This is a real-time shoot of a prototypical tracking session, with no smoke or mirrors. Going from scratch to a rough mix in an hour or so with mic choices and placements, preamp choices and mic swapping for tone shaping. All steps are explained and commented.
Tracked with Avid ProTools HD|Native, full line of Royer Ribbon mics and Mojave Condenser mics, UA 4-710, UA610, Great River MP2NV, Great River EQ1-NV preamps and eqs as well as Dangerous Music Monitor ST, Dangerous Music Summing and Focal speakers.
00:00:07 Please welcome, Fab Dupont!
Thank you guys.
00:00:17 So what we're gonna do today
is we're gonna...
00:00:20 track a band,
we're gonna pretend
this is an actual
recording studio.
00:00:24 So basically we're doing in
the worst possible conditions.
00:00:29 Which is great, isn't it?
I'll be playing the role of
the coolest producer
who's supposed to hang out on the
couch with the girls and the cigars.
00:00:36 But there's no couch,
no girls and no cigars.
00:00:38 And Meredith McCandless
is gonna play the role of the engineer
who quietly makes things happen.
00:00:44 This is Meredith McCandless.
00:00:51 Meredith is the first
engineer at Flux
which is my studio
in New York city.
00:00:55 We've done this a couple
times before, together.
00:00:58 But what we're gonna is
we're gonna do it for real.
00:01:02 Meaning that, that over there
is called the drumset.
00:01:08 The black things in front
are called microphones
and we're gonna put the
microphones onto the drumset
to show you how we do.
00:01:14 The reason why we're doing this
is because I get a lot of
email saying:
'Who do you guys do it?'
'Why? I have the same
microphones you have?
Why is it that your stuff
sounds better than my stuff?'
What's the process?
How does it work?
Well, maybe I do it more
often than some of you do it.
00:01:33 Experience helps.
00:01:34 And also we have some
tips and tricks I'm gonna show you
and then we have the joy of
working with really
great musicians.
00:01:41 So today,
the source is the key.
00:01:44 Today we're gonna work with
a band called The Will Knox Band,
and you're gonna see,
they are pretty fantastic.
00:01:50 First thing I'm gonna show you
is the way it usually works.
00:01:53 At the beginning of a session
I say: 'Meredith, today we're gonna
have 150 people in the studio,
and they are all gonna play
different instruments,
I see you tomorrow.'
The reality is, the first thing
Meredith does.
00:02:08 When I'm the producer I say:
'Hey, the session is starting,
this is the line-up'.
00:02:13 She puts together...
00:02:16 She puts a very, highly
technical
sheet of paper
that has
the number of lines,
the instrument,
the microphone and the preamp.
00:02:28 So what she does is she
makes the best guess
of what's gonna work.
00:02:33 How do you make the best guess?
First you've gotta
make your guess
and then you have to fail
a certain number of times.
00:02:42 Once you failed enough
times you say:
'That maybe not be a good idea'.
00:02:46 And then you try something else.
And at one point,
if you're lucky you'll succeed.
00:02:51 The next time you will do that.
00:02:53 That's what we've been doing.
00:02:55 The first thing we're gonna do,
and this is fictitious, I don't
know if it's still valid or not,
but that's really how we do it.
00:03:01 - Is it still valid?
- Yes.
00:03:02 Fantastic.
00:03:03 We write the name
of the instrument.
00:03:05 And then she writes the
microphone she wants,
There's no preamps on these one.
00:03:09 These are the
microphones we have.
00:03:10 'These are the
instruments we have'
What should we do?
So let's go look
at the bass drum.
00:03:15 After you, dear.
00:03:19 This is...
00:03:20 The band is a modern folk band.
00:03:23 Usually the bass drum
has two heads.
00:03:25 And no hole in the back head,
because it goes boom better
if there's no hole
in the back head.
00:03:30 In this case we have a bass
drum with a hole in it
so might as well just take
advantage of the situation.
00:03:35 If you want Dylan to
show us the bass drum.
00:03:38 So go ahead do your thing.
00:03:44 We've got two mikes
on the bass drum.
00:03:46 One for the beater and one
for the outside resonant head.
00:03:50 We've chosen the MA 100.
00:03:53 Mojave Audio for the beater.
00:03:56 That's a condenser.
00:03:58 Usually we put a dynamic inside.
00:04:00 But, why not?
If we are not gonna break
the microphone, I don't care.
00:04:04 Put it in!
Do you think it's gonna break?
I don't know, we'll see.
00:04:11 What did you put on the outside?
This is the Mojave 201.
00:04:14 OK.
Killer.
00:04:15 Outside kick, large diaphragm.
00:04:17 Very nice.
00:04:18 Are you just like...
00:04:20 I mean, how do you
know where to put them?
Are you just like
throwing them there?
Hmmm...
00:04:25 Usually a more focused mike
on the inside beater
that can handle the SPL.
00:04:31 Obviously we're using
a small diaphragm condenser.
00:04:33 Tracy's limited edit
but this is a great option.
00:04:36 It sounds good.
00:04:38 And the large diaphragm for the
outside to really get the low end.
00:04:42 The idea is: if you use a small
diaphragm condenser inside
the beautiful thing about
a small diaphragm condenser,
for those of you who are hair dressers
and are lost at Sweetwater right now,
small diaphragm condensers are the
small mikes that looks like a pencil.
00:04:55 And the large diaphragm condenser is the
one that look like big lollypops, OK?
The small diaphragm condenser
tend to have better off-axis rejection,
meaning that the bleed from other
instruments in that mike,
tend to not be as
offensive sounding
as the bleed of other instruments
in a large diaphragm condenser mike.
00:05:13 That will actually
influence your choice.
00:05:16 That's why a lot of people put
a small diaphragm condenser
inside the bass drum
because well,
there's a lot of stuff
going on there, right?
You wanna make sure that the
other instruments in that microphone
don't sound too bad.
00:05:28 Because otherwise what happens?
You put your bass drum up
and it sounds fine.
00:05:33 Then you put your snare up
and it's garbage. Right?
So you wanna a balance of
everything, that's the difficult part.
00:05:38 Actually we need to bring up
a drummer to play
there's a special kind of human
being who's able to play that stuff.
00:05:46 Well, I'd love to have you there
but I'd like to have more of a British
drummer with a dry sense of humor,
which rules out a lot of people here.
00:05:57 Anybody from England?
Alright, come on over.
00:06:03 This is Timur Yusef.
00:06:12 This man can play the
bass drum like no other.
00:06:20 Bear in mind that...
00:06:23 there's a reason why
they put a piece of glass between
the engineer and the musicians in a studio.
00:06:29 Right?
Enough said.
00:06:34 Whenever you test your drum sound,
if you're gonna record
a heartfelt ballad,
do not let the drummer play his
heaviest death metal groove.
00:06:42 It's not gonna help you.
00:06:44 The drummer will wanna play his
heaviest death metal groove
but that's not constructive for
your environment.
00:06:50 What you wanna do is:
'Hey, would you be kind enough
to play the groove from the actual song
that we're actually gonna
record please? Thank you!'
We're gonna record a few
bars of this,
so we can figure out if
we like the tone or not.
00:07:19 OK.
00:07:20 Can you play that again?
I feel there's a little
funniness in the middle.
00:07:26 There's a little something
that's just
not quite right.
00:07:30 Can you play the bass drum once?
See that 'rrrrrrr' thing.
00:07:36 It's not there, I don't hear
'rrrrrr' in the recording.
00:07:39 So, my hunch is that...
00:07:43 like in most situation,
there maybe a phase problem
between the two microphones.
00:07:48 Because as you saw Meredith
just used her best judgment
and just put it in.
00:07:52 And now, there's no real,
unless nobody ever told me
about it, but if there's a rule,
if you know about the rule,
send me a postcard. Till then...
00:08:02 you just put the stuff in, record it,
listen and then you have to use
your judgment and your taste
to decide whether or not
it's a good idea to
keep it that way.
00:08:09 In this particular case I don't
think it's a good idea.
00:08:11 How about we flip the
phase on the outside microphone?
Actually, flip the polarity.
00:08:18 My hunch is the reason why I'm
not getting the super bottom
is because the two microphones
are not properly in phase.
00:08:24 If we flip the polarity on the
second one we'll be able to hear it
without that potential problem.
So let's record.
00:08:33 And, do it again.
00:08:47 Thank you, let's hear that.
00:08:50 Aha. Check it out.
00:08:52 Do you hear that?
So what did we do?
All we did is flip the polarity
on the preamp.
00:09:01 The inside mike stayed the same
and the outside mike
flipped polarity 180.
00:09:05 180 degrees, OK?
Are they in phase?
I don't know.
00:09:14 If you do send me a postcard.
00:09:19 They are in phase enough
for me to hear 'RRRRRR'.
00:09:21 So let's move on.
00:09:23 You've got to be careful because
there's no real hardcore solution
to this problem, you have to...
00:09:29 listen and...
00:09:31 if you don't know...
00:09:34 For example, if you don't like
to hang out with drummers.
00:09:36 I make an exception for Timur.
00:09:38 But in general I tend to
stay away from drummers.
00:09:41 If you don't wanna
hang out with drummers
and you don't wanna go to
the live room to listen
to the actual sound of
the actual instrument
you probably will not notice
that the bottom is not there.
00:09:50 I recommend that you force your
drummers to take showers
before you work with them.
00:09:54 So that you can go hang
out with them in the live room
and you listen to the
actual instrument
and when you come back to
the control room you can tell yourself:
'Oh, this ain't what I'm
hearing over there'.
00:10:04 And then start moving
stuff around.
00:10:06 It's not "in phase".
00:10:08 It doesn't exist. It's in phase
enough for what we wanna do today.
00:10:12 Fair enough? Right.
Let's do the Overheads.
Once logged in, you will be able to read all the transcripts jump around in the video.
Fab Dupont is a award-winning NYC based record producer, mixing/mastering engineer and co-founder of pureMix.net.
Fab has been playing, writing, producing and mixing music both live and in studios all over the world. He's worked in cities like Paris, Boston, Brussels, Stockholm, London and New York just to name a few.
He has his own studio called FLUX Studios in the East Village of New York City.
Fab has received many accolades around the world, including wins at the Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards, US independent music awards. He also has received Latin Grammy nominations and has worked on many Latin Grammy and Grammy-nominated albums.
The acoustic guitar file is broken. I have tried numerous browsers and .zip programs and it still won't unpack. The rest of the files did just fine.
Fabulous Fab
2012 Dec 11
@rattlesnake: not less bleed but more even sounding bleed. I dont remember what I said exactly but my apologies if I said something stupid.
creaktor
2012 Jun 12
Fab, does a LCM compared to a SCM record more degree and Hz's within that degree for which the mic is designed? So does the pattern of a SCM tend to have more room for error placement.
quintonrecords
2011 Nov 24
cool series. fab is a good guy. but why is he wanting to tell us that small-diaphragm condensers (on the kick drum) would have less bleed than large-diaphragm mics? That's pure nonsense. Otherwise a dpa in front of an orchestra would give us a less-bleed-solution compared to a U87, which it quite simply is not...
You can use dynamic mics to get less bleed. Or - as his engineer did it - just put the mic into the kick... that will definitely get rid of most of the bleed, too ;))
makelifeLOUD
2011 Sep 08
Great video series, thank you!
tackmutt
2011 Aug 28
just start watching! i always pay attention to fabs videos! pretty smart! thanks
111Entertainment
2011 Aug 26
"Thank You So Much" for posting this!!!
I was able to attend the mixing seminar but missed the tracking session... so this is AWESOME!!!
"Thanks" Fab
"Touch The World"
F.L. Freeman, Audio Engineer/ Mixer
111 Entertainment LLC
chimulko
2011 Aug 25
thanks so much, looking foward to the mixing one. keep that great work and the sense of humor.
