Lessons
Day 1
1Introduction and Overview
11:29 2Getting the Right Gear
30:05 3So What Do I Need?
35:39 4Single Mic Demonstration
37:49 5Drum Micing Techniques Part 1
36:06 6Drum Micing Techniques Part 2
18:26 7Preamps and Gain Staging - Drums
22:43Preamps and Gain Staging - Guitars
20:07 9Reamping Guitars
17:44 10Critique Session: Pig Snout
30:13 11Critique Session: Owl Parliament Part 1
27:35 12Critique Session: Owl Parliament Part 2
23:22Day 2
13Pre-Production
21:10 14Getting Drum Tones
27:27 15Recording Shells and Editing
41:52 16Recording Cymbals
34:34 17Tracking Bass
22:31 18Tracking Guitar
19:30 19Guitar Overdubs and Doubling
30:12 20Mixing Guitars
25:07 21Recording Keyboards
21:04 22Replacing Tom Samples
17:55 23Takeaways: Dos and Don'ts
24:45Lesson Info
Introduction and Overview
This class is going to be mainly about how to maximize the results with what you have, whether you have just one mike or you get the chance to go into a fully staffed studio uh, we're gonna make sure that you're prepared and hopefully you don't blow it, you know, and hopefully a lot of tips um, basically to make it so you don't waste all your money in all your time um, I'm going to start out by showing you, um first I'm just gonna play you a couple songs to kind of demonstrate some of the ideas that we're gonna talk about over the next couple days. Um, this first track is a band called moose blood that I produced using a lot of the same theories, which is just hard, hard work moving like phones um, no real tricks on this then I want to play a song um, friends abandoned mine who recorded their band themselves all like on a double o two totally doing exactly what I'm talking about borrowing someone's rehearsal space tracked it in there had to retract the guitars a million times because e...
very time this sucked and then they kept redoing it, um and then I'm gonna play the third song, which is where I was able to take that song uh, through mixing it and kind of making it sound better so here's the first track was going to play you it's a band called news blood song I think is called I hope you're missing me here stay the way I think I think you guys kind of get the idea what that is the reason why I chose to play that is because it's a very standard kind of like rock production no drum samples no riel like tuning no editing the crap out of anything so when we get a chance to go explore those tracks and you guys get to hear him there's no real like trickery going on it's just this is what was recorded and that's how it sounds and there's also a lot that goes into that um that we can also be exploring other songs and showing how things were done poorly um just talking about how like, you know guitar tones and drum sounds and how they all have to work together it's not just about getting the best guitar sound you can and then you're throwing it with a drum sound and all this and it doesn't work together. I don't know if you guys have ever had that experience where you think you have something sounding great and you put in the guitars of the vocals and you're like, why does this suck? Why does it not gel together? Um this next track is a friend of mine's band this is the one I told you they attract everything with the double o two you know, no control room just everything kind of like how we're going to be doing it today it takes forever to do but this is where they were able to take it and this is where they ended up before they kind of asked me to get involved so I think you get the idea for that mean hopefully should be able to hear a pretty big difference between you know, the way things were all jelling together versus that song and the previous song now here is where I was able to take uhm this song that they tracked themselves um through mixing and then I'll talk a little bit about it afterwards so I guess the main thing I wanted to show from that track is just you are able to get something that's usable you know? And maybe, um if you're not able to get it there yourself, um you're able to pass it off to someone who can, you know um and in my opinion there's a pretty huge difference between where they were able to take it and where I was able to take it and if you were tracking that yourself, you may have been probably pretty frustrated of like, oh man, what is this recording does not sound good um but in my opinion they did you know they did everything right um but there's just things that they could have done better and hopefully I'm gonna show you how to avoid those things and make your recordings better and the best they can be so day one we're gonna talk about doing your homework spending your money on the right gear um knowing what to buy and what not to waste your money on um there's a lot of stuff out there and as you're reading the internet, you know you have everyone telling you what to buy, how what's going to make it better, but I'm going to try to focus on the things that I've found actually make things better rather than just buying the latest and greatest, you know, u eighty seven knockoff mike for like, one hundred dollars or you know, things like that. Um we'll talk about getting the best drum sound possible out of minimal resource is whether it's one mike's eight mikes or twelve mike's um talking a lot about placement I'm gonna go over a lot I'm going to show you guys the difference that you know, moving a microphone one foot will make on it is pretty drastic, but all of this stuff is just a game of inches and I think that's the biggest thing to remember even though you may not have like a definite oh my gosh that's so much better than this way of doing things in the end it's all things they just gradually build up and that's the difference between the home recording enter and like a real recording you know, because you're paying attention all these little details and it really adds up um I'm talking about cramps um how to use preempts how they affect sound um uh mike mike placement on guitars as well um I'm gonna be going over um three bands that recorded projects themselves and I'm gonna be kind of going over those open up the sessions kind of go through it open him up but you guys see ok, this was good this was bad he hears things they could have done better um and I think it would be kind of good for you guys to see that because hopefully you guys are making some of the same mistakes which you probably are um and it's it's kind of good in my experience it was nice to know that when I would see other people doing things um it was nice to know that we're making the same mistakes and they were easily fixable, you know? And then there's a way out it's not like you're just stuck with like I just can't record drugs, you know, like I'm I'm I'm never gonna do that um living on a day to we're actually going to record a song um, live here, I'm talking, I'm gonna do kind of non traditional way of recording drums were gonna record the drums and the the shells and the symbol separate, effectively doubling our microphone inputs because you only have we're only working with foreign puts, so we're gonna do kind of like a kick snare overhead and then a room like when we're doing the shells and then we're going toe track the symbol separately and then were indeed like stereo overheads with, like a hat and ride, so he ultimately are getting more microphones for the same kit by doing things separate. Um, we're going toe talking a little bit about tracking guitar is doing overdubs, revamping guitars, that's something that you're gonna have to probably do a lot of re tracking, retracting, retracting and retracting because most of the time, the first time you do it, it's going to suck and then, you know, you're gonna we're gonna get it. Um, and then we're gonna talk about editing, mixing and maybe a little bit of mastering we'll see how much time we have, but I think the big thing is to focus on is the tracking and editing and mixing.
Class Materials
bonus material with purchase
Ratings and Reviews
a Creativelive Student
A lot of great info here! Awesome getting to see Beau's workflow and hear his thoughts on the methods he uses. Would love to see him do a class on micing guitars, bass and show his methods in more detail/time. He gets some of the best raw tones in the game. Feel like this was more of a great overview and would like more time for details seeing as he is a very knowledgeable dude. Thanks Beau for the great class and for sharing this info with us.