How to Sound Like "Men I Trust" in Your Home Studio

[Music] so this is quite possibly the best sounding live session that I've ever heard besides the radio head basement session whenever I first heard of Min trust I saw this video and it completely blew me away I thought it was a music video and if you look at the space that they're working within it looks kind of junky but under all of that junk you'll start to realize that it's actually a really good sounding space so here's what we're going to do we're going to analyze and react to this live session then I'm going to use a very limited number of microphones in order to reproduce this session as accurately as possible the goal here is to show you how to get just as good of a sound from your own home studio as you would see in this video so here's the twist though senheiser noyman which they're the same company now they reached out cuz they wanted to sponsor a video like this I always want to make sure that any sort of integration like this is helpful and beneficial to you so we're only going to use this microphone the senheiser MK4 and a nyman MCM 1114 snare mic nyman also provided their new interface the mt48 a very nice interface and I'm very excited but if you can't afford an interface like this don't worry too much you can use any two input interface to do a similar thing that's enough Preamble let's just get into [Music] it I already have something to say so one thing you'll start to learn every single material on the planet has a different absorption index we know this intuitively but different materials are better at absorbing sound than others so this entire room is made out of plywood which is a great acoustic material actually it's covered also in curtains and it also has a carpet on the ground and sounds weird it's full of human beings human beings are actually really absorptive materials I will put on screen a little caption so you can see just how absorptive these different materials including humans are looks like we have just two sm57s one sm57 on the kick drum one on the snare I don't see a microphone on those symbols I love him so much dude I hope this isn't mean he reminds me of Franklin the Turtle he's also playing incredibly quietly so while this is already a pretty absorptive space it's a live drum kit he probably doesn't want to bleed too much into all of the other instruments especially the [Music] vocals so Emma is singing into a small diaphragm condenser that looks like Ayman k M 184 if I had to guess this is a really great microphone to choose for vocals I think a lot of people think that a small diaphragm condenser or like these little pencil microphones are objectively worse than a large diaphragm condenser it's not really the case actually a lot of times a small diaphragm condenser can give you a far more accurate sound than a large diaphragm condenser and that's because the rigidity of the capsule you got to think if the capsule is a lot smaller that diaphragm is going to move at a less flexible rate and the result is a polar pattern which basically just describes the directionality that a microphone picks up sound that polar pattern is a bit more accurate so you'll get more of a directional signal in the low end with a small diaphragm condenser than you would in a large diaphragm condenser so it might sound a little less warm but that's really just because it's a more accurate less stylized [Music] signal mini trust is a really good example of how you can get a really cool really contemporary really chill sound in a live setting and that's partially because hey the drummer is really quiet but Emma the singer is also very quiet she's singing with a ton of breath in her voice she's using a lot of her head voice soft palette and that is not going to reverberate in the room as much as say a belt would and you're just going to get a cleaner signal okay uh the course has vocal doubles I'm just noticing that so not entirely a live session now obviously we do have what looks like a guitar amp here what looks like a bass amp that the basist is sitting on and then very clearly the keyboard is di but if you look here this is a DI box meaning that he's splitting the signal of his guitar one going into an amp we don't really know if it's being recorded we can't see it and the other one is definitely going di there looks like there is a preamp of some sort next to the basist so the basist could not be going through his BAS amp could be going directly through whatever that is whether it's a preamp compressor it looks like a preamp and then [Music] di God that is such a good [Music] tone there's a few things here guitar pedal wise that we can probably assume are contributing to that kind of tone the main thing here though is an auto sounds like there could potentially be a flanger or a phaser on it as well overdrive that's what I think is probably comprising that guitar [Music] tone sick okay so with all that in mind let's recap the drums are super simple looks like there's only two 57s one for the kick and one for the snare now there's a lot of prominent high hat in that sound so if I were a guessing person and this is how I'm going to approach this mix I'm going to use a kick and a snare mic and then duplicate that snare mic one of which is eqed and mixed for snare one of which has a really crazy EQ just to bring out the high hat signal running in parallel then for the Bas because that looks like an outboard preamp I'm going to assume he's running di in order to recreate that sound we're going to use a digital preamp emulation super simple now for the guitars I'm of the opinion that the Vox and this amp that the guitarist is playing through they're not miked I don't think they're actually making it into the actual recording so I'm going to assume that both guitar signals are running through an amp simulation using the effects that I had mentioned prior the keyboard is easy enough that is just a DI signal and then for the vocal we're going to sing very quietly very breathy and we're going to use a condenser microphone we're going to use the MK4 cuz that's what we have available to us but if you have a small diaphragm condenser you might want to reach for that all in all this sort of setup is very simple but very effective even though they're all playing in a room that many might consider to be not ideal or you know whatever and that I think is plenty to get started on this one I probably will spend most of my time learning the solo see you back here soon all right welcome back this one did not take as long as the others and really quick these videos are insanely hard to make if you look at the uh subscriber count we're really not that big of a channel the way these videos survive is when the algorithm rewards use your engagement so if you could subscribe like and comment just all the things that help boost this video if you enjoy this video seriously it helps me more than I ever realized so thank you so as you know a big part of this one that was different from all the other forensic Productions all the track Recreations that we've done in the past this one we're working with a really limited palette One S iser MK4 our nyman mt48 interface and a nyman MCM 1114 snare mic that's all we had and the reason I'm bringing that up first is because when we went to go record the drums we're working with a really limited number of mics so we put the MK4 on the kick drum and we put the snare mic obviously on the snare but there's one big difference in the way that we're miking this that I completely forgot to mention in the first half of this video if you look back at the video you'll actually see their SM 57 is pointed towards the high hat this is not typical we're usually trying to reject as much high hat noise as possible so typically we put that snare facing away from the high hat and towards the center of the drum but this way we got way more high hat bleed and if you don't have any overheads to mic that high hat that's actually advantageous but I still did that original idea on a parallel track I used a high past EQ boosted up the treble and then added a bit of compression to emulate more of a high hat overhead sound that's giving the snare a lot of its brightness and it's also making the high hat much more prominent you can actually listen with and without it right [Music] now and just to give you guys a different flavor of how the drums could have gone we also recorded the drums with a three mic setup one Sennheiser e902 on the kick the MK4 as a mono overhead and still using the MCM as the snare mic so here you can check out what that three mic setup sounds like as compared to a two mic [Music] setup and as always shout out to mhj for being on all of our tracks our drumming hero of the day of the year of the month wait yeah whatever here's his contact information if you need drums done so for our purposes and recreating this track I actually think the two mic setup is more accurate we'll be using that one BAS if there's one thing I can drill into your head about a mini trust track if you don't get the bass tone right you don't have a mini trust track so for the bass if you guys are familiar with the band juice our boy Ramy from juice played the bass here's all of his info go follow him for sure I had originally chose to play the bass on this track and I did record aart I recorded my bass part it just sucked and the reason why is and it's a very specific reason why too if you watch the bass on the track he's playing a fender short scale Mustang and he's using a pick and palm muting the entire time I was palm muting but I was using my thumb and I was using you know a normal my jazz Basse well it just kind of sounded like a bass and it's fine I guess but if I would have just stuck to using my typical you know with a thumb palm muting typical bass tone it wouldn't have made it you know this track wouldn't have got there Ramy came in not only played way Tighter and more accurately than I did but he's got the exact same Basse that we needed he's playing with flat lounds which gives it a nice funky dark sound and yeah just played way more Tastefully than me check out my bass playing versus ramy's bass [Music] [Music] playing we recorded him Di and the DI tones on this preamp are insane using the onboard compressor on the mt48 we used about a 2:1 ratio so we had a little bit of compression already going in that gave the Basse a really nice present attitude whenever we were tracking we actually also used the onboard EQ and had a nice presence boost to give it a bit of a cut we basically did nothing else to the base I added ableton's ampamp simulator made it very clean very subtle they're a little bit too powerful if you let it just you know stay at 100% mix but that's really about it the right the bass a crazy good player flat wounds Palm muted with a pick compression on the way in and a good amp simulator and that's all we needed it was already 90% there without even doing any of that keys were again super easy I had our resident keyboardist Jordan come in if you saw him in the hoser track you know that he's a monster on the keys all I did was lay out a midi keyboard let him track using a basic Road simulator ended up using the contact 7 keyboard emulators and really the only thing to note is during the outro we use volume automation to boost him up a lot higher to basically account for the fact that one of the guitars that was playing rhythm is now taking a solo and you'll notice if you listen to the track that it sounds like a flanger or a phaser comes on a lot more aggressively on the keyboard during the outro so we also automated a flanger and a phaser to come on that's really it with the keyboards all done through midi all done through emulations didn't feel any need to use a proper keyboard during this one [Music] guitars this is the only part I would say was definitively really hard not only just to learn his Parts cuz he bends into everything but also I probably went through like four or five different trial runs to find a guitar tone that I liked starting with the lead tone that you hear in the intro I did an amp recording I did a completely clean di meaning just straight up guitar into inace then I did my guitar and pedal board into Di and by the way when I'm going di I'm always using the onboard compressor on the mt48 doing about a 2 to1 ratio just doing some minor compression I think it makes my performance a little bit nicer a little bit more present and it's a very beautiful di tone it was it was awesome to use and then I did the exact same testing for the solo an amp tone a clean Di and a pedal board di on both options and I think very true to what they did in their performances I ended up going with the guitar and pedal board through di so no amps were ever used on this recording every single stringed instrument was a DI sound and based off of the conjecture that we saw in the first half of this video I think that's about what they did as well and there's a couple key things to think of when you're going after this guitar tone first off I don't want you thinking that you have to look at the mini trust pedal board and you need that pedal board you need an overdrive you need one overdrive set that overdrive to have plenty of base and mid presence and just cut that treble cut it to like 10 15% that's what I did I have a Wampler tness that's what I use for my overdrive pretty much all the rest of the tone you can get using just digital emulations except for one thing I was going to be kind of bold and was not going to use a w pedal was going to try and essentially make a w pedal in the DAW and Route it to a midi knob and do it in post it didn't work it just didn't work so I ended up buying a Dunlop crybaby mini w super important to the guitar tone and that's because of the solo on the uh on the outro watching back his performance it doesn't actually look like he's playing with a W he might have an auto W on or something but that's really not the point the point I'm trying to make is that you need this kind of cocked W sound this essentially means keeping the W pedal uh about 75% onto like the basier darker side and just kind of existing in that land and venturing out of it ever so slightly during all the phrases of the solo you know if he's going to a high note I might go pretty close to the treble side but I'm mostly staying in that cocked Wat territory that made my guitar tone if I didn't do that if I didn't get a w pedal I don't think I was going to be able to do it and then in order to get the guitar more accurate it was a lot of low pass filtering and post definitely using corus simulations if you've got a COR simulation any cor simulation put it on all the guitars tube emulations the saturator plugin and Ableton Paramount to this kind of tone okay so let's hear the intro phrase both mixed and unmixed and a couple phrases from the solo mixed and unmixed [Music] [Music] oh you can see I'm cutting a lot of information and that's a key point I want to make here start with something that's too much and chop it down in the mix if you start with something that was too conservative you can't make up that Trel information and post it's gone it was never there in the first place so just because it doesn't sound completely accurate yet does that mean you can't make it accurate whenever you're working in the mix vocals were super simple senheiser sent one of the mk4s over to Rachel Hardy and she sung it perfectly that's all that that's what happened and if somehow you haven't heard of Rachel Hardy please go check her Channel out it's a really cool mix of amazing vocal covers and like medieval stuff I don't know just go watch it you're going to really like it I promise it's a really breathy mixed quiet sound sung close to the microphone to get the bigger proximity effect sort of thing I didn't EQ her voice it was already really accurate as is I put one La 2A emulation on her to make it a little bit louder I used one harmonic saturation plugin and then one vocal compression chain in parallel one is an 1176 emulation one is a distressor emulation and the third is fresh air mix it into the other signal you add a bit of breath and treble to the vocal but because you're not eqing the main vocal like that you're not cannibalizing all the warmth that you would normally get by not eqing like that here's the vocal mixed and unmixed and with the parallel end and without the parallel he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going and then the final step is one of my new favorite trends that I use called the rear bus from Andrew sheps took it from my hos your video I send every single harmonic instrument meaning every instrument that's not a drum or Rhythm to a separate 1176 emulation effectively creating a parallel compression track for all the harmonic instruments that is in parallel to the actual mix and then those get blended into the master and that's the mix and with all that we are ready to watch the mix see you on the other [Applause] [Music] side [Music] in the shadows he saw four eyes slip by fire fire he never done that with the L before before [Music] meanwhile everyone else got lost in quiet by the [Music] river seeking for more of course he from better he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going what he saw was different he should have gone to bed but instead he s around for the moon in the shadows he saw four eyes lit by fire fire he'd never done that with a l before before [Music] either early or late it was number seven and it [Music] happened I like a bird with his speak through the [Music] window he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on going what he saw was different he should have gone to bed but instead he suck around for the moon he saw them they saw him but everyone just kept on [Music] going what he saw was different he should have gone to bed but instead he stuck around for the move [Music] w [Music] [Applause] you seeing [Music] more you seeking for more you're seeking for more you are seeking for more [Music] all right I hope that was helpful thank you guys for watching thanks to noyman and senheiser for sponsoring this one and I will see you very soon byebye

Channel: AudioHaze

Views: 126,484

Keywords: Men I trust, Men I trust Sound, How to Sound like Men I trust, AudioHaze, Audio Haze, AudioHaze Phoebe Bridgers, How to Sound Like, Men I trust tutorial, Sennheiser, NeumannMCM, Sennheisermk4, NeumannMT48, MT48

Id: O441r8ThefY

Length: 21min 31sec (1291 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 27 2023