Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp

Lesson 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.

Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp will give you access to one of metal’s most in-demand producers and educators. You’ll also get to watch the talented and seasoned performers of Monuments show you how to record flawless takes and how to prepare to enter the studio.

Recording Metal with Eyal Levi: A Bootcamp is the definitive guide to recording and producing metal. From soup to nuts, start to finish, A to Z, you will learn everything you need to know about recording and producing a metal song.

Eyal Levi will take you inside the studio with Monuments as they record a song from scratch at Clear Lake Recording in Los Angeles. In this bootcamp you will learn how to:

• Prepare for a session in preproduction by choosing tempos and organizing the session
• Record flawless drums from selection and reheading/tuning to mic choice and placement to editing
• Record rhythm guitars
• Record clean and lead guitars
• Record bass guitar
• Record, edit and tune lead vocals, harmonies, and screams
• Mix and master from session setup to final bounce

What comes with purchase of the class?

Lessons