We Recorded an ENTIRE Song w/ Scarlett Solo Studio

[Music] today we are making an entire song with the focusrite scarlett solo studio bundle and the included software be sure to like this channel for more content like this stick around until the end of the video to hear the finished mix when this video gets 200 likes i will post a mix down video showing you exactly how i mix the song using only the included software [Music] there are lots of creative people out there and they often wonder how they can record themselves or simply don't know where to begin today i'm going to show you how easy it can actually be by taking you through the process from start to finish of recording a short song all in one day all i'm going to use to do it is the focusrite scarlett studio bundle focusrite has been generous enough to sponsor this video so we can show you what it's capable of but more importantly so we can show you what you are capable of i'm going to ask the help of my co-workers tay and cal and i will call upon their skills when the time is right the first step is to open this up here we go let's get this out of the way looks like we've got a lot of plastic here so let's take care of that all right first we've got our interface we've got our xlr jack on channel one with the 48 volts phantom power for condenser mics and the famous air mode this model is the isa preamps that focusrite has been famous for for years we've got our gain knob for channel one our line input or instrument input on channel two with the gain knob of course and an instrument impedance button we've got our monitor output knob we've got the included usb cable and of course the matching red xlr cable we've got the included condenser mic with the matching red stripe of course and the focusrite headphones again with the matching red stripe you can't work without matching right next we can plug in our scarlet solo to the computer take the provided usb cable and plug it into the back of the solo and the other side goes to the computer next we can plug in our headphones this volume knob will control the level from the headphones and the monitor outputs on the back now that we have our interface set up we can download the software first go to focusrite.com and create your account within your account you can register a new product scroll down the list until you find the scarlet solo studio third gen when you've found it write in the serial number it's probably case sensitive so be careful what you type and hit submit select let's get you started scroll down and press the register button next put in the info it's asking for of course you bought it from pixel pro audio looks like focus art doesn't have that info updated quite yet no problem we'll just write it in perfect got it next you can download focusrite control by pressing this green download button green is for go the rest of this screen has gifts with instructions that help you if you're getting lost once the software starts downloading you will see it pop up in the corner when it's finished click it and it will open up the installer you'll see it pop up and double click to install it execute the file focusrite control is the driver for the scarlet solo you're gonna need it focusrect control is only necessary on a windows computer these are class compliant on macs within your focusrite account you can redeem all of your software with this bundle you may have to make a few extra accounts to get all of your software but it is well worth it because these are great plugins you are getting absolutely free downloading and installing software is no one's favorite part of getting new gear but it comes with the territory once you download pro tools from avid's website you'll have to install it and activate the license with your new ilock account up next we can start the recording process this song is about an early morning coffee date we wrote this song just for this video so i hope you guys like it now we've got pro tools opening so we can start recording soon all right this is going to be a lot of fun i'm obsessed with recording so i'm really excited to show you guys how to do this so before we can start tracking we need to optimize pro tools for recording if you follow these steps we can make that happen so let's hop over to the screen here first we have to name our session and this song is called brew 4 2 and i'm not going to use one of the templates because i want you guys to learn how to do this from scratch but if you wanted to use a template just check this box and you can scroll through the options they have for you then hit create and i'm going to make this full screen so the first thing we have to do to optimize pro tools is go to our setup tab go to playback engine make sure that your audio interface is selected we are using the scarlet solo usb and then you can optimize for record or playback then hit ok now we are ready to start recording the first thing we need is a quick track a click track is a metronome that allows us to keep time with the tempo that you set and keep the song consistent the whole way through this allows us to edit the instruments and fix any off time mistakes when you create tempos pro tools also makes a grid that shows you the subdivisions of each bar to create your click track go up to the track menu select create click track now if i just hit play here you'll see that it already has a sound to it but you can click this insert and change the sounds based on what you like to hear pro tools defaults to 120 beats per minute but we've determined this song is at 90 beats per minute so we want to change this 120 bpm tempo to 90. to do that double-click this red arrow here it will bring up this window replace the 120 with 90 and press enter as you can see it changed the bars and the click track is already slower after we find our tempo we can then create a scratch track using a guitar this is a guide track that our drummer can play to so he has a reference of the song and will help him keep time it's the track we're going to delete later which is why we call it a scratch track even if you're just using programmed drums it's still helpful to have a guitar scratch track as an outline to do this we've got to make a new track in pro tools go to the track menu and select new or you can use the keyboard shortcut shift command n or shift control n on windows and we only need one track it's going to be mono audio because we're recording audio and we can rename this scratch guitar i'm gonna resize this just make that a bit bigger i'm not sure why uh pro tools first does this but it creates a track with elastic audio already on so i'm just going to turn this off and then i'm going to load up the included 11 light guitar amp plug-in this is a guitar amp modeler and it allows you to plug in your guitar directly into the interface and still make it sound like it's going through a real guitar amp at this point i can plug my guitar directly into the scarlet solo within pro tools i have to make sure i have the correct input selected on the scarlett solo the guitar input is input 2. so i'm going to select interface input 2 and you'll see it changed then we can enable this track and prepare for recording to enable the track select this button right here you'll see it's flashing red and that means it's ready to record once the track is enabled i can set the level on my interface to do this turn the knob up until the green halo is lighting up consistently and you're you're peeking around in this yellow meter area [Music] that sounds good to me let's get started to start recording i'm going to press the keyboard shortcut 3 on the number pad if you don't have a number pad or don't want to use the keyboard shortcut you can also click this record button here and then press play and this will begin the recording process before we start it's important to make sure you are in the grid mode so that way you can just select directly on the line and you are on the grid line i like to give myself a few bars before recording this way if i want to add intro effects or need some kind of lead in i've got the space there without having to add it later i'm going to start at bar 9 so i'm going to press enter on the number pad and this will be my first location i'm going to call this start i'm going to give myself two bars before that and then i'll start recording when you're recording the scratch track it's really important to make sure this is in time if the drummer is playing to something off time where the click and the track are fighting the drummer is not going to have the best performance possible so record until you mess up and then we can punch in so let's start now [Music] if you make a mistake while recording the scratch track like i do all the time you don't have to re-record the entire thing you can just focus on the spots you messed up on and punch those in i'll show you how to do that now the first thing you have to do is make sure that pro tools is in punch mode go up here to the record button right click and select quick punch next thing you have to do is open up your transport window you can do this in a few different ways you can go to the window tab and select transport or use the keyboard shortcut command and press one on the number pad then you can select pre-roll pre-roll is the set amount of bars that will play before pro tools starts recording i like to use two bars so you can select here in this first box press two and hit enter so i will punch in the verse because i think i could have played that a little bit tighter i'm actually going to rename this verse one so all you have to do then is make sure your track is enabled and press three on the number pad pro tools will then play these two bars and then start recording [Music] when you're done punching in your part you might notice some extra space at the end of the audio file to trim this back make sure you're in the smart tool mode you can select any of these three or select just above it to highlight all three of them and make sure that pro tools is showing you this icon that looks kind of like a bracket and just drag it over you can drag this to any spot that's been recorded on this file previously but it's always good to make the breaks where there's a space now that was the scratch track i had punching in on but you can do this on any kind of track so once we have our guitar scratch done we can start using the included expand two plugin in pro tools first to program our drums hop over to the screen here first we'll have to make a new stereo track one stereo and instead of audio this time we're going to use an instrument track we're going to call this drums as you can see here this looks a little different than the audio track here that's because this will be using a virtual instrument to open up expand 2 let's click on this gray box go down to instrument and select expand to i'm just going to find the drum kits and i tend to like their rock kit alright now there are two ways to program them we can either right click here and go to open in midi editor or if we have the track selected just go down here and select midi editor at this point we can start drawing in our notes from here you can create your drum part by placing notes on the piano roll unfortunately there's no indicator of which notes trigger which drum sound so we'll just have to listen go up here and grab the pencil tool and you can start and draw them in on the piano roll over here there we go so let's go to bar 9 and start writing as i'm doing this i'm copying and pasting like sections to save time and make it easier on myself when you're programming drums just do whatever works best for you [Music] now that we have our drums programmed we want to add some character by recording a real drum kit with the included microphone now i am a terrible drummer so we're going to call in the house drummer taylor to hop on the kit for us he's going to play and match the program drums as best he can in a normal scenario i would be miking up every drum on the kit because we only have one mic input and one included condenser mic we had to optimally place the one mic in the room to get the best sound of the kit the best way to get the sound we wanted was going between the cymbals aimed directly at the snare and the high tom but it's still a wide enough range to pick up the bass drum the floor tom and the cymbals we're gonna have to do some symbol cleanup eq but this was the best raw sound we found now to make the performance tighter we can edit the drums if you like the sound that you have if you like the natural groove that your drummer played you can skip this step for a really professional tight sound i like to edit the drums and really lock them in in pro tools first we can chop up the hits in this drum track and line up any inconsistencies with the grid all right we'll come over here to pro tools okay so with this being a pseudo room track i'm gonna want this to sound fairly natural uh but i still want to fix some of these early hits here so let's go through i've got tab to transient on here that's this button right here and what i can do is just press tab and then press b and you see it chops it up i can go through every single hit and just move it in time now in other versions of pro tools you can use things like beat detective but this is what we have to use right now it's not super ideal but it does work and the time will be worth it to edit the drums i'm going through and i'm aligning the drum hits to the vertical grid lines then you should have a smooth live drum take okay this part's pretty important so i want to really lock up this fill here with the grid i can't see all these subdivisions so i'll just go over here to where it says grid i want to turn that into 30 second notes now i can see all these extra grid lines here i'm dragging over the beginning of the clips to cover up any open space all right so once we've got our hits edited to the grid here i want to highlight all of them and then i'll just press f what that does is it adds little fades in here so i'll zoom in and it adds these cross fades so i don't get any clicks or pops when you're writing a song of course you can use just the program drums or just the live drums we wanted to show you the best of both worlds and combine them to make one sound listen to just the program drums [Music] and now here is just the live drum kit with the solo mic and this is both tracks blended together that we will use in our final mix [Music] next up we can record our real guitar tracks i always record real guitars after i do the drums because it's easier for guitarists like myself to play to a real instrument rather than just a click we're going to be doing this the same way as we did the scratch tracks but the main differences are that we changed our strings and we're recording two tracks instead of one one pen to the right side and one pan to the left side the subtle differences on the left and right sides will make the sound huge it also leaves space in the center for the drums bass and vocals all right so i did the intro section but i'm going to want to do a left and right guitar of each side i'm going to record in sections so that i make sure i play each section the same and so that the guitar stays in tune [Music] now that the rhythms are done we can track our lead guitar this is just a single lead guitar track [Music] for this part i switched to a different guitar because i want a different sound for the leads i want them to sit in a different frequency spectrum so you can do that by switching pickups if you've only got one guitar or you can use the same guitar for all three this is just a personal preference [Music] all right so now we're on to base this is cal our in-house bassist and uh we're gonna be laying down the bass one track um it's just gonna be a pan center to leave room for the guitars on the sides so we're plugging the bass directly into the scarlet solo and then we'll be playing sections at a time and stopping to tune let's get started [Music] now that we've got all of our instruments tracked we can finally do our vocals we are using the included condenser mic xlr cable and the headphones and then for my vocals i've got the air button switched on for the interface and as you can see behind here we've got a little bit of a makeshift sound dampener this is just a moving blanket draped over a mic stand and we're using that to deaden the reflections of the room and make it sound tighter and i highly recommend doing something like this in a home studio or in a not ideal room for recording a condenser microphone you can do something like this at home with a blanket over a mic stand a bookshelf or even inside of a full closet when you're recording vocals it is so important to do it until it's right don't just get three takes and move on because you're just gonna have three mediocre takes that don't sound professional do it until it's right and you're going to be happy at the end up first i'm doing the lead vocal track after that i will be adding a harmony to the verse and a double to the chorus then i'll bring in the boys to do the backup vocals leave yet let's keep this up keep talking i'll pour you a cup stay awhile kick off your shoes i can't prove for two siblings [Music] now that we've got the entire song tracked i can start the mixing process so what is mixing well i start off by moving my faders and adjusting volumes to get a rough balance of the song then i will be using effects like eq compression reverb and delay to create one sound out of all the separate tracks all of the plugins i'm using in this mixing process are the free plugins that are included in pro tools first the soft tube time and tone bundle and the focusrite red suite now i said this at the beginning of the video but if this video gets 200 likes i will post a mix down video showing you exactly how i mixed this song using only the included plugins now without further ado here is brew for two [Music] i guess i can't be surprised our laughter led to sunrise don't leave yet let's keep [Music] i can't prove for two [Music] date all right we did it whether you're in a band or even a solo artist looking to take your music to the next level all of it is possible with everything in this focusrite scarlett studio bundle thanks again cal and tay for the help i guess all it took was a little creativity and motivation i'd say more like a little focus right so let us know what you think in the comments below and don't forget to check out our channel for more gear talk and tutorials thanks for watching [Music] you

Channel: Pixel Pro Audio

Views: 86,325

Rating: 4.9160647 out of 5

Keywords: Focusrite, Focusrite Solo Studio, Solo Studio, Make a song with a Scarlett Interface, Scarlett Interface, Record whole band, Pro Audio, Recording your band, how to record, how to record yourself, Solo Studio Bundle, Scarlett Bundle

Id: q3qkXY0qJq8

Length: 23min 18sec (1398 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 31 2020