Recording with the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 Studio Bundle - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

hi it's Warren Hewitt here with produced like a pro have been doing marvelously well we are going to check out the Focusrite Scarlett studio the Focusrite Scarlett studio is a studio in a box it's an interface it is headphones and also a microphone it also comes with Cubase le which is the light version of Cubase I don't know to use Cubase I did years ago but I use Pro Tools so what we're going to do is we're going to use the interface the headphones and the microphone with Pro Tools 10 which I have on my laptop over here so let's open it up so here we have it we have an interface so here we have two microprose you have an XLR input around this outside here and on the inside you have a quarter inch input this quarter inch input is selectable between line and instrument and the reason for that is is that you'll get different impedance for each one of those inputs for a line input you're probably going to have a lot of output you know so if you wanted to take a synthesizer which can have a ton of output you select it to line if it's an instrument like a DI from a guitar there'd be a lot lower input so it's probably padding the input stage so it's like a pad for the GI and here we have a gain control here obviously for our preamp which works for everything obviously the mic pre whether it be line instrument or XLR input so you have two of those which are identical so you can do stereo keyboards you can do guitar bass stereo you know my King on instruments etc so it covers most most things to be honest with with exception of doing like a full drum kit you could probably do 90% of recording using this okay um here is your phantom on/off for your condenser microphone here is a control allowing you to listen to the direct signal or the monitor signal well that would mean is like if you just wanted to listen to the input coming in here or the monitor the actual mix here is an overall volume control which goes to our output on the back flip it around you'll see a left-to-right output these would go to powered speakers or power amp and speakers but presumably in a setup like this I would just have a pair of small powered speakers and then last but no means least is our headphone control so obviously if I was working on my own which I'm going to be I would just turn down the monitors if there was monitors attached and just monitor using the headphones also on the back is of course the USB connection which goes into our computer okay so that's pretty straightforward nicely laid out makes perfect sense to me USB cable to connect it next is our microphone it's a little mini condenser it's not tiny but it's a smaller condenser it's a cardioid condenser 90% of the time you're only going to use your microphone or cardio anyway if you if you wanted to use hyper or super cardioid that would be in a live situation or where you have a lot of mics going on the same source I rarely you know even when I'm using expensive mics like you 67's or you 87's I very rarely use them on anything except for cardioid unless I'm using them as an omni position in a room or a figure of 8 where I'm trying to get source on either side 99% of the time I'm on cardioid so this will get you through most situations straightforward looking a little mic I'm assuming this is the front as per usual you got logo and cardioid symbol on the front mic cable so nicely in red for Scarlett how are you great thinking okay so there's our mic cable mic clip and last but no means least a pair of focusrite scarlett headphones if you've watched any of my other videos you'll notice I did a five key components of a recording studio when you're first starting um and this pretty much covers most of it you know you've got your di W you've got your microphone interface and headphones I mean this is this is the beginning of making music so it's a good little thing I'm glad that they make this because a lot of people there's so much choice in headphones and microphones and interfaces and a lot of them are very comparable so I'm glad that somebody has done an all-in-one system like this because it takes a lot of the guesswork out of it because ultimately if you end up buying this and you become like an incredible producer engineer you're going to change out things as you go might change your headphones what you first might do is get in more expensive mic etc etc so it's nice to get it all in one go and take that choice out so let's see what it sounds like ok so it's just quickly connected pretty straightforward two completely different cables so even if I try couldn't plug in the wrong end and trust me I would if I could okay and it lit up yay we have power okay let us open Pro Tools we have a protist 10 on this laptop not the latest and greatest but the one that works really well on this laptop this is an older laptop at least by modern standards it's about 6 years old all right so let's create a rock guitar setting so let's just save it on the desktop as rock guitar focus right great okay let's make it large comes within and without an adapter which is nice which means I can use this straight so this could be my headphones this is actually quite obviously useful because if I do end up using these headphones and liking them I might want to monitor and use them for lots of different sources because being familiar with something is probably more important than the product itself like if you know these headphones inside and out and you use them in different sources then you're going to be a mix on them because you'll be able to use to hearing mixes on them okay so let's change our playback engine in Pro Tools to see the focusrite scarlett 2i2 USB comes in now I didn't load any drivers so that's nice it just recognizes it straight away god bless it I think on a PC you might have to load the drivers but on an Apple it comes up straight away so it's going to reopen the session now run headphones yeah there is the headphone sound good I'm used to using ultrasound headphones and they have a lot of highs and a lot of a really tough mid-range this is a little softer in the mid-range good bottom end but definitely usable and like I was saying earlier if you know your headphones that's more important because I could take this adapter off and plug it into my iphone and listen to some music and get used to hearing you know great recordings and mixers and then when I plug back in here my ear is going to be accustomed to it so alright so let's try out the mic prease let's do a guitar let's start on an electric guitar part we have a loop ready to go here we'll just write a song and try this thing out let's plug in what Pacifica here and as you've watched any of my other videos you know that I like this guitar a lot and one of the things I like about it as it costs about 600 bucks and a single Duncan pickups okey dokey so let's have a listen okay so we're going to have to go in here and set up our i/o properly okay I'm not sure why it did that it might just be you know because we changed to the focus right from the i/o but you can see I just dragged it over hopefully will come to life let's go to our rhythm guitar okay so we're on instrument plugged into the middle here gains on zero at the moment or nothing I should say okay looks like an e qs come up out not on so that's good it's there ready to go 11 has given us like a vintage CR whatever that is there's a little bit of latency Mitel come through on on the camera but I'm just feeling a little bit now it's probably doable if I go to my setup here and go to the hard playback engine I've got the minimize additional IO latency on I take it off spare the soon it's about the same but let's put it back on see what it's doing so here's with the minimized additional IO licensee on it's okay but if I mute here for instance and select my direct monitor and put it on I'm just going to hear the DI there's quite a high output from this pick up and so my gains on zero here it would lead me to believe that if you have an active guitar you might have to be careful because you know that this is just normal passive you know Seymour Duncan's but if these were like EMGs or something had a lot more output or even even more powerful active pickups like that I'm not sure of zero would be enough here cool so I'm this is what I'm going to do I'm going to monitor just the DI so I don't hear the latency just to try make it up some funky real cool listen back to that with the effect on we'll see what it feels like cutter works I mean what I'm going to do now is just for Smitty niggles is I'm going to play that you know monitoring it without the direct on so to take the direct off and see if that latency is killing me or not cool I could definitely hear the latency is to see what it's like on the plate compared to this it's definitely more in the pocket when I don't hear the latency so that's kind of a nice feature then you know so what I'm doing is I'm going I'm selecting the direct monitor so I'm just turning the signal coming in and then I am muting it here and then I'm just turning the DI it's not as pleasing to list too however sometimes you know obviously you can be recording of amps and stuff as long in that bigger issue okay so let's take this eight bars of it here so I'm going to highlight that and do an option R and I'm going to make that I don't know twelve so there we go far more than we need and there we go now we have guitar part here okay so we tried the DI let's try the DI / bass so we're going to create a base input so it's a quarter stereo track the bass one they've given us as an instrument one so let's do this I do shift option D ad to play this alternative playlist no no no nothing's groups it doesn't matter okay and it just basically duplicates this input here so that gives us like if I gives me an amp on it and EQ ready to go and I'll just rename it bass guitar it's a bass already a little bit of peaking there see what it's like in the really in the track because we're not printing with these effects on I don't have if I want to do a little less Distortion I like in this grit but if I want to do a little less I cannot adjust it up okay so I'm going to turn this off so I'm not monitoring that cool so just a quick groove idea to follow that same thing take eight bars option are probably only four and there you go all right so that's cool let's put the MU that hero kind of like that with the grill on it but I'm going to bring it down just a little bit cool works nicely okay all right I don't think we need to do any lead guitarist tried the microphone input okay great so we have our Scarlett on a stand here I'll scarlet Mike it is called the CM 25 by the way so I'm going to flip it round like this and I'm going to make up my acoustic like so so what I've got is I've got it somewhere between the 12th and 14th threat I'm slightly tilted away from the sound hole as well so it's not to boo me okay so let's plug it up Mike we're going to put two so let's leave my di certain I personally like to leave things as setup as possible because when I'm working on my own and writing I like to be able to just move quickly between things so my template here they don't have something so what I'm going to do is I'm going to make just create a brand new track shift command and create one new mono audio track return let's call it COO stick going input to phantom okay let's do the same trick I'm going to it's on direct monitor so I'm going to mute it there sounds good okay so let's just jam along so I can pick up some acoustic guitar to go along with this funky guitar got something that works okay we have the occasional peek I don't really care about that option see don't reduce your input level just for one or two tiny Peaks whatever people tell you don't because an occasional clip is not going to kill you oh that's fine so take that eight bar section create a new track here copy it in do again option are let's make it seven there it is okay so now we have an acoustic there do a really quick mix of our elements cop so there it goes it's kind of nice well I'm going to solo that acoustic and give it a listen alright so this is a really inexpensive system so whoo that's a pretty damn good sound like I'm not a singer so I'm going to make something up on the spot and humiliate myself just to see what it sounds like as a vocal mic okay so it's creating a double audio track because it's going to come in that same input same thing shift option D don't need the Attic plug at alternative players nope just go here call this vocal seven lesson Center this again mother that okay so a little bit of a latency I'm hearing so I'm going to flick over to my direct monitor only la-la-la probably a little hot I'm not using a pop screen we're doing this quickly to test it out so I have no idea what I'm going to sing I'm not even a singer I write the songs my fencing batter batter batter all right okay got a little bit of a peak there which I can't deal with it went on a little bit too long so let's just bring the input down a little bit occasional transient peak is going to be okay but it comes to like a vocal staying red for a you know that long we don't want that cool so probably split the difference on the signal you could get a little bit hotter but that feels about right okay so what I'm going to do here is do shift option D and I'm going to leave active playlist so I'm going to duplicate the whole thing here okay so it's a full bar phrase I'm gonna take the second four bars laid over the first take the first four bars like this lay them over the second they go record and seven listen okay cool so it's a very simple little you know could be a commercial on TV there you go you can write your own commercials it's really really straightforward that's a good sailing bike for add a better banner bar but a better badder and bird amber but works perfectly well um let's put a little let's see what comes of standard here cool so we're opieop channel strip here Pro Tools one add a batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter number better better better and bad just release time super fast add a batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter batter number but a better badder and badder better go quick bit of compression there put that on Buzz great so there you go in 15 minutes we have written and recorded a star and Cadbury's commercial coming to you any day no that's really straightforward so it's good that's a good telling Mike I mean it's a really expensive system so obviously I'm using ProTools as my da W because that's what I'm most familiar with but those of you that are familiar with Cubase or you're starting off from the beginning you know it comes with Cubase le and everything I'm just doing there you're going to be able to do that's a template that Pro Tools provides with a drum beat already in it I could play a drum beat in obviously everything else that's on here could be you know the only other thing we haven't tested is maybe a line in from a keyboard but you're going to go in and it's going to select it to line as opposed to instrument otherwise we've tested all the functions really straightforward you could obviously plug in some powered speakers as well but we're just keeping it to the things that they supply headphones sound good it's quick and easy to use obviously if you've got questions and stuff on settings and everything please leave them in the comments below and thanks for watching produce like a pro

Channel: Produce Like A Pro

Views: 1,314,013

Keywords: warren huart, produce like a pro, home studio, home recording, recording, audio, music production, record producer, recording studio, focusrite, scarlett 2i2, focusrite scarlett studio bundle

Id: UdeSbvVba-o

Length: 25min 21sec (1521 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2016