these are here always available and these are classic I came multimedia plugins and they just sound right to my ear and mastering I have C for two to a multiband kind of limiting thing that kind of keeps the frequencies a little bit together and then just a limiter they're a prequel thing so the signal doesn't get too hot or distorted and that's it it's a very simple mix in the end if you're new to mixing it's a lot of information but step by step exploring and studying I suggest that you start searching YouTube for all sort of tutorials on mixing if you're interested and just start by doing and and studying and exploring and I'm very impressed you got this far thank you for watching I hope you got some inspiration and ideas to your working and work with your band recording mixing I would love to hear your thoughts about this hope this was at least entertaining hope I didn't confuse your head too much remember don't take my work too seriously and don't take your work too seriously explore try out have fun and yeah make great music I'd like to thank Lois for the great microphone update and 2 notes for the cab and always using Kettner [Music] [Music] please subscribe let me hear what kind of videos you'd like to see in the future and also the thoughts so see you soon [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Mr. Fastfinger - Mika Tyyskä

Views: 59,094

Keywords: recording, band, engineering, micing, drums, twonotes, cabm, Mr. Fastfinger, Hughes & Kettner, Mika Tyyskä, produce like a pro

Id: CWpHp7KZHwo

Length: 35min 59sec (2159 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 05 2020