Lessons

Lesson Info

Mic Placement

So now we need to talk about our signal flow of a guitar amp in general when we plug in your guitar, we basically have it's les paul I'm using this marshall today as my amplifier, so basically, uh guitar goes into a d I box d I box sends into pro tools immediately that way we can have a d I recording of victory so we can use that guitar later on to ramp and that is how I recorded the sessions that we will see today I recorded a d I along with an actual amp and we're going to riyadh amp that die through the camper profiles of those answer we made and compare and hear the differences so on where is that guitar and fbi blocks the d I block splits into pro tools and it also goes right into the amplifier, so today we're going to be using this marshall j v n marshall j v m is going tio a marshal four by four twelve over there and basically we're going to be using a few different microphones. I'm going to show you how to make a single microphone guitar jones and also show you how to blend one...

and ah second microphone and we'll talk about phase and we'll get really into that the next signal and the chain is the preempt and today I got to really cool prints with me it's these hair ball audio lois, I'm sorry not blows. It has a picture of his dog lola so called it that but it's the elements siri's, perhaps the really cool they have these needs transformers in it. So the reminiscent of a ten seventy three sound they're not the ten, seventy three clone or anything, but they're the same components that exist and older needs. And it's paying homage to that and getting the classic sound. So I'm going to show those today. And basically the next signal on the chain is that we could use an e q and or compressor, or we could just bypassed that. And ghost raina pro tools what? We're going todo it's just go straight to pro tools today. But later on, I will show these cool compressors that I have with me today these air eleven, seventy six is and their loss of their head. We have mike here yesterday from hairball talking about those things. And I totally want something really, really cool. So you khun websites hairball is a hairball audio audio dot com. Ok, you just you just released these elements one. So those air those air currently available these are still a prototype, they will be out very soon, but you can get the rack version of it these are the five hundred serious version of it so I'm really excited to have this day and very sound really cool so we'll process some guitars with that and that'll be fun so I'll talk about some amps that I have in my studio at the paris studios basically uh I'm a big anti I'm a big guitar guy I grew up playing its arm bands so I really like guitar tones I really like clean guitar towns where I can articulate all the notes and all of the melody that's the reason I listen to music is I want it I want to hear the melodies and I wantto be able to pick out all the aspects and enjoy every musician that's in the span so with that being said I really like a lower gain guitar amps I'm not a very big like I don't I don't really use all these like they like fifty one fifty is probably one of my saving and that's probably the heaviest will ever go anything else is kind of like to meddle and kind of two days away the town so generally I like marshall amplifiers I really like vox's amplifiers I really love my orange eighty one forty it's a great and there's a cool picture out there they didn't see ah the dexter um that app is so unique and cool it's basically uh I went I was on craigslist one day and I was basically wanted to purchase the jmp which is the one that's sitting on top of it and found one on a list drove out to meet the guy the guy was real nice he had all these amplifiers set up in a shop and he's basically just like ah well then obviously you work on answering silly it's like do you have ah four channel or for input plexi I would love to get one one day because I really want to dio the green day dukie mod to it and he was like oh, did you see my web site and like your no what do you mean? He was like, oh, I'm I'm that guy is that what you mean is like I'm the guy who does the mods for green day like I know those guys and they bring other ants to me and like so I'm like no ways like and then like I'll make you one like no problem so by that that jam pee and then he made me that dexterous so that's that's a custom and that he made for me it's a really, really, really cool and it's basically just ah a marshal jam pee and it has the tone stack and gain mod from that green day's is so it's the green day dukie bod is what they call it dexter bill dexter schneider is his name he actually calls it the kill mud because it just kills things because it's so heavy but it's a great at the really cool unique feature of that happens that he installed a second and a fire inside of it so it also has a fender clean circuit so it just has that a single volume in a single tone and it sounds unbelievable great aunt so other campfires I really like are my orange like I said fifty one fifty and I have this and peg before that is a really cool app you can use it on guitar you can use it on base so those were pretty much the profiles that I have in my collection that will be talking about today. One of the coolest things about working at my studio is that we have really cool interaction with a lot of creative people and if I throw them some crazy ideas that could help me accomplish some awesome stuff so my friend carrie austin who is a really cool germer actually used him in a our drum sampling class yesterday he made this robot for me I basically was extremely inspired by eric found time and this guy richard something from the ramstein they both had a mic film robots and these were this is these are concepts and ideas that naturally come to any engineer who understands how to work with a guitar microphone placement is the most important thing ever. The only way to get a great sound out of that answer is you have to get a great sound starting from it, and you have to put him like phone in a great place where it's going to pick up the most balanced tone with that. So my robot that was built for me about kerry basically has ability go left, right forward and back. So we have this cool joystick that my best friend, ace, freely from kiss is a standing order right there, but yes, so that I get to move the robot left right anywhere I want. So I'm the way that I work on the with my family to get up and talk about this for saying the unique thing about their microphone robot is that it only goes left to right and that's ok, because as you can see, this is a three hundred sixty degree speaker going left and right is theoretically the same is going up and down now. Realistically, all aspects of a cone have a different sound, so what I just said isn't really true, but theoretically, yes, it's true, so the way that it works is that I'll place my microphone robot on the outside of the count generally, that is the darkest sounding spot of the count. And what I mean by dark is that it doesn't have a lot of tech doesn't have a lot of articulation it's very it's got a lot of low in response and it it sounds kind of money for lack of a better term. So as the robot progresses into the center here we start to find out that it's stretched get more warm and what I mean by warm is that the low end is coming down and the top is starting to come up and it's starting to sound more even and it's starting to sound more pleasing so generally when on miking guitars they start to live between this area in here really nowhere outside of here that's just my experience of working with tires I'm sure a lot of people are like out here is the best spot it is for you that's awesome no problem I'm not discounting that I'm saying this is what works for me and this is what I have found so with that being said my one of my favorite spots to really mike that I find is that right outside of the scene of the actual film so this is the cone and this is the dome basically all the sound of speaker it's coming right out of this center voice coil here and it's really bright it's really harsh and it's really aggressive and lots of times I really like a microphone city right there, it's capturing all that transmit information and it's capturing all of this attack and articulation, however it's kind of fatigue in on the ear after a little while it sounds impressive and it's bites really hard and it's really cool it's kind of like grabbing that your ears, but you want to be nice picking at your years old they're scratching your ear lobes out so you got to kind of be you've got to really test around, so I always all spend a lot of time maybe twenty two minutes to an hour playing with my position and basically as the microphone moves back away from the speaker, what starts to happen is you lose bottom and more top and focus happens, so I also find that, uh I like the microphone to be generally about two to three fingers away from the cab, maybe more. Sometimes I basically a lot of people are like when you have a camera on the line I like following my year and then going out and seeing where the microphone is and you're like, ok dennett of theirs that's never would have thought of that at school s o I was microphone robot has been a very educational tool for may to be able to understand how gets hard down sounds and therefore when I'm moving the robot, I kind of generally no what it's kind of sound like? Because I've had enough experience understanding the distance and the phase interaction with other speakers and all like that where it sounds on the come when you move it. So without inside, I really like having a microphone generally between here and here, and we're here in here, I'll start off at the at the end and I'll just sweet and, uh, usually these kind of sound the same on both sides, but sometimes maybe it's sound just a little bit less harsh on this side or something like that, so I like to play around really, really get into it, unfortunately, don't have an iphone rival with us today, so we don't get to really play with that. We don't get to talk about that, but I'm just going to show you where we're going to set up on likes day and what kind of makes I like to use I like to use s and thirty seven all time high in there. It's probably one of most consistently use mikes throughout the history of rock n roll recording, starting with when I was kid it's like it was always told me, well, that's, what they used to slash okay it's it's investing thirty seven slash than that's the like, you hear that guitar definitely getting a parrot as you're going to want to buy fifty seven years, that right? So real, like fifty seven, so we're going to the fifty seven today. I also really like to use a ribbon microphone what's really unique and cool about a ribbon is that they sound very warm, and they have a lot of a lot of bottom, and the top isn't very soft. It doesn't have this aggressive, ice picky aspect that the s and fifty seven ask, so I like to use that microphone in conjunction with an s and fifty seven because it sounds really bright, really balanced, and it hasn't been enough loan when you put both them together. I also really like to use just a fifty seven and nothing else, lots of times when I'm actually bringing the ribbon like phone in it's, it's a much more decibels quieter it's, not really the same volume, so we're going to really focus today on how to get a good gets hard town with a single fifty seven, and I'm also going to demonstrate how to use a second mike and how to make sure that you check the face on that. So that's basically that's in my position one on one, so now we need to talk about the guitar tone set process we need to get tellings now, and we didn't talk about how you at home look at guitar towns as well so the first thing you have to do is you gotta choosing char through either have a guitar your artist has a guitar or whatever important thing is evaluate if it sounds good and all that you really just need tio try every guitar possible said you make sure that you have the right guitar in the right hands so with that being said it's really important that guitars are intimated um I cannot stress the importance of having all the threats and all the strings being tune a moxie and tires her pretty much ninety percent of my my job when I'm recording times is redoing things because of tending issues so I cannot stress the importance and choosing a red guitar getting that properly set up and making sure that you have and it well a crypt acts going into your head and head by head I mean the amplifier so next thing in the chain is an apt fire we're going to talk about this marshal jd and today this is a cool marshall and fires kind I haven't really had too much experience with it actually sounds pretty good. I got some pretty decent talyn's going through right now so we're gonna profile two of the crunch modes one of the heavy overdrive modes and the other crunch mode so I'm this app is going into a marshal for twelve over there usually when I make its heart tones I'm using my orange for twelve it has vintage thirties and its selection vintage thirties I'm a very big fan of the selection advantage thirties I do have a couple cabs of greenbacks I also have a really cool marshall eight r eight ten guitar cab it's really really unique uh it's basically eight to ten inch speakers and I got for more v tens and four of them a green back so it's basically the eight inch version right side ten inch version of the finished thirty and a ten inch version of the green pack so the uh calories in today I believe it has uh seventy five what question speakers so I don't really use those traditionally but there that's what we got today so that's usually my cabinet choice we talked a little bit about the heads we're talking about some mike so I'm gonna walk over here I want to demonstrate some like we've got a couple nights with us today first one is our at at some thirty seven this is the classic hey this is the classic microphone radio um so this one is going to be oh basically I'm gonna go back to this slide here in a second I'll show you how will put these on there the next microphone in our arsenal here we had a royer one twenty one very popular with the microphone these as a combo is an extremely referenced combo and current rock guitars lots people use the combination I mean, this is against me and foo fighters everything is so very classic rock and roll mike I also brought a cool new mike with me from a company called s e I really like this company. I see that they make some really cool microphones that have been extremely excited about this one so cute, so tiny just barely fits in palma hand but it's basically it's a rebel like phone it's ah, si we are one voting like phone it's figure it just as the this room in here and pick up from the front and the back so it's cool because they get a little bit and dance as well because of picking up from the back. I don't know about this one if it has this feature that the word is but the roya is brighter on the back it's dark around the front and, uh, what I like to do is I'm a big like I mentioned earlier, I'm a big fan of bright guitar tones, so I like trump backside on the cabs and, uh, I don't really know too many other people who do that, but I know that it's not really that good for the ribbon and you can damage it pretty easily, so I wouldn't really maybe suggest that, but try it if you have a ribbon turn around the other way and see how it sounds so but those microphones they were going to working with today this is the cabinet that we're going to be working with I'm gonna go back to the slide over here and I'm going to just show how will set up these mikes on these cabs and demonstrate that for you like I was saying we'd like to have this fifty seven on the robot and it starts here it's important to talk about on access miking and off access miking they have their advantages and they both have the disadvantage is a cardio mike from pattern has approximately effect so therefore it picks up a lot more low and the closer you get it we called a lot of times that's referred to as ah very wide effect because you could get real close up to the mic and makes your voice sound real deep who so anyways if you get up real close that we get a lot of low end and as you move back the low and we'll kind of start to open up and tied it up you start kind of introducing some air into the signal and it's it's balancing the right amount of natural heir versus speaker excursion that you're trying to pick up on what I mean by excursion is the speaker is coming out and we want for want of capturing that so I like tio basically have my microphone on access and if you were to put this microphone on access right here and then turn it off axis it would get less harsh noise coming from there and we'll be picking up more of the dark side and or the other way be getting less abrasive they wouldn't be hitting the microphone is hard with all this wind from the speaker moving but it would be still capturing the high frequency information so lots of people like to do off axis making lots of people like to do this thing with two fifty seven's we'll put one right here and one off access together that's a unique trick to with that being said my robot doesn't have the ability to move my microphone on access for off excess so I just leave it on access I just go out there and I just start with it on access I used to do off access a lot I just found when I was using the microphone right about that when I would set it up off access and would sweep around I was less happier than when I had it on access so that's my preference I like on access mikey and that's what I'm gonna demonstrate today so when I set up this fifty seven where I'm going to put it is it's going to go on this present spot? I want to try to get that a good amount of presence and I'm trying to get some nice warmth but not I'm not trying to get it to low trying to get to building because I'm all about that articulation and the strings and all that is coming out of here but I don't want to just beginning smashed in the face with this harsh high frequency bright material so I'm going to set up this mike right here on our count and I'm gonna do so three fingers away three ish fingers away any too and basically what I eventually bringing the ribbon to it there's two things that will demonstrate phase is when a source is hitting two different microphones and sources arriving at two different times and that causes mids and it causes frequency cancellation so there's two ways that we can kind of solve this one we can put these microphones identically next to each other and make sure that it's getting the same sound it's not over here it's not over here it's right here together being capturing the same sound the other cool technique that I like teo teo is that and it's then this is kind of a theory based thing and how I got into this speakers are all different even though they're the same brand of speaker it's a different speaker so when you put a microphone on a different speaker in that cab you've eliminated a lot of the phase relationship because the source isn't the exact same sure the sources that talk that's going through there but the speaker is so much more different than this speaker because it's not the same so I find that that happens to eliminate a lot of the phase issues that people have so we'll get into that and I'll be able to really focus on helping you guys understand phase and lining up your tracks and making sure that things were cool so let's ah let me just pull the next light here and see what we got going on next we're going to start tweaking the and then we're gonna start getting into this I'm just going to go ahead and place these microphones where we just discussed that we know where that is s o we want we want to get the camera on me again over here all right so we're starting this as in thirty seven thankfully I haven't asked flashlight to help me out so I could see this count so I'm looking for the scene that we talked about on here again it's relieved l'm meets the cone so we'll set this up right here we'll make sure that we get it on our scene there cool now going to do my little finger measurement to make sure that we're about to fingers away looking good cool let me just come up a little bit more all right cool now I'm gonna place r s e microphone next to this guy so we can get this microphone in phase that when we do eventually pull up that microphone, it's going to be able to be in phase with it, where I like the microphone to go for a ribbon, I'm gonna go back over to the television here I'm gonna show the speaker again where I like these ribbons to g o is because they're not so bright they could take more brighton because they're really dark. You don't want to give it a lot of dark information because it's going to kind of overwhelm it with what it's already inherently capturing. So I like to put this directly in front of the count or of the down put that two fingers away, right dead center that's my usual ribbon placement if it's a little too bright, maybe I'll move it elsewhere, but I usually don't find it's too bright it's just aggressive enough and it's it's sounds very good when you blend it with another fifty seven, so I'm to go back over there and we're going to show that, so in order to make sure that we're totally and stays, we're gonna get this microphone as close to the s and fifty seven is possible, the one interesting. Maybe down side, but I think it's pretty cool because mike friends need to have a big magnet toe work that this ribbon will grab this. It has been fifty seven if it gets too close because it is really magnetized. All right, so we're two fingers away from the cat. We got both the setup. Great. Lastly, I'm going to set up our royal mike, and I'm gonna put this on a different speaker. That way, we can make sure that it's doesn't have a phase interaction with the s and fifty seven when we eventually use that. So I'm going to use this bottom speaker here. That's another aspect that I want to talk about is that when you mike up a cab, you generally it's another theory based thing. I'm really big about theory and thinking about the theory of sound because I respect sound, so a cabinet is sitting on the ground. Ideally, we want to float this cabinet about the ground we would put something like a cinder block underneath in my studio. The reason is that we don't want it to be coupled with the floor. What I mean by that is that we don't want this cabinet to have resonant frequencies that all of a sudden are tuned with the resonant frequency of this room and become extremely loud and amplified. That is something that these microphones going pick up because this cab is going to respond and his microphones of city right in front of it so I really want to float this up above the ground, put it on a chair, put it on some wheels something like that to get it up off the floor. I personally have wheels on everything one by cads and I still put them on center blocks just cause of the theory that I want to raise this cab, the next idea is that we want we want to minimize reflections so a cat is sitting on the ground and the floor is causing some reflections. What we're really just trying to capture is the speech we don't really want to pick up the floor we don't really want to pick up the walls we really just want to capture the speaker, so I like to put the microphones on the top speakers that way we don't have any floor reflection or interact with that I'm going to break that rule right now because I'm gonna put it on the bottom speaker and the reason I'm doing that is because this cab only two of the speakers are working with the image to match this, so we're not running off four speakers and also I don't want to be super loud in this room we're doing this so you guys can hear me talk so that's why I'm putting on the bottom speaker just let it be now I'm going to use the back side of this ribbon, and we're going to put it on the count exactly where the essay is dead, center the count cool. So how far off of a wall do you need to be like? And I'm sure you treated your walls and really dense walls, but in, like, a home studio set up for somebody this recording in there, bedroom, their mom's basement, something like that, how far off of the wall or out of a corner I no corners or bad, it just amplifies that low end. What do you recommend? Well, I would recommend two things one definitely play the amp and a lot of spots in the room, and determine where it sounds best to you because we're using our ears is their frame of reference when we stand there, and when we stand and play with a guitar, we want it to sound good, so I would suggest move the cat around wherever you can. The theory is like wall place when I definitely won't put a cab against the wall, and it's definitely got space between it because we just have space and we have a lot of space in a studio, so we have the ability to just kind of put it in the middle of the room and just kind of make it up. But I would definitely say experiment with that and snow right around way if you have it in the corner on well, you're still going toe get a guitar sound it's going to find. So experiment with the placement of the room and turning what sounds best to you and your ears. Cool. Great. So again, I'm gonna put this directly in the center of the count. Two fingers away. I'm gonna use this back side also, uh, I want to give special thanks to, uh, my creative live team for getting me a flashlight in this last pinch in a minute. That's something that everyone needs in order to make a guitar amp successfully. Let me just play this cable, and so we don't have to do this thing. All right? Um, I just kind of mentioned a couple other microphones that I like to use that guitar sometimes like a heel. Pr thirty. Um, I also like a, um, they're dynamic and two zero one and they also have a rhythm microphone that I really love it's called the m one sixty those air all seem like funds that I tend to gravitate towards other people like to use for twenty ones. That's a very popular microphone to use with a fifty seven. I personally not really using too often. I like guitars because I just use a fifty seven in a rhythm and or just it's, usually just a dynamic and a ribbon it's not too dynamic. So that's my technique. All right. Looking good here. Yeah. Okay, cool. So we got mikes are guitar up here. So next time, tio, I'm gonna take our fifty seven. I'm gonna plug this into you, my copper preempt. Another thing that I'm going to use today, pull it out is this red device made by my friend chuck from cathedral pipes? I need to mention that when you use a rhythm like phone you cannot use forty eight felt that it will melt the ribbon. You will destroy it on dh to ensure that we do not destroy our microphones were going to use this little gun in between. So and it actually I have to supply this fan of power in order for this to work with that microphone. So it basically amplifies the microphones signal a lot more so that we don't have to crank her prints too hard, and we get a lot of games I find it's really useful on this s e v ere one because it does a really low output which confused me at first I thought something was wrong with it but what's a plug into saying I was like oh, not unlike sounds great so I'm going to use this and I would suggest looking into something like this if you have written unlike phones there's a company called cloud that makes one cloud lifter and my friend check makes these ones as well so so it's basically just a surge protector sort of exactly essentially essentially one of those selfless doesn't let anything passed yet we're going to pay respect to these river microphones make sure we don't destroy them today so cool I'll just put that over here make sure we have that in line grant any questions so far? Am I doing all right cool? Does the mic choice affect how the camper profiles and am absolutely ok makes sense I mean the campers profiling every single thing in the chain we'll get into that in a second, but the kember is profiling your guitar town that you're capturing that's coming out of it exactly so between uh, let's skip ahead to a slide a in a second but basically work it. We're creating a guitar tone right now and I'm using it like you can use any money he want anything you want and I prefer to use these microphone to capture a tart down so that's why I'm using these but it doesn't all it does is it affects the way that your camper sounds because it's going to sound like what microphones you're using so that's all you can use whatever whatever you want encourage you to so yes but uh let's kind of talk about the signal flow of the camper and just kind of amp in general another question on signal flows from woods is is turning off the like in the stack the cleanest best rated profile and amp or do you just want to get the tone that you want to hear and then profile that tone so again, teo clear up any possible confusion that anyone might have aa lot of people I think that this they were making a model of a nap where we're like ok, great I'm going toe model my j v m and we're gonna have the j v and so like I don't need that amp anymore I could sell it and like yeah, I have that happen here so never deal now it's it's capturing the settings that you had it's capturing the town and so basically toe to stress how I use this and how it works for me is that I record guitar tones all the time I really liked the idea of digital modeling and digital guitar tones unfortunately those things just don't really sound getting my mixes those type of style of talyn's they just don't really work for me my style of guitar tones that I'm used to getting and used to working with our putting microphones on a cabinet and working with that. If I had the ability to make my sound a digital model, then by all means, show me how and that's literally what the profile is doing, its capturing our sound that we're creating today and it's going to make an identical version of that. Basically taking a photo of that almost you mean so that way, eventually I don't need to tear down anything I don't need tio reset anything up. I can just recall that, sir, about right here. If I want to get a different sound out of that marshal, I have some options in here to kind of tweak more low end and morgaine stuff. But again, we're tweaking the snapshot and it's not tweaking the digital circuit of the amplifier that it has modeled instead, it's tweaking the profile that we have name, I hope that kind of helps cool word.