Make Better Music Without Mixing - Here's How!

one of the greatest Engineers to ever live Al Schmidt was known to hone in the sound of a record from the beginning of the recording process rather than expecting to fix everything later on with EQ in the mixing phase if an instrument didn't sound good through a particular mic he might choose a different microphone or position the microphone differently until it did sound good in a way the mixing process began long before the record button was ever pressed if you're working on a session with Al Schmidt let's take a look at how we can adopt this same mindset into our own recording process [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] this currently sounds a bit bass heavy so let's try moving the mic away from the guitar a bit to reduce the proximity effect so instead of being so close here very close proximity to the Guitar let's move at the back of here all right so a little bit more distance of course at this distance it means that the signal from the guitar will be quieter because there's more distance between the guitar and the mic which means that we would need to turn the preamp gain up to achieve the same level and when you turn the preamp gain up the noise level will increase as well yeah there's something noisy in here let's see if we can fix that before recording instead of trying to fix it later on it's this light up here so I'm going to turn the light off it might get a little bit dark but it's for a good cause audio so let me turn that off and we'll continue ah much better so I'm going to delete this recording now if you're wondering this OC 818 microphone it's a front capsule and a rear capsule and then with this plug-in here we're doing some cool stuff where we can change the polar pattern so it is one microphone but it has two outputs so if it looks a little weird right here that's why let's go ahead and roll again so this time with more distance between the guitar and the mic [Music] thank you [Music] the sound is more balanced because there isn't as much bass buildup due to the proximity effect a similar thing could be achieved by using an omnidirectional microphone let's take a look at what that would look like this particular microphone is a multi-pattern mic which means that I can switch between cardioid or figure eight or Omni or whatever blend in between now directional microphones are the only ones that are susceptible to the proximity effect that means that if we switch this to Omni mode it won't have that base buildup as the mic gets closer to the instrument like I said though this is a dual capsule mic so I can change the polar pattern using this plug-in instead let's get the mic closer to the guitar like we did before and we'll listen to how we can change the polar pattern and change the proximity effect at the same time [Music] so if we open up polar designer the Austrian audio plugin we can do one band at a time where everything is all handled as the same polar pattern or if you wanted certain bands to have you know more directionality than others you could get crazy with it for this example let's do a one band where all frequencies are treated the same and then here is cardioid so that's a directional pattern and then if we go even more directional we'll have more proximity effect [Music] however if we take this back to Omni we won't have any proximity effect at all [Music] so if using an omni microphone you can get the mic much closer to the instrument and capture those finer details have a greater signal to noise ratio between the instrument and the surrounding noise and you don't have to pay the price of the proximity effect causing too much base buildup it's a situational decision that you'll have to make in your own session but let's hear how the proximity effect changes as we go between these polar patterns [Music] thank you foreign [Music] is a great mic for capturing acoustic guitar it's one of my favorites but let's say for this particular song we want a guitar sound with a bit more color which can be achieved by using a tube microphone like the Loudon la-320 let's close all this we'll mute these microphones here and we will unmute and arm the la320 thank you [Music] and let's listen to how that sounds [Music] thank you the guitar currently sounds pretty great on its own but let's say that we'll ultimately need a guitar sound that leaves a little bit of room in the low frequencies because there's a baritone vocal or a prominent bass sound in the song maybe we can achieve that contextual Sound by experimenting with the switches on the microphone so this particular microphone has a high pass filter which starts at about 120 hertz and a low pass filter which starts at about 12 kilohertz so let's Engage The high pass filter to remove some of those lows from the acoustic guitar again it might sound great alone but ultimately this is going to be mixed with a lot of other instruments and everything needs to fit together well [Music] let's see how that sounds [Music] a switch like this can be found on many different microphones the low roll off on this mic attenuates or reduces the level of frequencies below about 120 hertz you'll often hear an improvement in Clarity when you do this let me know in the comments if you know why okay back to the guitar this is a beautiful guitar sound as is but again think about it in the context of a mix while a bright acoustic guitar sound like this might be desirable for many genres maybe this particular song has a lot of other things happening in the highs like vocals electric guitar symbols Etc you might have Luck instead of placing the microphone on this side moving it over here to focus on the sound of the body foreign [Music] foreign [Music] okay that sounded pretty good but another way to accomplish this might be to use the same mic positioning with a different type of microphone like a ribbon mic that will be more smooth in the highs and high mids let's try using this Cloud 44 ribbon microphone and we'll keep it in the same position but due to the frequency response of this mic and the way it responds to those high frequencies it may accomplish a similar goal that we accomplish by moving the condenser over to the other side let's arm the cloud 44 and mute the other recording and we'll test this out here [Music] foreign [Music] okay that sounds pretty good the ribbon microphone did indeed help to smooth out those Highs but we lost the low roll-off that we were using so we would need to use a EQ or a high pass filter of some sort separately from the microphone in order to get rid of some of those lows let's try something let's place the Loudon la320 where it was initially but this time we'll use both the high pass filter and the low pass filter [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] now the guitar might sound a little bit dark alone but in the context of the mix this open yet compact guitar sound might be exactly what's needed these decisions will ultimately be based on your unique mix though and that means you have to make the final call based on the target sound and the tools you're using to achieve it but this is why it's so important to have a Target sound from the beginning if you don't know where you're going or if you drift off course early in the process it will become more and more difficult to find your way back with EQ and plugins later the ear Training Method I'll show you in the next video will help you to stay on course go ahead and click the video that's on your screen now and I'll see you over there

Channel: Audio University

Views: 41,324

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Id: EuxgHkIg1FA

Length: 14min 27sec (867 seconds)

Published: Thu May 25 2023