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Software, Hardware & Equipment

Pro tools you see we're a couple hours in and this is the first time I've mentioned pro tools you need to know everything knows about pro tools duck like I mean everybody knows pro tools or logic or q base or a bilton or any of these programs really they're all just ways of accessing information it's it's more of a workflow thing than a sound thing um but we are talking the commercial world the big time big studios this is going to be your main audio recording that medium no matter what a lot of guys composing logic logic is used a lot but the industry standard for recording is still pro tools and there's no signs of that changing any time soon so yeah, you need to learn everything you know about protocols but I'm banking on the fact that you know a lot about protocols before you graduate recording school because these days most schools give you an m box or something or or if you've got two hundred bucks you could buy an inbox many with pro tools when I was starting out they only had h...

d and ellie so you you know and ellie was still kind of expensive so it was a little bit tougher but now protest is so easy to know and become good at no you need to know more than what's inside the computer to really be a great engineer producer mix engineer musician even if you're a musician in your guitar player and you show up at the studio. If you don't know what a good guitar tone is, how you're going to tell if the engineers doing a good job or not, you know some specifics. Hi the patch bay. Yes, it looks like a lot of stuff and it is however I don't know how many I mean obviously guys know about 00:02:02.003 --> 00:02:04. patch bays because you had already talked about it 00:02:04.39 --> 00:02:08. before we started. Um the nice thing about a patch 00:02:08.21 --> 00:02:11. bay is it's way mohr looking intimidating looking 00:02:11.1 --> 00:02:11. than it actually is 00:02:13.13 --> 00:02:15. if you learn one patch bay like say you learn on an 00:02:15.52 --> 00:02:19. sl consul in school if you've seen one ssl patch bay 00:02:19.79 --> 00:02:22. you've seen all of them they all look the same whether 00:02:22.82 --> 00:02:25. it's on a nine thousand four thousand doesn't matter 00:02:25.7 --> 00:02:28. what has to sell it is they all look the same and 00:02:28.01 --> 00:02:29. same with the knee I think this is a nieve patch bay 00:02:31.57 --> 00:02:34. but they're really essentially all the same you just 00:02:34.04 --> 00:02:36. need to know where the normals are, which you'll learn 00:02:36.64 --> 00:02:40. as a ninja when you're an intern in the room maybe 00:02:40.54 --> 00:02:42. you could ask the cyst those are things that you re 00:02:42.61 --> 00:02:46. con on your own you don't ask the engineer eyes this 00:02:46.5 --> 00:02:49. normal that he's going to be like huh? Like 00:02:50.97 --> 00:02:54. so get to know this study it make it your life 00:02:56.21 --> 00:02:58. once you're in assistant yeah have a good story about 00:02:59.47 --> 00:03:02. basically the best patch bay iris are the craziest 00:03:02.75 --> 00:03:03. patch bay oversaw 00:03:05.51 --> 00:03:08. and you know I'm a total obsessed engineer nerds so 00:03:08.62 --> 00:03:11. when I see a crazy patch bay I'm like that's awesome 00:03:11.04 --> 00:03:13. that means there's lots of shit going on in here so 00:03:13.88 --> 00:03:16. we were mixing at the studio the palms in las vegas 00:03:17.37 --> 00:03:20. and they have two rooms there and in the other room 00:03:20.43 --> 00:03:22. the killers were cutting one of their I think it was 00:03:22.74 --> 00:03:25. her second album or might even been there first out 00:03:25.1 --> 00:03:29. and this was a while back um and I had become friends 00:03:29.43 --> 00:03:31. with the other assistant engineer that was in the 00:03:31.39 --> 00:03:31. room 00:03:33.17 --> 00:03:36. so he took me into the other room before the session 00:03:36.54 --> 00:03:40. and started and these guys had the patch bay was so 00:03:40.08 --> 00:03:44. full I swear you could not fit one more ti ti cable 00:03:44.09 --> 00:03:47. in tow one more hole in that patch bay and I was like, 00:03:47.76 --> 00:03:51. where is all like how is there's this much patching 00:03:51.85 --> 00:03:53. and he's like come in and I'll show you he took me 00:03:53.87 --> 00:03:56. into the live room which was about three times the 00:03:56.6 --> 00:04:00. size of this room and you're talking three or four 00:04:00.04 --> 00:04:05. drum cat kits miked up couple of war litters two pianos 00:04:05.9 --> 00:04:09. every piece of percussion you could imagine congas 00:04:09.6 --> 00:04:14. tim bali's stacks of guitar amps to the ceiling all 00:04:14.97 --> 00:04:17. miked up with like four or five different mikes on 00:04:17.21 --> 00:04:19. each and I'm like what like why all this and he's 00:04:19.98 --> 00:04:23. like because they want the engineer and the producer 00:04:23.95 --> 00:04:26. wants sounds on the fly okay, we want a clean guitar 00:04:26.81 --> 00:04:30. sound open up this mike band oh, we want a dirty guitar 00:04:30.43 --> 00:04:34. sound ban everything was set up. So where any idea 00:04:34.09 --> 00:04:36. that they had they could instantly create it like 00:04:36.15 --> 00:04:40. that because it's, all preparation and it's, all 00:04:42.06 --> 00:04:45. surveying, it's, anticipating. Okay, well, what if 00:04:45.24 --> 00:04:47. they want this sound? Well, maybe we should just have 00:04:47.42 --> 00:04:49. it set up, just in case. Maybe they don't use it. 00:04:49.85 --> 00:04:52. Maybe they do, but the fact that you have it set up. 00:04:55.55 --> 00:04:56. Signal flow. 00:05:01.96 --> 00:05:05. This is it is cool because it was the first thing 00:05:05.28 --> 00:05:09. that was mentioned. It is, along with documentation, 00:05:09.42 --> 00:05:11. is the most important thing that assistant needs to 00:05:11.59 --> 00:05:11. know. 00:05:14.3 --> 00:05:18. For the reason, like I was saying, like in that gigantic 00:05:18.6 --> 00:05:21. room, the assistant is the one who knows how all that 00:05:21.41 --> 00:05:23. stuff is wired. The engineer is just going to walk 00:05:23.89 --> 00:05:26. up and be like, okay, let's, get 00:05:27.8 --> 00:05:29. that second drum kit. Let's, let's, let's, get the 00:05:29.99 --> 00:05:31. overheads in the rooms. I just want to hear the overheads 00:05:31.92 --> 00:05:34. in the rooms. I don't want any close mike that's, 00:05:34.05 --> 00:05:35. one here with that sounds like, 00:05:36.4 --> 00:05:38. well, you can't be okay, well, let me set that up. 00:05:38.68 --> 00:05:39. No, it has to be ready. 00:05:42.34 --> 00:05:45. And things never stay the same ever. So you better 00:05:45.24 --> 00:05:46. be able to make changes on the fly. 00:05:48.65 --> 00:05:51. Okay. The guitar player in the left side of the room. 00:05:51.18 --> 00:05:53. There's an air conditioner and he's cold. We gotta 00:05:53.06 --> 00:05:56. move to the right side of the room. Okay, so that 00:05:56.5 --> 00:05:59. constitutes moving the mic cable to a new tie line 00:05:59.41 --> 00:06:01. on the other side of the room and change. And then 00:06:01.76 --> 00:06:04. it constitutes going back to this. And if you don't know this, this could freak you out. The simple thing is moving this over here. Oh, shit. Well, now, well, if you know this back your hand taking five seconds because you just know where everything in the room is connected to that patch bay. Wei had this assistant. We're working at east west studios in l a, which is a very famous studio, used to be cello studios a long time ago. Frank sinatra used to record here. Elvis presley. A lot of history in this room, and we were doing a huge tracking date. We were recording music for the burlesque soundtrack, and we had an upright bass player and electric bass player. A drummer, um, upright piano player of four piece horn section a guy in the control room playing an x seven phantom keyboard and a producer playing a drum machine all simultaneously. And we had an assistant who was a freaking rock star like the funny thing is all actually name her and her name was audio which is kind of funny like that female version of audio I guess no no but she did all of this seamlessly like we're talking like okay I'll pull up the kick in mike okay the kick out there's some kind of phase issue let's change the mike let's put a instead of a yamaha sub kick let's use a forty seven fete hook that up okay no problem literally five minutes later she's got the mike it's routed it's hooked up now a pump the favor okay well now the sound is right but there's some kind of crackling on the channel let's move the kick out mike from channel twenty six the channel thirty okay no problem click like okay that's great but now my kick out mike and I kick in my car next to each other so let's move to kick it over to channel thirty one okay click boom okay thanks. Oh and your coffee's right back there too like she did all this with a smile on her face and acted like she'd been doing it for thirty years. These are the type of assistance and this was probably five years ago and I still remember her name and I remember what that session very very vividly. These are the things the same way that doing the the food you know, with keeping the food hot, we get you notices. An intern, it's. Things like this to get you noticed. Notice as an assistant and stuff like this, that will get you one of those residency type jobs. I've seen it happen where engineers come to a studio work with an assistant that such a rock star that they steal the system from the studio and, like, come with me, you're gonna work with me wherever I work, you're going to be my guy. And that's the goldmine gig. How about microphones? Yes. And this is stuff that they teach you in recording school. And the reason why I'm kind of just touching on it is because, for some reason. The assistance that I come across, or interns, or whatever that I've come across in my path, don't know this. And I don't know if it's. They forgot. Or they slept through the day in class. Or. They may be they learned about it, but they just didn't take it that seriously, because, you know, um, this is recording right, like getting the right input. The right sound at the foundation is so imperative the fix it in the mix as a mixer, I could be one that say that I hate that saying and it's a saying that haunts me. Sometimes I'm blessed enough to get to work with a lot of great people, and I get really good stuff. But it does happen, you know, and a lot of times when the mix becomes problematic, it's, because the sound wasn't right at the source. If you could get great recordings, you're going to get noticed really quickly because it's, an art that's kind of it's, kind of not as is out there and important as it used to be, because now things are more about your speed and pro tools and stuff like that, so really quickly. I mean, I'm going to brief about this. One thing you should know when you walk when you become an assistant is howto mic up a drum kit really quickly even if it's not the final sound it's a starting point these are some things that you could probably memorize you should be able you should have a mic set up for a drum kit memorized so where you could walk into any where and just say okay snare some fifty seven it's pretty much a standard and the reason why two standards because it sounds the best it's that whole thing where the pros have gone through all the trial and there find out what the pros use and start their well not everyone uses this, but probably ninety percent of people use a fifty seven because the frequency response this sounds good on a snare as you can see we're almost all dynamic microphones when you're dealing with drums you're obviously dealing with high s pio so a dynamic might could take more pressure than a condenser if you're using condensers, you probably have to pad them damn and you know, hopefully they teach you this in recording school and I'm not trying to dive too much into stuff knowledge that you're getting there, I'm trying to help you build upon that, but I'm just trying to emphasize that memorizing a basic drum mic set up is imperative as an assistant, but let me make sure I understand so you're talking about a drum mic set up here. But, you know, you should have the same sort of basic template for, you know, different kinds of vocal, absolute ours, absolutely. You know, this is this is just one. This is a principle that you should have, you know, I'm not saying, oh, you should only memorized the drum. I'm saying, basic setup you should have memorized, not like, okay, that you're asked to record an electric guitar, or you're asked to record a base or someone's like, yeah, I want to use the base, and I want to make a cab and die as well. These are things, the basics. You should have memory it's, like you could be like, okay, let me set that up for you. You go right to the mic locker and grabbed the mikes, and it's set it up. Damn! You know, and these air all taste things like this is very basic. This is what I like to you, so I'm just posted this up because this is what I like in ar e twenty is also good for this d one twelve pretty standard, a sure bet of fifty two as well. We'll get you some nice attack forty seven fete, you know, just a great all around microphone, so my whole point about this is get to know microphones. They're your best friend that's really quickly? Sure. So forty seven there's, two different types of forty sevens, a fed and a tube. So the reason why they're labeled that way? Because you can't necessarily push the same pressure into a tube mike as you can, something that's transistor based. So these labels are designed to not to get you to not destroy your microphones, like if you're recording a horn section and you put a ribbon mic right by the bell, you're going to break the microphone and these microphones are expensive, so basically, this. You know, this. Mike specifically is the transistor version of a mic that also comes in a tube version. So pressure? Absolutely. Um, two mikes tend to sound really, really nice on vocals, like a than a lamb telephone kin to fifty one is my favorite mike for recording vocals. But if you try to record beyonce on that mike, it might be tough because it could distort because of the power you have to 00:14:05.146 --> 00:14:08. understand the source. That's comforting. Coming from 00:14:08.79 --> 00:14:12. the key to being a great recording engineer is understanding 00:14:12.86 --> 00:14:15. the source from the source, not the source. Through 00:14:15.94 --> 00:14:18. the gear, the source from wherever it's coming from, 00:14:18.66 --> 00:14:21. whether it's coming out of someone's mouth, whether 00:14:21.24 --> 00:14:24. it's coming from strings, whether it's coming from 00:14:24.01 --> 00:14:28. a drum, you have to understand and listen to the sound. 00:14:30.8 --> 00:14:33. At its source like I never understood a recording 00:14:33.8 --> 00:14:38. engineer that didn't walk into the the live room before 00:14:38.22 --> 00:14:40. they recorded and listen to what the sound sounds 00:14:40.32 --> 00:14:44. like in the room that's the first thing I do is say 00:14:44.53 --> 00:14:46. a piano player is in there playing well, I'm going 00:14:46.47 --> 00:14:49. to go into the live room and listen to what that piano 00:14:49.71 --> 00:14:53. sounds like in the room and be like, okay that's the 00:14:53.24 --> 00:14:56. sound I'm trying to capture you're not trying to capture 00:14:56.21 --> 00:14:58. the sound through a bunch of cues and compressors 00:14:58.5 --> 00:15:00. and be like okay, well the sounds too bright let me 00:15:00.93 --> 00:15:03. do it let me tweak this and tweet this like that's 00:15:03.88 --> 00:15:06. not what proper engineering is proper engineering 00:15:06.81 --> 00:15:10. is capturing the best sound source that you can and 00:15:10.26 --> 00:15:12. having a knowledge of the right microphones to do 00:15:12.19 --> 00:15:12. that is imperative 00:15:14.16 --> 00:15:18. my questions your so I like the e lamb to fifty one 00:15:18.56 --> 00:15:21. too, but I noticed that I noticed the destruction 00:15:21.51 --> 00:15:24. especially on the top end of it so you've got a singer 00:15:25.6 --> 00:15:28. and she sounds great on that mike except when she's 00:15:28.66 --> 00:15:30. pushing the top and what would your second choice 00:15:30.77 --> 00:15:33. b my second choice would be to have the singer worked 00:15:33.51 --> 00:15:35. the mike that's? What that's what mind would be too? 00:15:35.75 --> 00:15:39. What if you're with a singer who can't grok that um 00:15:41.06 --> 00:15:45. forty seven to is a good substitute also you sixty 00:15:45.35 --> 00:15:46. seven is really nice 00:15:48.16 --> 00:15:48. um 00:15:50.76 --> 00:15:52. if you're going for a brighter sound, 00:15:54.66 --> 00:15:56. me, personally. I'm not a huge fan of this, mike. 00:15:56.98 --> 00:15:58. But the sony see eight hundred. A lot of people like 00:15:59.0 --> 00:16:01. because it's really bright, uh, really good for recording 00:16:01.46 --> 00:16:02. rat vocals. 00:16:04.33 --> 00:16:05. Er any more questions about mike's? Anything. I'm going to move on to the another really important thing on on a assistant list. Backups. Yes, backups. Um some people don't know this that when you go to a commercial recording studio, they don't keep the information for you. They wipe the drives it's, not their responsibility to archive sessions it's. The sessions of responsibility to come to the studio, provide their own hard drive, provide their own backup system. Most studios will keep the information for maybe usually about a week maximum. So if you are come and do a session and then you leave and then a week later, you're like, okay, we need the file so we could start mixing. If you don't have the files with you, they'd be like, sorry, what do you mean, you didn't take the files? Some people get burned by this because they just assume that the studio's going to keep files for them. Absolutely not. It is the assistant's responsibility to back up the information, but they're not backing up to studio drives, their backing it up to client drives. Since backups are so important I actually provided what my favorite system is and again there's probably other systems out there but this is what I like because got it I do so much primarily I'm mixing now so I basically do you have a different song every day that I'm working on I use this program called synchronized pro I'm sure lots of people out there have heard of it or use it even it's really really good and I wish I had this when I was an assistant because it makes backing up absolutely it makes it the same every night and it makes it completely full proof what this does basically is you hook up your drive which is your master drive or your work 00:18:09.192 --> 00:18:12. dr and then you hook up another drive and you designated 00:18:12.89 --> 00:18:16. basically the disney as the slave driver the backup 00:18:16.69 --> 00:18:21. drive and every time you hook up that backup drive 00:18:21.13 --> 00:18:23. and start this program it will no okay this is the 00:18:23.8 --> 00:18:25. back up this is the master 00:18:26.75 --> 00:18:30. and when you sink them it basically it takes all new 00:18:30.55 --> 00:18:34. information and on lee new information from the master 00:18:34.02 --> 00:18:37. drive and backs it up to the slave driver so you're 00:18:37.99 --> 00:18:41. not double copying sessions like when I was working 00:18:41.17 --> 00:18:43. with dave at the end of every night sometimes we would 00:18:43.85 --> 00:18:46. have recalls on three or four songs so we would tweak 00:18:46.19 --> 00:18:48. this on this song tweet this on this song and they 00:18:48.34 --> 00:18:51. be minute little changes like change this and change 00:18:51.31 --> 00:18:53. that well, I would have to back up the whole session 00:18:53.23 --> 00:18:55. again, which sometimes could be eight or nine gigs 00:18:55.79 --> 00:18:58. worth of information, so you're wasting a lot of drive 00:18:58.63 --> 00:19:01. space because every time you're doing it, you're copying 00:19:01.4 --> 00:19:03. information that's already there that hasn't been 00:19:03.54 --> 00:19:06. changed. So what this is doing is it's on ly finding 00:19:06.66 --> 00:19:09. the newly written audio files and just backing those 00:19:09.24 --> 00:19:09. up 00:19:11.35 --> 00:19:15. so it's one for one thing it saves dr space and for 00:19:15.38 --> 00:19:15. two 00:19:16.95 --> 00:19:19. you don't have to worry about and keep a list of everything 00:19:19.58 --> 00:19:22. you change that day, you just hit sink it's dummy 00:19:22.75 --> 00:19:26. proof it will do the work for you. It will tell ok, 00:19:26.45 --> 00:19:28. this was changed, this was anything that was written 00:19:28.53 --> 00:19:30. on the drive, we'll be back up to the to the other 00:19:30.96 --> 00:19:34. job, so I don't know a lot of other programs because 00:19:34.92 --> 00:19:36. I like this one so much I never even liked looked 00:19:36.94 --> 00:19:39. into other ones. So 00:19:40.69 --> 00:19:43. any program that's like this I highly recommend is 00:19:43.2 --> 00:19:47. there keep a copy of the other section that you're 00:19:47.56 --> 00:19:50. working with. So does it keep like the original and 00:19:50.77 --> 00:19:54. then update a newer version of whatever you've changed 00:19:54.18 --> 00:19:56. that you could potentially go back to it's the only 00:19:56.41 --> 00:19:57. thing it doesn't, 00:19:58.45 --> 00:20:02. it doesn't over it doesn't copy audio files that haven't 00:20:02.12 --> 00:20:04. been changed, so say um 00:20:06.45 --> 00:20:08. like you do an update on how many's approaches an 00:20:08.82 --> 00:20:11. example just cause that's what I use so you update your approach will session you do a save as and you know you make some changes whatever you change in the audio will back up along with the session like the actual session document um it will back that up it it's any information that's been changed but it doesn't get rid of old information it just puts but it also doesn't copy doesn't double copy information has been changed on lee new information does that make sense perfect okay do you do save as each new day on sessions absolutely I do save as is all through the day so I'll do a save as I mean I go a little bit overboard like sometimes in one mix I'll have like twenty save as is because every couple hours you know because I start I'll do a quick mix just just to get the feel of it do a save as maybe start queuing something's do is save as and I always revert backto how I started just tow listen cause sometimes you over mixed things sometimes you over think it and you kind of go back to where the original field was like okay kind of like this better so you go back and you start over from there I have another question about one of the things that I was hoping to get out of this workshop is information on file management and backup awesome when you do it same as I how do you label it however what it depends on what you usually I go numerically like I try to keep it as much of a system as I can write and a lot of that is for my assistant because my assistant isn't always in the room with me at all times because he may be in another room doing edits or doing something so it's much easier just to be new miracle like so I'll just I'll have you know like a song of save the day drew mix one is we're all start and by midday I could be a tte six or seven so if I need to revert back I could just tell my assistant hey go back to mix five so I keep it new miracle until I get the mix at the end and then I label it like vocal up or base up right just if their specific changes that I know in my mind could we could revert away from grow back too or alternate versions that makes sense I will label it specifically if I'm not doing specific edits it's all new miracle and along with the date too because sometimes if I just doing america li I can't remember like was did I was hack from tuesday's session or no I don't because pro tools time stamps the session and look it'll say datemodified yeah, that will tell you the exact moment that it was changed. So the numerical thing is for me, for my own system, your exact, because you have to keep it as as simple. I mean, this job is complex enough. You've got to simplify things as much as you can. No. Some other stuff to know about we'll gain structure and this kind of starts branching into the engineering side as an assistant in a big studio you will be engineering sometimes and this is something that absolutely will happen and this is imperative this is how you break out of being an assistant and become an engineer because one day the the engineer is going to be sick or the engineer is goingto get stuck in traffic on the one on one or they're going to just not be there for some reason and you're going to end up engineering because you're the next one in line this actually happened my friend in vegas the engineer didn't show up and he ended up recording elton john vocals and piano because the engineer was in there so as an assistant are you going to be prepared for that for elton john no music theory in song structure now when I say music theory that doesn't mean you have to be beethoven or mozart doesn't mean you have to know howto write out a notation but you need to understand music progressions more importantly structure you know what's an intro what's averse what's a pre hook what's a hook what supposed took what's a bridge come and when you when you're an assistant and your ninja ring all this knowledge you'll see all that you'll see how things are common what is common between from song a song what kind of is kind of universal. And then you'll see the things that are unique, and especially for you guys, that also our producers and want to make your own music. This is you're like, how engineers are storing gear and techniques in your head. You're storing the way different people arrange music or the different keys that they use, like that's. One thing I noticed is how a lot of people in modern pop music, right almost in the same key, like there's, several keys that are used way more than other ones. So these are all things. What, why, even being a producer, being insistent engineer could be very, very vital, because you're also learning from the producers in the room and how they create the music, how they structure of the music, how they arrange the music, because that is like I mean, so much of how good a song is is depending on the arrangement, like ninety percent. Yes, sir. A couple people in several of these recording classes that have no music background never played an instrument. And I guess I wonder, like what's the bare minimum that they need in order to actually be able to do this, because I just figured you needed something. And there are some people that are music lovers but don't really have much music theory. Maybe they get song structured intros and verses and choruses, but, I mean, these are things that you learn over time, so I would say if you don't have to have played an instrument to become a good engineer, a lot of engineers that I know are ex guitar players or musicians, and it definitely gives you an advantage over the people that don't. But I wasn't a musician for say, I'd play drums. I was a drummer but I never read a piece of music in my life and I would say you don't have to be a musician but at some point you're gonna have to understand music from a from a construction standpoint not just from oh I really like this song it makes me feel so good when I hear like well you have eventually gonna have to figure out what about the song from the inside out is what makes it great I mean that's what this whole business is is constructing records so do you have to know it coming out of recording school you'll be better off if you do but it doesn't mean you're doomed if you don't you can learn it they can be learned put that into your obsession because you got to work harder than someone that has been playing guitar for ten years because they're going to know progressions and notes and all that stuff is going to give him an advantage okay are we doing okay on time cool this is really important and I'll give you a little example of it too sourcing equipment one thing I also did when I got moved up into being an assistant that a lot of people hadn't done is I called all the gear rental company every gear, every company in the area which in l a is a lot of companies that rent instruments, pro audio equipment software whatever was I called them all got to know the people figured out what their inventory was okay what do you have what vintage microphones do you have what what this do you have what that do you have that way on the off chance that one day a producer or engineer may walk in and they never give you a heads up hardly ever they'll just come in to be like okay we're doing strings today and I want a fair shot for the sound okay well for those of you who don't know what a fairchild is it's a very expensive very rare compressor they run about twenty thousand dollars each and not everyone has it in fact hardly anybody has him so he says that and you you don't know where there's fairchild's in town what's next in your life you're gonna have to call every gear rental hey do you have a fair child hey do you have a fair it could take you an hour meanwhile the engineers and they're like well we just wasted an hour of our day so this happened to me not with a fairchild but someone came in and they wanted a couple of vintage pull tech accused for the piano so I knew I knew I called my buddy john fisher over gear works for audio I said I need to vintage pull technique you p one days he said come on over you grab I knew how many they had I knew which versions they had. I even knew if they were stereo pairs or not. Because this is all ri con and being a ninja and thinking outside the box where a normal assistant would have been like. Okay, let me see what I can find for you and been on the phone. I already knew what everybody had. So it was just a question of being like, okay, we'll call this guy because let me look at my list. Okay? They have one boom and five minutes has done in twenty minutes. It's it's in the front door and in forty five minutes you're recording. Do you recommend that they do go out and make a purchase of equipment? Um, yeah. A cz muchas you can afford. I mean, I understand that. I mean, a lot of this recording equipment is very expensive. So it's kind of hard for someone to tell him to go out and buy a compressor that costs fifteen hundred dollars. You know, come it's all dependent on what your budget is. If you can afford it, I would. Some really good startup microphones would be like a u eighty seven is really good for vocal recording. Let me think here obviously pro tools some sort of either end box or you could even get hd native that they make now which is a little bit more expensive but it gets kind of gives you a little more of a professional work flow within pro tools anything made by apogee be it the duet the apogee apogee makes this thing called to do it it's real italy like this big and you could get literally million dollars studio quality sound out of it and you could hook it up in a bedroom or it's literally this big and hooks up to your laptop or your computer via firewire and you're up and running and it sounds really really good no well perfect hopefully it wouldn't be too slow but you know I guess it would depend on what processing running the computer as well but but recording is very accessible now so you could get a startup that sounds of really really good for probably maybe a couple of thousand dollars whereas if ten years ago you need to fifty grand to start something up and again and again the question I would have to know your budget specifically if you have more money to spend there's more expensive things you can get into and you always the more expensive you get the better the sound is going to be you know like if you have the budget to buy like a naive ten seventy three mike pre I would that's my favorite mike three in the whole world I've used a lot of them and those sound amazing but they're also you know, three thousand dollars a channel so they're more expensive recording school is you know, taking manager of facilities they have there too you know play around with all the gear there one hundred percent um because it's getting its storing in your mind and you're in your template um of what the sound is I mean quite honestly you're you're still new to the force of the art form of recording so you're not going to hear the subtleties in certain things until your ears are a little more refined like I probably did fifty ssl mixes when I was in recording school but I didn't really understand what the sound of an ssl is until a couple of years after that until I had been and so I had done six hundred mixes on it before you start really understanding how would you describe the sound of an ssl mix very when you're comparing it to other consuls it's very transparent like if you're working on something like a naive or an ap iet's going to color the sound a lot more eso like I was saying with that listening to the sound in the room if you want just like if I walk in and I hear piano playing in the room and like man, this room sounds amazing I want that sound without it being changed then you would do something like an ssl if you're like it could use a little flair or a little warmth in the bottom end or something they need to do something like a need that come that is going to color the sound a little bit more so my ultimate working style would be to record through an iv and mix on an sl because when you're mixing on unnecessarily you're not really coloring the sound too much down using an ssl the reason why as the cells became so popular is because of the automation system and they're the routing and the fact that there was dynamics on every channel and it kind of gave you that crush and destroy sound of the nineties you know the teddy riley music the rock you know the listen to like the rage against the machine type of records that really like this crush and destroy sound was created by the g siri's ssl so the sound of an ss l I would say is punchy and aggressive and the sound of a needy I would say is round and fat you know these are all of you hard it's hard to describe in words that's why we use really colorful weird words like this it's like well what is dirty sound like well you have to find that out for yourself that's my interpretation of dirty might be different than someone else's so just before we get our equipment a few people because we mentioned a few times now pro tools you question saying why is pro tools the indus expanded number one because did you design which is bought up by habit is very good marketing company never tio the way the software is laid out is very very easy to understand and when pro tools first came out the way that the routing in the flow of the software was created was very similar to how you're out signal through an analog board or how you did it when you were using tape machines and analog consuls so it was easy for the old guys to switch because it was familiar like they would sit down and say okay here's the pan pot here is this the fader even looks kind of similar okay here's the input stage here's the inserts here's the sends its very similar to the way analog board is laid out if you look at logic it's like what the hell is this like I mean logic is great but like the fader czar like squares and it's like the pan's heir done bye biddy so it's like sixty four like doesn't make any sense to you an engineer so it's a combination of great marketing by the company and being familiar being a familiar look and feel to the analog world in the early days and then once something takes stone you know once something becomes a standard it's kind of hard to break that once people get familiar with something they don't like to change so the only way that pro tools is going to fall out is if something else has a superior sound that's so obvious that people would want to switch from the workflow absolutely yeah from stock items that would be great toe have I know it's a lot of it depends on your budget but can you just gloss over compressor you mentioned mike pre cues and and if we have time I'd love for you to tell us about your choices on the five hundred siri's which are the smaller lunchbox so for a compressor my favorite compressor in the whole world I guess it wouldn't in the grand scheme of compressors it's not expensive it's runs about fifteen hundred dollars is it's the empirical abs distress sir and it's great because you could literally put anything through it like I've recorded vocals through it I've recorded bass guitars through electric guitars draw any kicker snare like and it has so much character and you could make it sound clean if you want you could make it sound as dirty and disgusting as you want it actually has a setting that because compressors air work by a ratio of how many decibels over the threshold the signal is being taken away and how much you're getting back so they take it all the way to tend to one and then they have a button that says nuke, and I just love that like they're they're like the ratio, and now is its crushing it so much that we don't have a number for it anymore. Now, it's just nuke, and to run drums through that just gives it this kick ass distortion and down and relatively speaking for what it does and how cool it is. I mean, it's, not that expensive when you look at what other compressors do that are way more expensive, and you can't do half of what you could do with them, so that would be my choice. If I could have one compressor, a rack of only one compressor, it would be that compressor, a ce faras cq. That's, a tough one because I don't get is excited about excuse, because there was just a cut and, like there's, no character to it, really. I love the ap. I like you're saying the five hundreds. I have a rack of ap five fifty a's that I really like and five sixties, which you can actually get the plug in the makes a plugin version of it. That sounds really, really good.