Do you want to improve your music making skills and get better sounds, fast, while achieving professional results? I’ll help you with tips on composition, how to use the mics, software and plugins to improve your skills so you can create great sounding music without needing to wait for inspiration to strike!
I have to come back and look for you just to say thank you. This is very intelligent and helpful, this idea costs a million dollars, thank you so much for sharing. Tried it last night on a song I’m working on and boom, everything sounds so sweet and incredible. Thank you so much, I’m going straight to your channel to check out your other videos, thank you
Oh Yeah... Would you be so kind as to do a video in which you "break down" the mechanics of what is happening in "76" style compressors, when the "all in"/"Nuke" functionality is activated? I'd be curious as to whether it it is merely super compressed, OR if all of those ratios are applying mildly different timings/sync, etc... or anything more than merely a "high ratio".
SUUUUUPerrrrr USEFUL video, Brother! I'd LOVE to see a video covering usage of LA3A vs LA2A. (Sidenote: Did you use a compressor for your fade-in/out for this video? I ask because the way that it came in and out... the timing was really weird in that your voice and the example audio were out of time when they came in and out many times. It gave me a weird (almost motion sickness) type of "out of sync" feeling. But, i'm just one guy. Hopefully no one else was impacted.
You continue to SLAY with your tutorials, Brother! Could we please get a tutorial on how to use compressors based in the Gates Sta-Level? And as a follow on to busses would be AMAZING to see a series or long form video on building mixbusses, in which you use different songs to show us umyour assembly of multiple mix buses (at least 3, preferably different genres) so that you can explain what you are adding, what that choice is treating within your mix, and why you feel that it was tge right choice verses some similar tools which you could list and share what the consequences may have been with those tools versus the one you decided upon. I specify all of these details as a reminder to us all that choices will be "use case" dependent, and so that we can learn some of the analytical processes which we should likely consider when weighing choices. :-) Oh yeah, and PLEASE a 3rd request: On Mac, how would we use the MIDI Studio settings? Apple is painfully negligent on a tutorifor it, amd it seems that it could likely be VERY useful.
Hi Alexander, amazing video and awesome you are working in Luna and have a sphere mic. I need some help. Yesterday I recorded with my DLX sphere a vocalist. I wanted to use melodyne to tune the vocals which it does, however, I notice the Sphere plug in, the microphone I chose, doesn't work anymore. When I want to change the mic or even want to change the settings in the plug in nothing responds, it is like melodyne took over. When I put the melodyne above the plug in I get an alert that the mic isn't calibrated. So, isn't this possible? UAD said it does work perfectly when place the melodyne in the first slot and the sphere plug in after, but it doesn't with me....I see you bounced the track with the chosen mic, however, here is another question, you can see in the original that the stereo of the original has one signal from the front of the mic and the bottom one the back which I guess gives it a nice quality - when you bounce the track and bring it back in the stereo volume is equal. Doesn't that change the character compared to the original? When the original comes into my vocal bus it does enter the track equally. Another thought is that melodyne grabs the track mono, doesn't that change the character of the original recorded stereo track? I think I hear a difference, however, the mind can play tricks on your ears 🙂- I presume you, like me, tried many ways to tune vocals using the sphere mic, so I love to hear your mind about how you do it in this video is the only way to do it, or that it is possible to put melodyne on the same original vocal track and make it work...Thanks in advance
Hey there! Well firstly, thank you for watching the video! It’s great to have you here! So, I can definitely shed some light on what’s going on for you with Melodyne. Basically, the plugin “takes over” anything before it. So in LUNA right now, if you have any plugin before Melodyne, then use Melodyne’s Capture to import audio into it for tuning, the only thing you’ll ever hear play back is Melodyne’s audio from the plugin onwards - so you’re quite right in that anything you change in the plugin chain before Melodyne will indeed do absolutely nothing! This also causes issues with moving or editing your regions on the timeline. If you’ve imported it into the Melodyne plugin and tuned something, then move a region, you’ll notice that the audio will still play back in its original position. The most natural workflow is to decide on a mic setting before tuning, as then you’ll never have Melodyne interacting or interfering with Sphere. Once you’ve done your tuning, export and then reimport the now committed Melodyne tuning and you won’t have Melodyne messing around with this “taking over” stuff it does. Also, to explain about the stereo file and the two sides of the audio. When you capture audio with Sphere raw, you’ll absolutely see the top part larger (front of the mic) and the bottom part smaller (rear) assuming the sound source is in front of the mic. You then use Sphere, but if you then export audio afterwards, you’ll notice the two sides of the stereo file look the same. That is because the Sphere plugin is dual mono. So although the front and back stereo signal goes into the mic, what comes out is actually a mono signal - or as we’ll call it, dual mono.
3 Questions: 1)Are there tools which your recommend for checking "Phase Coherence" between mic positions (live during mic check, instead of tracking and then having to resolve after recognizing poor phase alignment, after the fact? Unrelated 2)Do you own the UAD "Complete" Bundle? 3)Do you feel that the Complete Bundle is worth the upgrade in comparison to the "Ultimate" Bundle?
Hey! So, with the phase whilst tracking, I don’t have any special workflow other than recording and then double checking. Zooming right in on the wave forms to check is something I do a little bit of, but mostly just deciding on a master microphone and then making sure everything is aligned to that is a good start. Of course, that doesn’t mean everything will be in phase because you can get things that are 90° out of phase. There are certainly plugins that will help fix phase between mics for you, too. Which can help! With UAD, you might have noticed I’m a big, big fan of their stuff. However, I don’t own any of their bundles, I just buy what I need as it comes up. I have a fairly decent selection of their stuff, and I do think they are worth the money, but only if you definitely have a use case for everything.
Oh I know, it’s so annoying! It was an attempt to have the camera auto track me between the mix position and the drums and it absolutely has not worked! 😂 I won’t be trying this on any future videos for sure!
Really interesting video and technique, Alexander. Looking forward to seeing the follow up and hoping you may even release the raw drum samples you recorded (I’d love to use them in a song 😊).
Thank you ever so much! You know, I hadn’t thought about releasing the samples but I totally will do now that you’ve mentioned it! Thank you for suggesting it!!
Interesting Topic. Great content (as per usual), Brother. I would LOVE to hear more about strategies for setting vocals & instruments apart through use of hardware & software distortion & saturation tools.
Hey there! I think maybe I confused you by earlier in the video when I’m demo’ing the LA-2A, I begin with it first in the chain, but then later when I’m demo’ing the impact the 1176 has, it’s the 1176 that’s first in the chain. Sorry for any confusion! I’ll be careful to let watchers know when I swap plugin order during the videos in the future!
At 7:20, you said you were speeding up attack and release times on 1176, but moved the knobs to the right, which I believe would increase these times. Did you mean to say you were slowing these times? Just want to make sure I understand correctly. Thanks for the video.
Hey! Awesome question! On the 1176, the fastest attack and release times are when the controls are turned clockwise, or to the right. The slowest attack and release are to the left. The numbering is from 1 to 7, which means absolutely nothing! It’s just arbitrary! So the 1176 is different from the vast majority of compressors, where the faster times are indeed to the right! Thank you ever so much for watching!
This is great, I often feel the high end of cymbals can stick out and feel offensive to me. I'm hopeful techniques like this can tame what I'm hearing. Love the highlights on the cursor to show what you are doing on the DAW helps focus on where to look.
I wouldn't have thought that microphone distance would cause a noticeable time delay, it's shocking how much small things matter. Great explanation, it was remarkable how much the polarity/phase change made to the kick, and the snare change was a surprise too, I wasn't listening for that, so much more energy! And phase does sound like it could be boring, but when it makes the music so much more exciting I would say it is anything but boring, thanks for sharing with us!
I use a time adjuster plugin in Pro Tools. I will find the number of samples difference from the snare hit start on the close mic with the overheads, then set that number of samples as a delay time on the kick and snare so they line up. The other option is to move the overhead track earlier and line it up via kick and snare hits. I also measure the overheads so they are the same distance from the center of the snare drum so they are aligned.
I have a bass amp that is out of phase with its own DI. I flip the polarity on one and the low end returns. Love your channel! Great info and explanations. Thank you!
Wow, I absolutely love what you did with combining the compressors & showing how they react together. Then comparing the before/after wave forms. This is GOLD! I remember doing something similar to two different masters of one of my songs. I had to use one of them for the bridge, and the rest was from the original master (don't ask. LOL). I wanted to make sure the volume was consistent, so I made a wave form of the bridge in both files, and compared. I even went an extra step & made an animated GIF, which went back & forth between the two. Then I adjusted the volume accordingly, until you almost couldn't tell the difference between the two. Fun stuff!
Honestly, any reverb that can have a really short decay time! They all sound a little bit different but you’re looking to use it in very small amounts! Think like between 2% - 10%, and 10% would probably be on the high side! Just listen out for it in the gaps, rather than on top of the audio itself!
what about edm? I produce mainly in the box, except for when i have vocalists in. I also use the CTZ method as i need my mixes loud, generally - 6lufs for dj playlists. Would you say ths method could work on that style of production? Do this to all my tracks before anything else as you suggest? Great video, thanks
Totally works for all musical styles, except those that really require no dynamic control at all (for example, some Jazz and Classical). The thing that this helps to achieve is solving that issue where you push up the faders, then at first you quite like the balance, but before you know it things in the mix start trampling over each other. Unless you have extremely static parts dynamically, then this will help you keep your tracks steady, ready for further creative shaping, but you’re not fighting as much with your initial balance.
Another great vid. Probably one of the best explanations of attack and release i've heard....Thanks! Btw...do you compress and/or eq during the recording process or is this with a completely raw voice? Thanks again!
Hey there, thank you ever so much for watching! In this video, that was a raw voice but my gosh, didn’t I have to do some searching through projects to find one because, yes, I always compress when recording. In fact, I will do any amount of processing that I think is as close to the finish individual track processing as I dare. I’ll even bake in a reverb if I think the sound will never be without it!
This is great tip, i always use parallel compresion but i am going to try this. Can you translate the settings from the pultec to fabfilter pro q 3 in terms of boost and attenuation for me please.. thanks for a great vid.
Hey! So it’s totally possible with any EQ really, the real key is you’re using a shelf to set to 100Hz and taking that down by at least 15db, then boosting the high end around 5 - 10kHz by about 15dB again. What this does it then send the compressor an ultra thin sound so it only reacts to the high pitched transient stuff in the signal. Then compress like crazy with the compressor and finally do the exact reverse in the second Pro Q EQ. The only thing about the Pultec’s is that they are not quite the same frequencies between the cut and boost, because it’s old analogue hardware inaccuracy. So the Pro Q will actually be much more accurate than the Pultec. This means that the results will have a different texture/tone/shape - but only mildly. The main point is the process between these three plugins which gives you the real feature that you’re after!
bumped into your channel by accident and how wonderful it was! These extra bits of info has given me the nuances that i miss in compresssion. Very clear, precise and friendly. Thank you!
What a great video again! Your first LA-2A video and this one just really make something click in my head about the use of compressors this way, very useful content :)
3 db of gain reduction might be preferable on a vocal performance based on 3 notes, but I prefer to compress shit out of the vocals on a more dynamic performances xD
