In episode 3, Vance dials in the drums, guitar, and synth bass sounds, explaining every decision along the way.
Watch as Vance:
Dials in tones for the drums on his SSL console and massive wall of outboard gear
Explains his approach to getting the sound of the kit through the overheads
Inserts 1176 compressors on the main kick and snare drum channels
Uses multiple parallel processes during tracking on the drums
Checks the phase relationship of all of the elements of the kit in the overheads
Sends the "taste mic" to his famous "Beard Verb" pedal and Polysaturator
Creates a mono drum mix to enhance the sound of the kit
Uses a very unique technique to eliminate guitar hum during tracking. You'll just have to see... we cannot in good conscious type it out here. Trust us.
Demonstrates how he checks phase relationships in mono
Uses his vintage RCA microphone preamplifiers on guitars
EQs the guitar mics
Sets the tone for the octave down guitar
Explains the phase relationship between bass DIs and amplifiers and explains how he addresses it.
00:00:23 What I want you to do is play a little bit
I'm gonna listen to these room mics, is that cool?
- Yup.
00:00:29 I'm gonna listen to the room mics first,
the R88 up there.
00:00:33 Just coming in flat, into the desk,
and I'm just gonna turn them up and see what happens.
00:00:57 They sound pretty great by themselves,
no EQ or anything,
that R88 is set pretty high in the room, there,
I do have a compressor
that I'm gonna turn on, here,
it's the Chandler TG1 compressor,
I'm just gonna hit the button and see what it sounds like.
00:01:27 The thing I love about this is that
there's a certain knock to it that I like.
00:01:32 It's just part of the limiter circuit for the EMI.
00:01:35 I don't know what they did but whatever it was
it's really good.
00:01:38 And again that's a Chandler down here,
if I look at the meter, it's really just kinda doing this,
but, man! It's obviously doing something!
It's happening so fast that the meter can't pick it up.
00:01:51 It just sounds really cool to me.
00:02:02 OK so, the next thing I like to do
after the room mics
is listen to the overheads.
00:02:07 The life of your drum sound to me is
really made in the overheads.
00:02:11 I want the overheads to sound like the drum kit
but maybe like, not really right up close.
00:02:16 Hey man, OK play that same thing for me,
if you don't mind?
- Yo!
I'm using the AEA ribbon mic pres
for the R88, that's another R88 honed
over the overhead.
00:03:06 I'm using these ribbon mic pres because they have
this little high-frequency lift and
I like a little bit of that.
00:03:12 So I have that in and also have a little bit of
low end taken out.
00:03:15 But I just love the way the R88 sort of
places the drums in the mix.
00:03:20 Is it right?
I don't care.
00:03:23 I just like the way it sounds.
00:03:25 I'll let this play a little bit.
00:03:35 You can hear how cool the snare is,
how the snare sounds,
literally that's exactly what it sounds like
in the overhead.
00:03:42 And this is from up above it.
00:03:44 It's really great.
00:03:55 So my goal on the overheads
is to get the overheads to sound as close to the drum kit,
the whole kit, as I can.
00:04:02 It's pretty impossible to get the real low-end of
the kick drum out of it
and I am actually kinda taking a little bit of that off
because, you know,
phase, stuff, in the low end is really important.
00:04:13 This is what these overheads sound like:
he's just playing and
I've balanced them up a little bit on the AEA
to get them to sort of be balanced
but since they're a coincident stereo pair
the snare is a little bit to one side
the floor is a little bit to the other side
so if you are watching the needle,
the meter right now, you can see
they sorta.. it sorts of does this
every time he hits the snare it kinda goes like that
every time he's around the ride..
00:04:37 that's totally cool by me.
00:04:38 I am totally down with it, so..
00:04:40 take a listen to this real quick and then
we're gonna talk about
a little compressor I have
on these two channels.
00:05:02 Sounds super great!
I have a Neve 33609
that I have inserted on the compressor.
00:05:08 I kinda set this by eye,
'cause I like the snare to do about 4 dB of compression
and then I like the compressor to just
come right back out so
super fast release..
00:05:19 33609 has no attack so
it just is whatever it is, which is great.
00:05:23 So I am gonna do that over here on the inserts, now.
00:05:48 Now this is super subtle:
you really can't hear them doing a lot
but, in the mix, this will bring the cymbals up
the bloom a little bit
and the snare it will, it will..
00:05:58 every time you hit the snare it
[unintelligible] the compressor,
so it will make the overheads pump
just a little bit..
00:06:04 that little extra snap
that the compressor has.
00:06:07 That's all I'm gonna do to these.
00:06:08 Now, the other thing that happens
is that we need to check the phase.
00:06:12 We know they're in phase with each other,
at least they should be, but..
00:06:15 it's a good idea to check.
00:06:17 So, what I do is, I put them in mono
and then I flip the phase on one side
and.. you'll definitely know.
00:06:32 Yeah, when the signal of the snare drum
just disappears and it just sounds really weird,
you know they are out of phase.
00:06:36 So, they are in phase.
00:06:38 But are they in phase
with the rest of the drums?
So, we're gonna get to that.
00:06:41 So now I've got the overheads,
the next thing I'm gonna listen to
is the kick and snare.
00:06:46 Now, I've got two microphones here on the kick drum.
00:06:48 I have the Beta52 and
I have the Chandler Red.
00:06:52 And I'm gonna bring these up,
there's a little bit of EQ on them,
not gonna go too far down that path, because
every kick drum,
you're gonna have to put some EQ on, alright?
You're gonna have to do it.
00:07:02 So your mileage may vary on what EQ, but..
00:07:05 here's the two microphones.
00:07:14 So this is the Beta.
00:07:23 And here's the Red.
00:07:30 So now, if we put the two together..
00:07:58 All right, cool!
So, now there's some outboard processing here
but I'm gonna get into that.
00:08:04 On the bus, these two microphones
are going to one bus, they're going to bus 3.
00:08:09 So they're gonna go to track 3 in my Pro Tools session.
00:08:12 I'm gonna come out of Bus out 3 of my console
and I'm gonna come over to this 1176.
00:08:19 This is my go-to.
00:08:20 Every kick drum, every snare drum I've ever recorded
has gone through these or some just like these.
00:08:26 These are 1176, version F
and they're really great.
00:08:31 You'll notice there's not a lot going on here,
you'll also notice my bulb burnt out.
00:08:35 That's just, you know, that is..
00:08:37 the bulb burnt out.
00:08:38 So, that's the kick drum, you see..
00:08:41 not a lot going on there.
00:08:42 Attack all the way to the slowest,
release all the way to the fastest.
00:08:47 This is always almost right,
18 here, 30 over here,
it's almost always exactly the same setting.
00:08:56 So, kick drum.
00:09:06 Now that's just kick and overhead.
00:09:08 And to be honest with you,
that's a pretty good drum set!
I mean.. I'll take that!
So our goal
is to be able to turn your kick drum on
into the overhead
and it actually sounds pretty good.
00:09:25 And I think that does!
So now, let's make it a little bigger.
00:09:29 And how we're gonna do that,
we're gonna add the full snare.
00:09:31 The snare on this is particular track
and the kick drum is coming in
to these pres also:
these are the UTA pres,
these are Eric Valentine design pres,
they sound amazing.
00:09:42 So you can see the 52, the Red,
snare, the snare..
00:09:46 There is no EQ on this snare drum, at all.
00:09:48 This is as flat as it gets.
00:09:50 I'm just gonna bring up all channels
'cause it's the only way that it makes sense:
bring up all channels.
00:09:54 One of them is out of phase, the bottom mike
is flipped out of phase..
00:10:10 Now you hear a little ring..
00:10:11 I like that.
00:10:12 Some people don't.. fine, great.
00:10:14 I love it.
00:10:16 So now we're gonna put these in the mix.
00:10:31 Now, if you noticed here on the snare drum
there is a little bit of compression going on.
00:10:53 Now all along I have not had the room mics on
so let's put the room mics in.
00:11:36 So this is the hi-hat mic.
00:11:38 I hate hi-hat mics.
00:11:40 But sometimes you gotta have that.
00:12:08 I'm going to add a couple other little things in.
00:12:11 One of them is the floor tom.
00:12:14 Let's listen to that.
00:12:22 And that is pretty much
I'm turning that on and it's pretty much as..
00:12:25 there's a little bit of EQ, here's without the EQ..
00:12:30 So I am adding a tiny little bit of EQ..
00:12:40 All right, so.. 3 dB of something..
00:12:43 3 dB of 200 cycles.
00:12:45 A dB of 2 k. That's the setting.
00:12:50 Pretty simple. Oh!
3 dB of 8 k and up.
00:13:00 Just play.. keep playing it a little bit, all right?
- Just tom or everything? - Yeah, just that tom!
All right, I'm gonna play with the phase a little bit
here on the tom-overheads,
so I'm gonna mute the room
'cause I don't care about the room.
00:13:26 Uh! Not good!
Ah! There we go!
Cool.
00:13:31 In this scenario our overhead
is out of phase with the snare drum
and the floor tom.
00:13:37 Now, why is that?
Well, it's distance.
00:13:39 It's not that they're out of phase.
00:13:41 It's just.. distance, by the time
the sound leaves the snare or the floor tom
and reaches the overhead,
if you have them "in polarity"
they're not "in phase".
00:13:52 So by flipping the polarity
you have them to land closer
to being in phase with the waveform.
00:13:59 I don't know why.
00:14:00 It seems to always be that way.
00:14:03 I always have to flip the overheads.
00:14:06 Almost every record I mixed
comes in the overheads are upside down to me.
00:14:10 Just timing-wise.
00:14:12 So that's what's going on.
00:14:17 Just play the whole kit a little bit
and I'm gonna talk about some other stuff
to the folks in here.
00:14:21 Thanks! Thanks for your patience.
00:14:23 - Oh, yeah!
So I have a few other little tricks.
00:14:35 One of them is this "Sprinkle to Taste" mic.
00:14:41 Now, this is the mic that's kind of under the snare
by the floor tom.
00:14:47 I've got a gate on my console
and I'll show you why, in a minute.
00:15:00 OK, cool.
00:15:01 So now I'm gonna engage the insert.
00:15:05 The insert is this Radio STC
up to the Polysaturator pedal.
00:15:11 Down to the BeardVerb. Now this is a custom
pedal, it's basically an analog delay.
00:15:15 That's all there is.
00:15:17 But it's really special and it was made for me
and I love it.
00:15:20 So, we're gonna check that out.
00:15:42 I don't know what it's gonna sound like in the track
but it sounds pretty awesome right now.
00:15:45 My console does have a gate,
I'm gonna turn that on.
00:15:48 And basically is really only gonna just shut off the noise
when he's not playing.
00:15:52 And that's pretty cool.
00:15:53 So I'll turn that on now.
00:15:56 Now, I'm gonna unsolo this.
00:16:04 Here's with it in.
00:16:10 And here's with it cut.
00:16:32 So the next thing is
I'm gonna see if the phase of that
is in phase.
00:16:36 So hold on one second.
00:16:38 Heya, Jake?
Hey, can you just hit the..
00:16:41 just the snare, for me, a few times?
I think it sounds better out of phase.
00:17:20 Now, some of you might be wondering
why I am moving this faders, down here.
00:17:24 I'm trying to put together a drum mix
where all of my faders, here in..
00:17:29 on the console are at zero
and all my faders in Pro Tools,
which you can see, are at zero.
00:17:34 So I'm literally gluing the drum mix here
on these faders to tape.
00:17:38 Now why do I wanna do that?
Well, because that makes sense.
00:17:42 It doesn't make any sense to have your faders
all over the place,
in Pro Tools, when you're recording drums.
00:17:47 So, no reason to that.
00:17:49 If you don't have these faders
then use the output of your preamps
or just use the mic pre inputs.
00:17:56 Just turn it up!
The drummer's playing the drums
and the kick sounds great,
the snare sounds great,
the overhead sounds great,
but you need the hi-hat?
Just turn the hi-hat up until you hear it,
that's all you gotta do!
Don't try to fill up the bit bucket,
there's no reason to do it.
00:18:10 At some point Fab can probably show you
why you don't need to do that.
00:18:15 And I think that'd be a good thing.
00:18:16 Because if you were to make the very quietest
thing that our 24 bit track could play back
audible..
00:18:23 the loudest thing will blow up the whole world.
00:18:25 So that's a project for Fab to work on.
00:18:28 I do, from time to time, like to drive the converters
harder.. I bought converters that have transformers..
00:18:34 sometimes it's cool to drive them
and really just bang them really hard.
00:18:39 I am not doing that on this one,
I just don't feel that there's
any need for that sounds, so..
00:18:42 cool!
So, lemme listen here..
00:19:20 A couple things I like to do from time to time is
I like to make a submix of the drums and then
I take that submix of the drums and
I drive it through a compressor and print a mono drum.
00:19:35 One of the first times Fab and I met
I was doing this thing in South Africa and
the second day of the show.. is probably one of the
worst studios I've ever been and for being one of
the most beautiful places.
00:19:46 It was in Johannesburg and
we were cutting this track in this room
that was the most dead, horrible-sounding thing ever,
there was no real good monitoring, there was no real
way to really hear what was going on.
00:19:56 So I just spun up a mono mix through a compressor,
through a Distressor and printed,
at best I could hear,
a mono drum track.
00:20:04 Now, I did record the other drums
and then the track that I was recording,
which wasn't very good,
Fab did have to mix.
00:20:11 And I am sorry about that.
00:20:13 But one of the things that was cool,
was: what Fab actually used of all those
kinda-crappy drums,
was just the mono mix.
00:20:20 And I remember sitting out there and going:
'Well, I am glad I did that!'
I did this a lot of times with rock bands
'cause I just really like the thought of them
being just.. maybe..
00:20:30 you know, the drums are in mono,
they're right in front of us,
maybe it's just that one track, so..
00:20:35 let me show you what's going on, here.
00:20:36 I basically, these faders,
these levels are going to tape and
I have a little mix of these faders,
basically all kind of post fader,
so basically the track
as you're gonna hear it, so
I'm gonna have him play a little bit.
00:20:50 - All right Jake can you just kinda
keep playing it that you've been playing?
- Yeah! - I appreciate it, thank you!
- Oh yeah!
- All right, cool so I'm just gonna bring
this up, here.
00:21:34 As in glorious mono!
Compressed to hell!
And sounds great.
00:21:40 It's an API 525.
00:21:42 It's a compressor that is really like,
really under-utilized today but
was on every API desk in the '70s.
00:21:49 Super cool, it makes no sense.
00:21:51 Impossible user interface
in many ways, but..
00:21:55 once you kinda get it..
00:21:57 it's super gooey.
00:21:59 So check out what happens here
when I put this into our drum mix.
00:22:21 And what happens is
all the drums kinda get a little longer,
they get a little more.. they get a little more
processed and ..better! If that's even possible.
00:22:29 Cool. Alright, so these are main tracks.
00:22:32 Now, I have a couple other things.
00:22:34 And these are, these are..
00:22:36 parallel drum processing.. only,
I use if I need them.
00:22:41 Right now I feel like there's a couple
transients in the drums that aren't really
translating as well as I want them.
00:22:47 So I have a couple parallels set up.
00:22:49 And how we do that in this.. with the console is,
the drums are going to 3
but I send the two kick drum channels
to 25..
00:22:58 and then I send the two snare drum channels to 26.
00:23:01 Those come out, Mike back here,
my trusty and awesome assistant Mike Fahey,
back here..
00:23:08 has patched those up
to a pair of Distressors,
one of them is on 25,
one of them is on 26,
one's for the kick drum, the other's the snare,
and then a pair of Transient Designers.
00:23:19 And so what I wanna do is,
I wanna just use two parallels to get
a little more gain
out of the kick
and a little bit more processed,
compressed kick drum
into the track that then I'll compress.
00:23:40 OK, cool. So this is soloed up right now,
this is the Distressor,
the Kick Drum Parallel, OK?
Kinda get that nice knock out of it.
00:23:59 So I'm gonna put that into the mix, here.
00:24:30 Alright, cool. Then there's a Transient Designer.
00:24:31 Now, I might not use this, but I'm gonna see.
00:24:42 So this is like stupid short and kinda snappy.
00:24:45 I'm gonna do a little EQ.
00:24:58 Now let me show you what..
00:24:59 I'm gonna take these out.
00:25:16 So now, to balance that out
I'm gonna turn those on
I'm gonna take my 1176 here,
which is now, let's add more gain,
and let's turn this down a little bit.
00:25:25 And now I'll turn this back.
00:25:32 OK, cool!
I'm gonna do exactly the same thing
on the snare drum.
00:25:35 So now we're gonna solo these up.
00:25:47 That's the Distressor.
00:25:48 I'm gonna add that in.
00:26:05 I'm gonna add just a little bit of EQ to this.
00:26:45 OK now, the Transient Designer.
00:26:46 And this is a little radical.
00:28:08 All right.
00:28:09 Thanks, man!
Alright, so.. so now I have the bases.
00:28:13 I have all my things in the right spot.
00:28:16 Is this the sound that I'll live with? No..
00:28:19 I doubt it, I'm sure I'll be turning knobs
and things as the band goes on.
00:28:22 But this gives me an idea of what I can adjust
and I will be working while we're doing this, so..
00:28:28 So that's kind of the drums!
- Hi, man! Hey, I think we've got a scratch
vocal for you.. let's see if that works!
- Hey, hey, hey! - Hey! Look at that!
- Yeah! Cool!
Looks like it works!
Let me hear your guitar
and I gotta talk a little bit about
each one of these mics
that I got on it and all that
and then we'll kinda dial in on the sound.
00:28:49 I don't know what guitar sound I quite want yet
because I need to hear it. So..
00:28:53 just play a little bit for me, OK?
- Got it!
I think, earlier, you saw there's..
00:28:59 we talked about..
00:29:02 the four mics that I am using.
00:29:04 67, 57 on the Princeton
and then the GA-20: BK5 and the 57.
00:29:10 So I'm gonna show you each one of those
then we're gonna talk about it.
00:29:14 As of right now, they're flat,
there's no EQ,
I am using some cool preamps, here..
00:29:20 I am using some BK1s,
these are from the late '50s
and they're broadcast amps, they've been modded,
they're really great. They're tubes,
they're fantastic.
00:29:31 And that's it. So, I'm gonna bring these up, here.
00:29:33 So here's the 67..
00:29:59 So, on this one there's a 20 dB in-line pad
because the RCAs have a little bit too much gain.
00:30:14 That's the 67.
00:30:15 Here's the 57.
00:30:25 Now, there's no EQ on this.
00:30:27 So now you only hear the 57 and then 67, together.
00:30:33 67 first.
00:30:36 Now the 57 together.
00:30:39 They sound really nice together.
00:30:40 Lemme check out the phase.
00:30:46 Yeah, good. In phase.
00:30:48 Alright, cool. So that's the Princeton.
00:30:51 So now the GA-20. This will be the BK5..
00:30:57 I'm gonna turn that up a little bit.
00:31:09 Now the 57.
00:31:21 Now, get that this is a totally separate amp.
00:31:22 Which is cool, I'm gonna show you why
here, in a minute.
00:31:26 'cause I wanna take this amp and
I put it with the other amp..
00:31:40 Really nice stereo image..
00:31:41 lemme see if they're in phase.
00:31:49 They were not!
So now the left and right are in phase.
00:31:56 Now what I'm gonna do here is
I'm gonna put a little tiny bit of the console EQ
on the BK5. Just take a little point to it.
00:32:10 That's about 3 dB .. 3 or 4 dB, maybe
a little more than that.
00:32:15 Maybe it's 7 dB.. of 3 k, 4 k,
something like that.
00:32:21 And here's the 57, I'm gonna do the same thing..
00:32:22 this is more of an amp tone thing.
00:32:28 I'm gonna add a little low end to this, too.
00:32:49 Princeton.
00:32:53 And this is the GA-20.
00:33:31 The cool part about recording
with all four of these microphones..
00:33:35 is that I can tone-shape these, later.
00:33:39 So I have four tracks in my session, for these main tracks,
what I'll end up doing is,
I'll adjust the levels a little bit
to get the tone I want without adding any EQ
and then I'll probably just commit this
to a single stereo track..
00:33:54 alright?
This is without the 57s.
00:34:05 This is with the 57s.
00:34:08 This would be without the BK5 and the 67.
00:34:14 Each one of these microphones is definitely
a big part of the overall sound.
00:34:24 There's no compression, not cutting
with any compression.
00:34:34 That's a sound!
Cool, man!
Alright, so, I hear your little slap
you've got going on,
- I'll take it off! - You had it on.
00:34:48 Yeah, that's pretty cool.
00:34:49 - You like that? - I like it.
00:34:51 - Cool.
00:34:55 Right.. and then what you were just playing
was that the wha?
- Yeah.
00:35:02 - Lemme hear that.
00:35:05 Yeah, it makes it a little too..
00:35:07 a little too broken up.
00:35:08 - Yeah, yeah.
00:35:12 - That's a cool sound, right there.
00:35:13 - That's kinda, I think what I wanna base things off of,
'cause I think, this guy might be too bright..
00:35:20 - It's a nice solo-y sort of vibe but.. - Yeah.
00:35:22 - Yeah I think you're.. that initial sort of darker sound
is better.
00:35:28 Yeah, that sounds nice!
- Yeah.
00:35:51 - Yeah. - No [unintelligible] guitar in this song?
- Yeah. As of now definitely.
00:35:56 - As of now, no.
00:35:57 OK let's just check real quick so
we can show it off, alright?
How about that.
00:36:01 - Sounds great.
00:36:10 That's just the DI, right?
With a little bit of fuzz on?
- Right.
00:36:16 - Sounds cool.
00:36:17 Alright, cool. But we're not gonna use it
so I am just actually gonna turn it off here..
00:36:20 - Cool! - Now let's hear.. the Moog bass and the amp here
while I explain what's happening here
- OK!
What's going on here is, he's got foot pedals,
which you've seen the thing
and we have a DI, which is here,
and we have my B15,
my Ampeg B15 amplifier.
00:36:46 When you put the two together..
00:36:52 Now the question that always comes up..
00:36:54 the phase, with bass.
00:36:56 If you're using
electric bass
and you're using a DI
and you're using an amplifier and a mic
they're always out of phase.
00:37:04 They're never in perfect phase.
00:37:06 You know, you can either slide it around
a little bit but the DI is always ahead of the amp.
00:37:11 Only because there's a little bit of
space usually between the amp and the mic.
00:37:15 Even if it's just that much space
that's a millisecond or two.
00:37:19 So there's a really great tool
that I use
kinda post all this
and that's the Little Labs IBP,
the phase adjustment.
00:37:30 I tend to just use the UAD plug-in.
00:37:33 So we'll record the track,
you know, like.. you would..
00:37:36 you just record the track
and then we go play back our first listen,
I'll just quickly throw it on and listen to it
and usually just dial it in right away.
00:37:45 And it's usually between 2 to 4 ms.
00:38:04 Now, we can get it even closer
with the IBP, here in a minute,
when we've tracked this.
00:38:09 - All right, man! That sounds good!
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Vance studied eletrical engineering in Misouri and started his carreer in live sound as a front-of-house engineer. In 2002, he moved to Nashville in order to become studio manager and chief engineer at the legendary Black Bird studios in Nashville. In 2006, he co-founded Sputnik studios along with Grammy winning engineer Mitch Dane, still in Nashville.
Vance Powell has won 6 Grammy awards working with rock artists such as The Raconteurs, Kings of Leon, Jack White, Pearl Jam, The White Stripes, The Dead Weather and more.
Powell's domain of expertise is definitely mixing and producing rock music. As shown in his pureMix videos, Vance likes to experiment and create new fuller and exciting sounds using all kinds of pedals, echos, analog outboards and plug-ins. Vance was used to recording to tape and definitely has an analog approach that makes him commit to fewer good sounding tracks rather than piling up takes in Pro Tools.
His goal is to make something new and warm that fits the band's vision with upfront snare drums and powerful guitars. Rocking.
This is puuuuure gold! I love how Vance describe everything to us while we're listen to that!
zachary miller
2020 Apr 10
Does Vance's parallel Kick and Snare then run back into his 1176's? or does he sum their output along side the original kick and snare onto tape? great series by the way, loving it!!
carlosferamirez
2020 Apr 06
I wold like to know if using guitar pedals are not a bad thing, since they are not balanced. Does that matter or not?
leesparey
2020 Apr 05
This series is ramping up nicely, excellent episode, thank you
plays_gibsons
2020 Apr 05
Great song and sounds, but the best thing about this series so far is that both Vance and Mike are wearing Clutch t-shirts! \"/ \"/
ben641
2020 Apr 04
Very instructive episode! Technically, sonically and humanly...
Thank you
