Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement
Lesson 29 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A BootcampEyal Levi
Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement
Lesson 29 from: Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A BootcampEyal Levi
Lessons
Intro to Bootcamp
13:45 2Purpose of Pre-Production
15:55 3Technical Side of Preproduction
11:33 4Pre-Production: Setting Up the Tempo Map
12:05 5Pre-Production: Importing Stems
10:11 6Pre-Production: Click Track
15:27 7Creating Tracking Templates
17:04 8Intro and the Tone Pie
04:52Drums - Lay of the Land
10:45 10Bearing Edges
03:10 11Wood Types
10:37 12Depths and Sizes
04:00 13Hoops
02:39 14Sticks and Beaters
07:39 15Drum Heads
07:31 16Drum Tuning
1:03:55 17Drum Mic Placement Intro
10:38 18Basic Drum Mic Setup
53:37 19Cymbal Mic Setup
35:25 20Touch Up Tuning
46:56 21Microphone Choice and Placement
40:34 22Drum Tracking Intro
01:01 23Getting Tones and Final Placement
34:52 24Primary Tracking
31:54 25Punching In and Comping Takes
20:11 26Guitar Setup and Rhythm Tone Tracking
01:59 27Amplifiers - Lay of the Land
10:01 28Amplifiers & Cab Shoot Out
27:13 29Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement
03:56 30Guitar Tracking and Signal Chain
29:08 31Finalizing Amplifier Tone
51:24 32Guitar Mic Shootout Round Robin
05:22 33Intro to Rhythm Tracking
07:46 34Setting Up Guitars
15:02 35Working with a Guitarist
05:05 36Final Guitar Tone and Recap
04:11 37Guitar Tracking with John
15:19 38Guitar Tracking with Ollie
32:03 39Final Tracking
22:08 40Tracking Quads
33:44 41Intro to Bass Tone
01:26 42Bass Tone Setup
07:36 43Bass Tone Mic Placement
16:42 44Bass Tracking
45:09 45Intro to Clean and Lead Tones
02:15 46Clean Guitar Tones
34:05 47Lead Tones
10:58 48Vocal Setup for Tracking
11:27 49Vocal Mic Selection and Setup
02:39 50Vocal Mic Shootout
09:14 51Lead Vocal Tracking
38:09 52Writing Harmonies
07:44 53Harmony Vocal Tracking
23:25 54Vocal Warm Ups
11:40 55Scream Vocal Tracking
18:57 56Vocal Tuning and Editing Introduction
01:35 57Vocal Tuning and Editing
29:26 58Routing and Bussing
25:16 59Color Coding, Labeling and Arranging Channels
17:54 60Setting Up Parallel Compression
30:51 61Setting Up Drum Triggers
10:41 62Gain Staging and Trim
1:00:54 63Drum Mixing - Subtractive EQ
25:39 64Drum Mixing - Snare
23:01 65Drum Mixing - Kick
11:39 66Drum Mixing - Toms
24:47 67Drum Mixing - Cymbals and Rooms
17:24 68Drum Mixing Recap
08:58 69Mixing Bass Guitar
16:27 70Mixing Rhythm Guitars
1:16:08 71Basic Vocal Mix
1:08:59 72Mixing Clean and Lead Guitars
58:55 73Mixing - Automation
43:36 74Mastering - Interview with Joel Wanasek
31:02Lesson Info
Guitar Cab Mic Choice and Placement
All right. So John Brown and I decided that we liked the 3-channel dual rec through the oversize recto cab. After shooting out a few different options, we liked that one the best. So if you notice, the room looks a little different. There's a cabinet missing, the head missing, and there's this giant monstrosity behind me. And what this is is a set of gobos, and gobos are basically a dumb word for portable acoustic equipment or acoustic treatment. You use that when you want to change the sonic characteristics of a room. Like for instance, if a drummer was too live, and you're recording a fast drummer, like at my place in Florida, you might put gobos around the kit to get the mics to sound more focused and get less room in them. In the case of this room, like we've been saying there's a lot of 300 buildup which is gross, something that we don't want in guitars, and so we don't want that getting in there anyways. On the other side of this wood, which the cabinet is, there's also foam padd...
ing, so it kind of isolates it. Now, let me also say that when you're miking up a guitar cabinet for this kind of music, you might be surprised to know that a lot of room will get into the microphones, even when they're right up against the speaker. More room gets in than you would expect, so you really do need to take steps to isolate the cabinets as much as you can. It's counterintuitive. You'd expect that blasting the amp with a microphone that's literally a centimeter away would drown out the sound of the room, but that's just not the case. So, even if this was a great-sounding room and didn't make 300, and didn't sound like it was boosting 300 everywhere, we would still be doing this. So let me show you what we've done. So you can see we've got gobos on each side, and when I get out of here, I'm going to be closing this one off. If this was my studio, I would actually also put one up top to prevent any reflections coming from the ceiling, but, you know, work with what we've given. The cabinet itself is decoupled for the ground. It's lifted up and it's on a foam padding inside that case, and we've got sandbags holding the case down so that it doesn't move, because a movement of even a centimeter can completely change the tone. And as you can see, we've got four SM57's. We picked SM57's because they are the go-to de facto standard for dialing in guitar tone. Now, these are not placed in any great way or anything like that. What John Brown did was he went and listened to each speaker with his ears, and decided that he liked the top right speaker, but just to make sure, we're going to listen to every one under a microphone, because John Brown's ears are not what's going to be sending the material into Pro Tools. It has to go through a microphone. So we have each one of these 57's the exact same distance from the speaker. Then they're all right where the speaker meets the dust cap. It's just a good neutral starting point. We're going to record all of them, and pick what we like best and go from there. And that's it. And then if we get something that rules, and we can just start tracking, great. If we get something that's just kind of okay or terrible, we'll try something else. So that's what's up. So I'm going to close this and we will begin.
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
Ron
I'm on lesson 19! Already worth every dollar!!! Priceless insight! I have already incorporated some of the ideas (preproduction common sense stuff that I never thought of, but damn). VERY HAPPY with this course! ALWAYS LEARNING and looking forward to the next 50 (or whatever) lessons!!! Excellent course! GREAT PRODUCER/ENGINEER, GREAT DRUM TECH, and GREAT BAND!!!! THANK YOU!!!!!!!!
ceeleeme
I'm just part way though and I'm blown away by the quality approach Eyal takes to getting the best out of the sessions. I love how well everything is explained and Eyals calm manner is just awesome it really makes you want to listen to the gems of wisdom he offers.
Will
Wow is all I can say. This bootcamp goes in so much depth from tuning drums, setting up guitars, to recording and mixing. I have learned so much by participating in this bootcamp. It has taught me some new recording techniques and signal routing for my mixes. I just want to thank Eyal, Monuments, and Creative Live for taking the time to do this. It has been amazing and I will keep going back to these videos.
Student Work
Related Classes
Audio Engineering