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.
00:00:03 Could you please?
Do you want help?
I've done this before,
I can do it.
00:00:09 How about I do this one,
can I do this one?
I love touching microphones.
It makes me feel in control.
00:00:17 Right.
00:00:20 This is great.
00:00:21 What's this for?
Violin, oh yeah.
00:00:25 OK, cool.
So...
00:00:28 Meredith is gonna keep
placing the microphones,
we're gonna discuss overheads.
00:00:31 A lot of, depending on the
music you do,
overheads may be
all you need for the drum sound.
I know it sounds incredible but
a good pair of overheads
is really what you need.
00:00:41 In this particular case,
because of the
very kind of like,
textural quality of the part,
I like that 'booom'.
00:00:51 And that I'm not gonna
get from the overheads,
I'm gonna get from
those microphones.
00:00:54 But check it out once Mary
places the overheads.
00:00:56 One second Timur.
I know you wanna play.
00:01:02 Tsss, drummers!
Can't do with, can't do without.
00:01:13 Alright.
00:01:14 So, again.
00:01:16 Because Meredith has probably done
300 drum sessions over the last two years,
She has a fairly good idea of
where it might work.
00:01:25 But she's never worked
in this room.
00:01:26 So maybe the reflections are different,
maybe it's not gonna work out.
00:01:30 The overheads are designed basically
to capture the whole instrument.
00:01:34 The drumset, contrary to popular
belief is really one instrument.
00:01:39 If you can make it feel that way,
for this kind of music is cool.
If you're doing a Lady Gaga record,
send me a postcard.
00:01:48 Alright, that's good enough
for jazz, let's...
00:01:52 And I mean that in
the best possible way.
00:01:57 Now we're gonna record
a few bars of that.
00:01:59 Maybe you wanna do the end
of the verse into the breakdown
so we can hear the cymbals.
00:02:05 Yeah, that sounds great.
00:02:07 So...
00:02:09 Here we go.
00:02:34 Thank you, thank you very much.
00:02:36 Let's listen to that without
the direct sound.
00:02:41 The overheads being the
two microphones way up there. Right?
It's a lot of snare,
a lot of hi-hat.
00:02:52 So, we failed.
Miserably.
00:02:55 So we're gonna learn from that
and move the overhead.
00:02:58 - What you're gonna do?
- I'm gonna move it slightly back.
00:03:01 OK.
00:03:02 So we get more cymbals
less drum.
00:03:04 And then sometimes maybe
even angle them.
00:03:09 Slightly out.
00:03:10 Those new Mojaves are great
and they're very smooth as you heard.
00:03:13 What we're doing is taking
advantage of their patterns
to aim at what we
wanna hear more.
00:03:20 You know?
Fixing in the mix doesn't exist.
00:03:24 It just doesn't exist.
00:03:26 You can kind of hide the misery
in the mix. How's that?
Might as well spend and extra
five minutes here. It doesn't hurt.
00:03:33 Let's do the fill into...
00:03:35 The same thing.
00:03:44 See the hi-hat is no longer
in your face?
It's amazing right?
We've moved it this much.
00:03:50 Crazy.
00:03:54 I can stand this.
00:03:59 So now we're gonna check,
Remember how the phase between
the two bass drum microphones
changed everything?
Well how about the phase between
the bass drum microphone
the overheads, the snare,
the hi-hat, the top microphone?
Yes, you do have to
pay attention to that stuff.
00:04:13 How do you feel about that?
Usually what I'll do is
I'll solo the kick,
listen to that
and I'll just pop on the
overheads.
00:04:22 So we're listening to the
bottom of the kick.
00:04:24 She listens to the kick,
and she makes sure
the bottom is there.
00:04:27 Then she turns the overhead on.
What happens?
Hear with the overheads in.
00:04:36 Nothing happens
because she's good.
00:04:41 What might happen,
what happens a lot is
you have an awesome
bass drum sound
you turn on the overhead
and bass drum goes.
00:04:51 Because the overhead is
out of phase with the bass drum.
00:04:54 And consequently all
the bottom goes away.
00:04:57 What's the solution to that problem?
Move the microphone.
00:05:00 Or flip the phase,
but if you flip the phase
then what happens
with the snare?
And what happens with the tom?
Moving the microphone
is the least amount of pain
for the most amount of return.
00:05:10 Promise.
00:05:12 What we're gonna today is
place microphones.
00:05:16 Use good quality microphones,
good quality preamps,
good quality converters,
And we're gonna make
a record with it.
00:05:23 Which I'll be mixing tomorrow.
00:05:25 But at the end of this
one hour and half
we'll play just a whole track,
you tell me what you think.
00:05:30 There will be very little
compression and EQ, if any.
00:05:33 And that's the key.
00:05:34 So, can you solo the hi-hat because...
00:05:37 On this last pass...
00:05:42 Maybe on that 'shhh' thing.
00:05:47 OK.
00:05:53 I'm not super enthused by this.
00:05:56 I find it a little
kind of like...
00:05:58 A little, 'ahhnn', aggressive.
00:06:03 Play that again so we can
put it in our ears.
00:06:09 I don't know how it feels right there.
I just doesn't feel like his hi-hat.
00:06:12 Can you stop?
Can you play that 'shhh'
on your hi-hat?
See, his instrument
doesn't goo 'eeeeeee'.
00:06:18 OK. So in this case
what do we do?
This is our assumption.
00:06:23 It's an MA 100 on the hi-hat.
00:06:26 And that's probably not
the best choice,
in this particular case, with this
drummer, with this kind of particular
weather and what we have
for breakfast this morning.
00:06:34 Consequently...
00:06:35 We're probably gonna...
00:06:37 What we have for breakfast
this morning is a disgrace.
00:06:39 I've got to tell you.
00:06:44 Specially for a french boy.
00:06:47 So we're gonna switch, since
we don't have any more microphones
why don't we just switch the high tom
mike for the hi-hat mike
and see if it makes a difference.
00:06:55 And that's totally fine.
00:06:56 You set everything up,
you like it,
don't let your laziness take over.
00:07:01 If the microphone is not
quite there, switch it.
00:07:04 You may or may not have noticed,
Timur is not specially in love
with this high tom,
on this particular part.
00:07:09 I don't think he's hit
it once so far.
00:07:11 So my hunch is that the
high tom microphone
is not super crucial.
00:07:15 So why don't we just use that
on the hi-hat and see
if it sounds better.
00:07:18 It's always better to
switch a mike
than just to say 'ahhh'.
00:07:25 "I'll hide the misery in the mix".
00:07:27 You just can't do that.
00:07:29 The signal flow today
is as such.
00:07:31 We have microphones from
Mojave and Royer.
00:07:35 Mojaves tend to be the condensers
and Royer is all the ribbons.
00:07:39 Going through preamps
from Universal Audio and
Great River
which is this rack here in the middle.
00:07:47 Which we'll describe
in a minute.
00:07:48 Going through Avid Pro Tools
using the new HD IO converters.
00:07:55 Right here. And a Pro Tools 9 rig.
00:07:57 Using HD native.
00:07:58 So if you're wondering if you
can track a band with HD native
I confirm that you can.
00:08:04 It's great, very powerful system.
00:08:06 Going through monitoring and
summing from Dangerous Music.
00:08:10 You'll see the summing tomorrow
because today we're tracking the song
but tomorrow I'm mixing it.
00:08:15 And mastering it.
00:08:16 Monitoring and summing from
Dangerous and then, lastly
speakers from Focal.
00:08:22 And those are the sponsors
of the event today.
00:08:25 This is the chain we have,
you can go wrong with this guys.
00:08:27 What we just did right now is we
switched the hi-hat and the tom microphone
to see if we can get a better
tone on the hi-hat.
00:08:33 Let's do that part
where you go 'shhhhh'.
00:08:47 Cool, let's listen to that.
00:08:56 Just hi-hat.
00:09:01 See, all the edge is gone.
00:09:04 Now, does that mean that MA 100
is a bad microphone?
No.
00:09:08 It means that the MA 100 was
the wrong microphone for the job.
00:09:12 We switched it with the 101
now we have the right
microphone on the right stuff.
00:09:15 You don't have to have
that 'eee' thing.
00:09:17 We can move on to the
rest of the miking.
00:09:20 Since you're here and...
00:09:23 that's something you do
very well,
I'd like you to explain why is
the hat microphone placed like this?
It looks odd.
00:09:29 What I do with the snare and the
hi-hat kind of respectively is...
00:09:36 the snare mike is positioned
slightly
so that the rejection is, you know,
it's rejecting the hi-hat.
00:09:42 Meaning, the back of the cardioid
pattern, you've seen it,
the one that looks like a
heart that's been blown up
right?
The back of it
is rejection, you don't hear
as much from the back of it.
00:09:52 And she points it so that the
hi-hat is not as loud
in the snare microphone.
And then?
Yeah, usually it will be looking
something like that.
00:10:01 OK, that's great.
00:10:03 And then with the hi-hat,
that's and interesting way.
00:10:06 Same thing with the hi-hat just
obviously not as drastic
but just slightly angled so that
it's rejecting the snare.
00:10:13 So if you have your hi-hat like this
she places the mike like that,
with the snare being here.
00:10:17 Meaning, she uses
the back of the pattern
to reject as much
snare as possible.
00:10:21 And if you hear,
that's a good trick,
specially if you have...
00:10:27 There isn't such thing
in the world,
but if you have a drummer
who bashes on the hi-hats
louder than the snare,
you know that drummer,
this is a good trick.
00:10:37 There's only one, you know him,
we all know him.
00:10:40 It's a good trick make sure that you
can make a record with the recording.
00:10:44 If you solo the hi-hat and play
what we just did.
00:10:47 Listen to the snare
bleed in the hi-hat.
00:10:57 That's a condenser.
00:10:58 That's a condenser that is
this far away from the snare
but we still get
really good rejection.
00:11:05 How about the snare mike
to hear how much hat we have in that.
00:11:15 Totally acceptable.
00:11:17 You know what I mean.
And that's just by going...
00:11:20 And I just angled it more.
00:11:21 And we're not talking hypercardioids
or any complicated thing,
we're just talking about common sense
using what the microphone does
to your best advantage.
00:11:29 Let's move to the drum preamps.
How you choose your preamps?
Do you have to have a late 60s
1073 with and LA-2A and this
and that to be able to make a record?
Ahhh, no!
You don't.
00:11:43 So Meredith, how do
you choose your preamps.
00:11:45 I said OK, this is what
we're doing today.
00:11:47 These are you available preamps.
How do you choose?
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Fab Dupont is a Grammy 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 been nominated for Grammys 6 times, including two Latin Grammys and has received many other accolades around the world, including Victoires de la Musique, South African Music awards, Pan African Music Awards and US independent music awards.
