With singer/Guitarist Rich Tuorto and drummer Bryan Garbe are ready to go, it's onto the rhythm guitar and bass sounds to finish getting the band ready for tracking.
See how Jacquire King and Kolton Lee:
Mic up Chris's guitar amp, and explains his microphone choice and placement in detail
Bring up the microphones on the Neve console and get the perfect blend between the C414 and SM57
Explain the phase relationship between the two speakers in Chris's amp and audition polarity inversions moving each microphone individually and as a group
Recall the bass guitar amp settings from another song on the record as a starting point
Explain their session documentation process, which includes photos of all of the instrument and amplifier settings and detailed session documentation
Mic up the bass cabinet and dial in the sound on the Neve
Chase after a ground hum on the bass guitar, checking each step of the signal path
Watch Jacquire King and Oak & Ash create "Keep The Light On" from Start To Finish. Only on pureMix.net
00:00:23 Chris, are you ready to
get the guitar sound?
- Great.
- Let's do it.
00:00:28 For the time being let's
just rock with the one amp.
00:00:31 Have you heard the
sound come through?
Yeah, we adjusted it,
I have my levels, the volume...
00:00:35 Can I hear what you get going?
Can we drive it just a little bit
more, reverb wise?
Just...
00:01:09 It's on the room right now.
00:01:11 You leave the reverb
on for all the parts?
- Yes.
- Can I hear the Chorus?
That part is gonna be
probably... A louder tone.
00:01:43 I like the Strymon better for the
reverb, to be honest.
00:01:52 Hang on one second,
I'm gonna put the mics
in front of the amp.
00:01:57 Can you just hold the lights just a
little bit more towards the center?
Perfect. Cool. Alright.
00:02:04 Alright.
00:02:08 That looks lined up properly.
00:02:10 OK, so let's just
kind of come over here
and get this going.
00:02:17 When I'm miking a
guitar cabinet...
00:02:21 the speaker cone
from the outside,
there's a little bit more low end
and as you get towards the
center that's where it's...
00:02:29 where all the
brightness comes from.
00:02:30 And the center circle
is the dust cap
for the voice coil
and so what I
typically try to do
is line the microphone up
on the perimeter
of the dust cap.
00:02:41 And that way you get a little
bit of a balance between
the high frequencies
in the middle
and the low frequencies
towards the outer edge
of the speaker cone.
00:02:49 So, if you angle the
mic towards the center
it becomes brighter,
and if you angle it out
towards the edge it gets
a little bit darker.
00:02:56 I always try to mic
a guitar amp,
a speaker, I should say,
on the perimeter of the dust cap
to get a balanced tone,
I think it's the best place to start.
00:03:10 The microphone is back
from the amp like 1 inch.
00:03:12 And it's also important
that both microphones
are equal distance
from the speaker cones
because...
00:03:20 Just in terms of phase alignment
and the combining of
these two microphones,
you want them the same distance
from the voice coils.
00:03:29 We're getting guitar tones
that will work
for the whole track,
to get the basic track down.
00:03:36 We may go in, replace a verse
sound or a chorus sound.
00:03:39 We're just trying
to get ourselves
in a place where we can
track the song as a band
with a good overall tone.
00:03:44 Once we get that done
we may re-record certain
parts or add to them
to get them to sound just right.
00:03:50 Chris,
just go ahead and play for us
and we'll kind of get things
going in your headphones.
00:04:00 Hey, I think the chorus is
probably your loudest part.
00:04:02 So, would you go ahead
and do that first?
Hello Sir.
00:04:15 Let's put the EQ off on the 2.
00:04:18 I did.
00:04:19 That's off.
00:04:29 That's about where we had
the other one, right?
Yes,
They look similar there.
00:04:38 Great.
00:04:40 Great, great, great. Bus 2.
00:04:47 Get out of the way.
00:04:49 That's the 57.
00:04:56 It sounds really good.
00:05:04 I'll filter up a little
bit of the bottoms to see.
00:05:10 Get rid of some of that tubbiness.
00:05:19 I'm kinda like adding
a little 820 in there.
00:05:21 Hey, I'm just gonna
preemptively,
I'm gonna turn the output of this down.
00:05:26 It sounds good to me.
00:05:30 So, preemptively,
I'm just turning the output down,
the same as we did
on Richard's sound
because we'll
probably end up there.
00:05:37 And then, turn on that 414.
00:05:40 Or not.
00:05:44 That's just me.
00:05:46 I've got to put up the bus.
00:05:57 It needs a little brightness.
00:06:01 Not that kind of bright.
00:06:10 Interesting.
00:06:13 One of the speakers is
out of phase with itself.
00:06:19 Which way sounds better?
- If I do that?
- Yeah.
00:06:28 Another way.
00:06:34 I prefer this way.
00:06:36 I agree, I just had to
hear it go back and fourth.
00:06:41 I kinda like...
00:06:43 I'm leaning on the 414 again.
00:06:50 A quick little
sidebar here before we
start eqing
the bus.
00:06:56 The reason we use two
different microphones
that are very different
is so that
the 57 is a very mid-rangy
kind of
focused sound,
has a lot of low-mids to it as well.
00:07:07 It's focused a lot
in the mid-range.
00:07:10 The 414 has a little
bit of extended bottom
but specially an extended top end and
it sounds a little bit more opened
and a little bit cleaner.
00:07:18 And so they're kind
of a nice thing
to pair together.
00:07:22 We're currently busing
them to one track
but if we only had
one electric guitar, perhaps,
in the band, in the performance,
we'd might print these on separate
tracks so that we could make
kind of a faux stereo
kind of mono image.
00:07:38 Because
the sonic imprints of
each is so different
it makes a nice
stereo image if we choose
to do that at some point
but in this case we're collapsing them
into mono and blending them together.
00:07:54 I wouldn't put two
57 on the same amp.
00:07:56 I just wanna clarify that point.
00:07:59 Just to sort of demonstrate I'll
show you more specifically
what I'm talking about with each mic
having sort of a different sonic imprint.
00:08:05 We'll just go solo each one.
And the way we have it balanced.
00:08:09 It's again a 60/40 balance leaning
a little bit more on the 414.
00:08:12 So here are the individual sounds.
We'll start with the 57.
00:08:36 Obviously you're hearing a
little bit of a level difference
because we didn't
change our balance.
00:08:40 That also demonstrates how...
00:08:42 what the volume
relationship of each one is.
00:08:45 But as you can hear
the 57 sounds much smaller
and kind of covered up.
00:08:51 But it gives you
that really thick
sturdy mid-range
that you kinda need for
a rock guitar sound.
00:09:09 I'll see if we can sweeten our sound
a little bit further on the bus EQ.
00:09:30 Here I'm adding just like,
it looks like 1 dB at 12 kHz,
maybe we can do a little bit less.
00:09:39 See if I can find that little..
00:09:41 That mid build-up
so maybe pull out here.
00:09:46 270.
00:09:50 390.
00:09:51 So I'm gonna take that dB and
maybe a half dB out there.
00:09:55 A little bump.
00:10:01 A little bump at 110.
00:10:12 Nothing super drastic but
just little changes across
to help it kind
of come together.
00:10:18 Now I think I might have a bit
too much here.
00:10:30 Let's bring that output
down just a little bit.
00:10:32 Still more?
- Better?
- Yeah, I think so.
00:10:40 The bus is saturating
but it really sounds good.
I'm not too worried about it.
00:10:51 What Kolton is
talking about is that
we're driving the output bus
on the console pretty hard
but that's part of the sound,
that's kind of what
makes it sound cool.
00:11:00 We're pushing the record path
through the Neve
kind of to its upper limit.
00:11:07 Not all the way past the headroom
but we're up in the headroom
of the console
where it starts to
electronically
kind of compress and sort of
really saturate the electronics
and the transformers
in the console.
00:11:19 This kind of helps fill
the sound a little bit,
it kind of adds some harmonics
and little bit more grit.
00:11:23 So,
there's no harm in it until
it starts to sound bad.
00:11:29 If it sounds good it is good.
00:11:30 Just keep playing buddy.
00:11:52 If we try to get
that sound with just
the individual EQs we probably
have to work them a lot harder.
00:11:59 Probably wouldn't
hang together as well
but because we're
combining the sound
we're treating each
microphone individually
and then we're coming up with
the blend and then that blend
that we've sort of shape,
we're taking another step
with the bus EQ.
00:12:14 Sometimes you accumulate
EQ, compression
to kind of get you
to the final sound,
it's not just done
at one specific step.
00:12:21 It's the microphone choice here,
it's how much gain we have
through the signal path and
then accumulating some EQ.
00:12:30 Fantastic Chris!
We've got your amp
in the other room.
00:12:34 If you wouldn't
mind, just kind of
taking your spot and
playing a little bit for us.
00:12:40 Just so we can make
sure that we've got
signal going into
the other room.
00:12:44 The headphones...
00:12:46 No.
00:12:47 So, I'll just play over here.
00:12:56 As we were kind of
getting that set up,
Paul and I were talking about,
because we're so far
away from the amp,
one of the songs
we already recorded
that seems like would
be a good place to start
at least for the sound of
setting up the bass amp
is another song in the
album called 'Stranger'.
00:13:11 And we've got a Tube
Screamer in line
that we borrowed from
Richard's pedal board
and so we're just
kind of agreeing on
a recall for the amp
as a place to start.
00:13:23 We're gonna reference a
different song called 'Stranger'
to at least give us
a starting point.
00:13:29 Just keep playing for a
second, I'll be right back.
00:13:33 I'm just gonna
tell them about...
00:13:44 - Another cable in here...
- OK.
00:13:47 Can we... Paul and I feel like the
recall for the amp on 'Stranger',
if we could just kind of start
there, that would be super helpful.
00:14:08 And could we quickly just get
sound to the headphones?
Where are we doing
headphones from?
It's all in the box here.
00:14:21 So I'll just need to
assign those things.
00:14:33 I'm just gonna assign our cue outputs
here, we have a bunch of
pre-production tracks,
I wanna send those all out
11-12 for these guys.
00:14:49 I'll put them in pre-fader here
so we can solo them in the room.
00:14:58 Copy our
send information.
00:15:02 Get all the live instruments
out to the guys as well.
00:15:07 Brian likes to hear a lot of kick and
snare so we give him his own individual
kick and snare mix
and then the rest of the
drums we just throw into a
stereo pair that's
he's usually fine with.
00:15:21 Usually.
00:15:24 So, just a little more detail on
the recall for the bass amp sound
from the other song that we did.
00:15:30 We're in a habit of
photographing and documenting
all of the amp, pedal
outboard sounds,
all the things associated with
the recording.
00:15:41 We photograph the
guitar that was used
or microphones, every part of the
signal chain and the settings,
as we go,
just as a record
or a document of
the process because
sometimes you realize
the next day or the next week
that you might wanna
change your part.
00:16:01 For whatever reason you wanna
be able to recall a sound
so you have document of how
to set it up really close
and make the repair
or the change
and it's also a good thing.
00:16:12 I kind of feel like,
at least a place to start for this song,
I feel like
the bass sound that we had
on another song, 'Stranger',
I don't want the
same exact bass sound
but I know that's a
good place to start
and so that will help
us get a fast start
and give us a bass
line to work from.
00:16:30 We've already
recalled the
setting for the amp.
00:16:34 I'm just using the flashlight
on my phone so that I can see
where the speaker cones are.
00:16:45 I'm moving the amp a little
bit, it's pretty well...
00:16:49 there's a lot of
absorption material here
so I don't know if there's gonna
be a lot of resonance in here
but I also don't want
the cabinet parallel
to these walls.
00:16:58 I'm kind of just turning
it just a little bit
and then I'm using my
flashlight to find...
00:17:02 this cabinet has four
10 inch
drivers in it.
00:17:11 I'm just finding where they
are and I'm just putting it
slightly off center
of one of these speakers.
00:17:28 There we go.
00:17:30 We've got, I think,
all our issues sorted out
with the bass and got
the cabinet miked up.
00:17:34 Dan, would you do us a favor
and get Paul to play so we
can get his headphones going?
Thanks man.
00:17:41 I'll get that.
00:17:42 The cabinet is on, right?
Now it is.
00:18:02 I'm wanna see if we can get away with just
a little bit less master volume in there.
00:18:06 Sure.
00:18:33 So,
we have just a
little bit of a buzz.
00:18:37 Is there...
00:18:39 Where... is there a lift on this DI?
We tried that and it's
not really helping,
we have a ground lift
we can stick on the amp.
00:18:46 - OK.
- To test it out real quick.
00:18:48 - Is that handy?
- Yeah.
00:18:52 Cool, you wanna do that while
we at least get the DI to the
headphones and see if that's working.
00:18:57 Yeah...
00:18:59 I'm seeing it.
00:19:07 Here's the DI compressor.
00:19:30 Tom, while you're there,
would you flip that DI too?
So the...
00:19:55 Is there a way to put
the DI out on the floor?
And run the signal?
Can we try that?
Because we're not
solving the buzz issue.
00:20:06 I'll take that out of input...
00:20:08 Turn that down... These guys.
00:20:10 Dan, would you explain to Paul that
we've gotta move the DI out there?
Basically we have an
instrument cable that's running
from the studio floor all the
way back to this Iso booth.
00:20:22 I wanna experiment by
moving the DI out there
where the ground lift is out in
the room closer to the instrument.
00:20:28 That line is being driven
from the output of the DI
to the amp as opposed to
all the cable being on
the front-end of the DI.
00:20:36 And maybe that will
get rid of the RF
and ground hum we're hearing.
00:20:40 It's just the next logic step in my
mind in terms of troubleshooting.
00:20:46 Let's actually put
this closer to here.
00:21:06 Can you grab me an instrument
while you're back there?
- Sure.
- Thanks.
00:21:13 - There you go.
- Thank you.
00:21:27 Alright, that should be good to.
00:21:33 It should be good here.
00:21:35 It should be good to go?
Dan, would you ask
Paul to play again?
Well, what is the
talk-back situation?
- Talk-back?
- Yeah, how do we do talk-back?
Paul, can you hear me?
Give me a thumbs up if you can.
00:21:54 Cool, thank you man.
00:21:57 If you continue to play for us.
Yeah.
00:22:03 Well that seems to have solved it, right?
So by moving the DI
out into the room
and having less wire
from the instrument
to the DI has helped
solve the issue.
00:22:28 Paul I can't hear
you talk to me yet
but are you getting the
bass in the headphones?
Unfortunately that
talk-back on there
is just out in the
room for you guys,
we're setting up a separate
mic so that I can hear you,
which we haven't got into yet.
00:22:41 But...
00:22:42 Give me a thumbs up if you're
getting the bass in the headphones.
00:22:45 Awesome, if you wouldn't
mind just keep playing,
we're almost sorted out on you.
00:22:52 OK, great. Now we can...
00:22:56 The levels of the
compressor looks OK.
00:22:59 I can go ahead and kind
of set it once you...
00:23:06 So, I'm just gonna
pick a ratio of...
00:23:10 starting out at 3:1.
00:23:15 Just the attack and release.
00:23:18 I just really wanna a few dB
of compression at the moment.
00:24:01 So, Kolton is just a applying a
little bit of EQ over there I believe.
00:24:06 Right now I'm just
trying to find
a little bit of where that
nice finger sound is
without getting to squeaky.
00:24:19 This is just on
the DI right now.
00:24:22 I'm making these adjustments
and trying to see
where the low end
is sitting.
00:24:33 It feels pretty good
how it kind of is,
I don't really feel like
I wanna boost too much.
00:24:44 It's starting to feel pretty good,
I'm gonna switch over to this
big nice Focals and see how
the subby subs are feeling.
00:24:53 It feels pretty balanced to me.
00:24:57 So right now,
I'm boosting just
a little bit at,
I can't even read what that
is, it looks like 1.8.
00:25:07 1 kHz, and then a little bump at
56 Hz,
just a little of that super low.
00:25:37 It feels more focused to me.
00:25:45 So, as you turn the gain up
I'm seeing a lot of
compression over here,
I'm just gonna up
the threshold up so
that we can get a
good level over there.
00:25:55 OK. And I've got the
output at zero just
so that the compressor is kind
of at a neutral place that we can
give a good gain on the channel.
00:26:09 I have the threshold all the way up so
maybe back the gain down a little bit.
00:26:13 I just came that down one click,
does that feel better over there?
Yeah,
that seems like a good spot.
00:26:21 I'll just get this guy
a little love as well,
maybe try to take out
a little bit of that
'nose'.
00:26:30 Yeah,
just take out a
tiny bit of that.
00:26:34 And see where out low
end feels appropriate.
00:26:41 A little 100 doesn't hurt.
00:26:45 Can we hear it in
bypass real quick?
Yeah.
00:27:06 Cool, where are you cutting?
I'm cutting at 820,
taking a little bit of that
like sort of a honky
nose out of it.
00:27:16 It seems like our friend,
the buzz is back a little bit.
00:27:22 On the DI?
Yeah.
00:27:27 I'm wondering it's just some lights.
00:27:34 I'm gonna
try to flip the DI again,
just give me a thumbs up or down.
00:27:39 Hang on one second Paul.
00:27:44 I got a mean buzz
on the headphones.
00:27:46 Yeah, that's what we're
trying to sort out now.
00:27:58 What was that?
I turned off the tube
screamer but it's still...
00:28:02 - Still there?
- Still buzzing.
00:28:07 Paul, can you roll the volume
all the way down on the bass?
All the way down.
00:28:12 - Yeah, on your instrument.
- Yeah, it is.
00:28:15 I've done that so that I'm
sure that the instrument
and pickups are not introducing
the RF and buzz into the signal.
00:28:22 So, it's still there.
Is the amp still ground-lifted?
No, we took that off.
00:28:27 Can we ground lift
the amp again?
Yeah.
00:28:31 Well, we've got a
good sound to start,
we're trying to eliminate a
little bit more noise on the DI.
00:28:46 Here we go.
00:28:49 No?
Can you flip that
ground on the amp again?
Is that flipped?
OK.
00:29:07 Well, no change.
So you can just put it back.
00:29:10 Grounding the amp is
probably a better idea then.
00:29:13 Because it's not
solving our problem.
00:29:14 Should we try and plug his
pedal board in somewhere else?
Maybe sharing...
00:29:19 Can we skip the pedal board?
Hey Paul, would you do us a favor and
skip the pedal board for a moment?
Just take the line that's
going out of the tube
screamer and plug it right
into your instrument.
00:29:27 I have it muted right
now because he's
pulling stuff.
00:29:33 Worse.
00:29:33 Much worse.
00:29:36 OK.
00:29:37 Don't do that.
00:29:38 Put it back,
it was better before.
00:29:40 We're gonna roll with
it for the moment.
00:29:48 And then once you get that hooked
back, if you just play for
just another minute,
I need to set one compressor
and then we'll be good
for you for the moment.
00:30:01 That seems like
it's gotten worse.
00:30:04 Yeah.
00:30:05 Much worse.
00:30:07 Hey Paul, sorry bud.
00:30:09 Hang on one second.
00:30:12 Tom, can you pull
the input to the DI
out there on the
floor just so that...
00:30:17 Yeah.
00:30:32 It has nothing to
do with the DI in.
00:30:37 It's wherever is going on with
the pedal board and the guitar.
00:30:41 Let's plug the DI
back in please.
00:30:56 Alright.
00:30:59 Let's try a different DI.
00:31:01 I guess. Yeah.
00:31:03 OK, we're gonna
try a different DI.
00:31:05 Maybe it's just the way it's reacting
with the instrument plugged into it.
00:31:08 I'm not sure.
00:31:09 We got a different bass.
00:31:12 That's a different instrument
plugged in right now.
00:31:14 Is that changing it?
Alright, that's not helping.
00:31:27 Can you patch
this in?
What a pain.
00:31:36 How's that Mr Kolton?
Hey, wait a second.
00:31:43 It's so clean.
00:31:44 So, it has something
to do with the board.
00:31:45 With what board?
His pedal board?
Well, that's the bass
straight into the DI.
00:31:51 OK.
00:31:53 So, can we...
00:31:56 Can we just put the...
00:31:58 Can we try and put the tube
screamer in front of the amp only?
So that there's just the
tuner out there on the floor?
Absolutely.
That sounds like the best plan.
00:32:06 Because he doesn't
have a power supply,
when you run all the power directly
into each pedal, they're not isolated
and so they can cause...
00:32:18 We need this little
connector right here.
00:32:21 - Oh, it has a...
- Yeah.
00:32:22 I'll do it.
00:32:23 Do you want me to grab some
more cables from the...
00:32:25 Actually I'll grab some short
ones from a different room...
00:32:29 Cool.
00:32:30 So you don't have
to go super far.
00:32:31 Alright. Sounds good.
00:32:32 You wanna just plug this in so
we're good to go here into the DI?
- We are straight...
- OK, perfect.
00:32:41 That tube screamer is plugged
in, whenever you're ready.
00:32:50 That sounds good.
00:32:52 Fantastic man,
you are good for now.
00:32:56 So we finally got the
bass situation sorted out.
00:33:00 What we've ended up doing is we moved the
Tube Screamer just in front of the amp
and then so the instrument is going
straight into the DI out on the floor.
00:33:08 And I believe we're
skipping the tuner,
we're just gonna use like
a 'snark' on the bass.
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Award-winning Producer, Engineer, and Mixer, Jacquire King, has worked with some of the world’s most influential artists in every role you can imagine in a recording studio. From being an acclaimed recordist to mixing and producing multi-platinum records (9X in the case of Kings Of Leon) by superstars like Kaleo, Modest Mouse, Kings of Leon, Tom Waits, Norah Jones, Buddy Guy, Cold War Kids, MuteMath, Melissa Etheridge, and James Bay.
To date, Jacquire has received several awards for his meticulous attention to detail and unique approach to creating records that withstand the test of time.
His discography is well-known for the variety of music encompassed from the past 20 years. When you see Jacquire’s tutorials on pureMix, you will have the chance to sit next to a true master at work, who strives to enhance the artist's vision and serve the songs he helps deliver to the masses.
In past videos, Fab has boasted that Flux has success with the "keep it simple" technique of running a long instrument cable to the bass amp even though the textbooks all say it should be an EMI/RFI headache. The lesson here is read your textbooks, kids. :-)
a2c
2020 Dec 26
Great teamwork to solve!
YXuZjfph
2020 Dec 23
Thanks for leaving the troubleshooting in!! It allows the thought process to really come across!
shane.l
2020 Nov 24
1st minute in...OH how guitar players LOVE when you touch their pedals! I can hear him saying "DUDE! WTH!" haha
studiosix
2020 Nov 21
Chasing buzz is a pain but problem solving is necessary.
mojoboy
2020 Nov 20
Now this is a REAL session!!! So glad to see this and thankful that you did not edit the buzz thing out. Dong this for a while, there was never, ever, a session where you don't have to troubleshoot something!! It's part of the "magic!" Hahahaha!!!
