Make Better Music Without Mixing - Here's How! 

I swear is this youtube premium? he just cut all the bullshit and gets straight to the relevant concepts. awesome

Al Schmitt was my boss, Steve Tyrell’s engineer for many sessions over the years. I’ll never forget the day that we got the news of Al’s passing. Rest In Peace to the greatest audio engineer of all time, Al Schmitt.

The trick is remembering that proximity effect is an eq itself. With the prevalence of overdubbing it's easy to get drawn into the full sound in isolation but it will end up needing hpf in context. When tracking a band with multiple cardioid mics up close to control bleed, that PE can make for a 'lumpy' holistic sound when all added together, and why tracking a band playing together is a great learning curve to learn to use hpf on the mic or preamps, or experiment with the distance and listen to the signal to ambience ratio as well. Also learning to use subtle compression on the way in and how that can show up the bleed level.

As the saying goes in the computer world: GIGO (Garbage in, garbage out). If you don't have a reasonably good sound from the mic to start with, there's a limit to what can be done in a mix. Slightly off topic, but it reminds me of a time when I turned up to start rehearsals with a new band. They were all complaining about their PA: sounded terrible, always feeding back etc. I looked at their setup, and sure enough, there was a graphic equalizer with the sliders set to a curve that looked like a drunken rollercoaster. I asked them "why do you have it set that way?" and they looked baffled and said "Um, er, well we've just always had it like that..." I tried to educate them in 'EQ 101' start with everything flat and only adjust as necessary, but I'm not sure if it sank in. Anyway, great video & keep up the good work!

Yeah, now this is REALLY how you should record. Because what a sound engineer should be trying to achieve in the studio is simply capturing the band's "live" sound. This also means recording as a band and not one instrument at a time. It's about capturing a band's energy, and if the full band isn't there playing you'll never get that recording.

Misc need both high and low pass filter more often! That tube mic is the only one I’ve come across with this feature.

After watching a few of your videos I really have this guitar melody in my head. Saying that, it should be your channel anthem/intro theme.

I love this lesson and this advice. There is a build up somewhere in the low mids (low but distorted “twongin”) to mids that is prevalent in all recordings. I dig the process - it makes me feel like setting up multiple mics at different distances at the same time and then picking the one that’s giving the vibes!

I recommend listening through studio monitors. Great upload once more. I like this 'real world' approach. Thanks Kyle.

This points to the first rule of recording: focus on getting the best source that you can. Mic choice, placement, pre-amp quality, and room conditioning are all vastly more important than post processing.

Great video, Kyle. Something that should be mentioned is the sound of the room versus microphone distance from the instruments. When recording, we don’t always have the luxury of recording in a treated room. Choosing the right mic and mic placement are key. Al Schmidt’s claim to fame is recording all of the instruments simultaneously in the same room. Instrument placement and type of the mics play key roles.

Well, I only have 1 mic, so... VIVA EQs and plugins!

That you for this wonderful lesson! Appreciate your videos!

This takes me back to my first mixdowns "in the box" around 2005. Somehow I was more focused on getting a specific sound on my productions (Electronic music). Being a musician first, I didn't really understand EQ and compressors, but looking back, there was a vibe to those early tracks that has kinda lost its way over the years. It's like, by knowing where I wanted to go, all it took was a static fader mix of the elements. Nobody said you couldn't master them, though!! ;)

A great lesson you have just revealed about microphone positioning. I am soon Graduating in my way of handling sound pieces of equipment during live Events. Thank Engineer Kaye

There is a resonating frequency (I want to say around 1kHz) which is very distracting on basically all recordings except for the one done with the tube mic with focus on the body. That's why that one was my favourite recording.

Look into the earliest recording methods. That's it. Analogue world. Also: wonderful acoustic guitar sound and a very nice chord progression - it reminded my ears of the start of an as yet unheard Jethro Tull recording. I adore their acoustic guitar sounds.

Great job as usual ❤

"We'll fix it in post." "YOU'LL FIX IT NOW!"

Never even crossed my mind! This is such a great video, Kyle! :)

This is good stuff. I kept hearing something sticking out with the tube and ribbon mike in the 1.6khz or thereabouts frequency region. I have no idea if this is original to the recordings or an artifact of putting it up here, but how would you deal with this without mixing?

ribbon mic sounds good. and that martin of course

I like using two mics for abilty to adjust EQ later. And additional room mics for adding necessary ambience. ETC. Learned this from various interviews with Steve Albini who keeps multiple mics as his 'EQ' before reaching for actual EQ adjustments. By the way you can also place an omni with a figure-8 as close as possible (and hopefully as matched sound as possible) and get all the control that your australian audio mic does by balancing between them (even with an EQ!), albeit the capsules may be a little further apart so not quite as neat- cardioids and other patterns in multi-pattern mics are just OMNI+FIG8 due to one side of the fig8 adding and the other side subtracting due to phase.

Regarding clarity when engaging the high pass filter on the mic, I guess it comes down to upward masking (or upward spread of masking)?

The less bass the less masking of higher frequencies --> more clarity. :)

"Its for a good cause; audio." Yes.

Hey hi. Great vid thanks. Some info's missing in the description: what's your guitar ? I like it ! Thanks

I love this tutorial

Well, your video is once again very good. I still must say that I prefer live performance, where you do your best beforehand and during the show, but there's one shot only, no replay nor rewind.

Best way to do it.

“It’s for a good cause - Audio.” _-Audio University_

Wonder if it’s better to Lo-cut on the mic (if possible) or the audio interface. Actually I think I know the answer….experiment

Ok, you might be the right guy to explore this. When you go old school and at the home studio level, you can approach from the old school and 1950's and a basic mixer board which was tube.. And as a tube console, it was not too far removed from any tube audio circuit both as standard audio pre-amp & power amp which also is nothing really different than a guitar amp of the era. As technology in the tube era advanced to the 9 pin mini's as opposed to the old octals....and the circuitry permitted a jumping of channels....which gives a stronger signal at the other end to hit the power amp. Now if the singular channel had a tone control sub-circuitry, adding 2 together to thicken the signal...also gives you play with the Tone EQ circuitry within the realm of that vacuum tube and where its set and adjusted to in the circuitry and where its riding its curve. MOVING ON in time to solid state & the modern IC's, some of that tube era can be carried over. SO when there is NOT a switch for HiZ/LowZ for the channel inputs...generally as with Mackie, the 2 inputs are joined or "Normalized" if there is a term, but that NON switched aspect lets you jump 2 fader strip channels....at least on a Mackie board. This will let you use the 2 fader strips on one mic, and the secondary channel is where I usually play. The primary channel strip & hence XLR input I run generally straight and the board EQ flat and play distance positioning for the mic when its a condenser, but I dual mic with an OMNI (text book head to head). SO I blend in the board and use 2 channel strips per mic. So on the secondary channel is where I would use the strip for any delay/reverb/echo effects and blend and the secondary I use with the INSERT and an equalizer....any enhancements tonally to put emphasis if needed...whether dry or with effect. I do use a dual channel Equalizer patched via the inserts on each channel strip so the "dual" eq services both primary and the secondary independently as one unit when viewing the board and the 2 channel strips as ONE as its on one mic. THIS lets you adjust the mic signal strength's and use the board pre-amps & strips......to dial up and excite the pre-amp circuitry....all be it...Solid State & IC based. BUT its that point of exciting the circuitry tastefully. The secondary pathway of signal passing through the circuitry and then meeting up in the board as a summation......creates a hint of secondary pathway latency since it travels that extra distance...considering the speed of light & the math & perception of ears.....but it does excite the electronics......> the question is, being physical hardware and the modern age....has THIS be carried over into software or modern physical equipment like Apollo's or other interfaces where the school of thought is usually STRAIGHT AHEAD and not too much outside the box. I can see stacking plug in channel strips in the computer, but its NOT the same as what I am saying here with jumping channels. WHICH brings on real world and professional studio consoles and patch bays....and the HiZ/LowZ situation and jumping channels. So in my aspect, where I am using the secondary channel strip. I am utilizing the source signal from a guitar amp cabinet & hence a "dry" source mic's with a condenser and omni head going via a mixing board where any effects are applied as in "modulation" type filters and thus piped into a solid state PA since it is a mixing board BUT the PA speakers and drive is minimal to BLEND in the room with the DRY source....wet/dry blend live in the room.....AND then I have a divorced set of recording mic's which are Omni's that I also mix down to essentially record to my cell phone to capture. I am mixing and blending 2 omni's as rear in the room, and one omni more proximal to the dry/wet source front near that sound front but mixed lesser than the rear Omni's.......and DIAL IN. BUT those divorced room Omni mic's are on the mix down boards and only adjusted slightly on those boards from FLAT. BUT it is FUN dialing in a good noise floor hahaha....nip & tuck and dialing in. Now this is a HOME situation and I utilize 15 bander's where if I would do it over....full on 31 bander's would be more appropriate for the INSERTS......but the 15's do well for the results I need. Keep in mind that this lets the 2 AUX feeds on the mixers in play and I do use a Vacuum Tube enhancer unit in the AUX and effects add on's to enhance the "MIC" blend within the mixer as a treatment. SO you have the primary straight plus the secondary plus the AUX...all blended in the board for the output of the board....on top of the room blend....so there is alot in play....on the way to be printed and recorded to my cell. And to be clear...patched in to my cell and NOT the cell phone mic built in to the cell phone. I use a bypass software in the cell.

Exactly how we do live sound. Maybe recording guys can learn from doing a couple dozen live gigs.

i admire this man 🤩🙏

Every mic is AND has an EQ response, therefore a mic IS an EQ by default. The problem is we do not have 20+ or so mics at hand, contrary to studios. Same about the free saturation and compressoring saving to tape gave us (again with big\expensive tape machines in studios). On top of that, they had analogue channel strips with additional EQ, saturation, gate, compressors and gain built-in (all analogue)… and expensive. Today, there are plugin emulations for those and dedicated plugins for each task with contemporary options. And after all Mixing is an art form. Some people are gifted at it! Others - not so much. Like any other art form. And of course there are 99% wannabes.

Well yes, but does it matter _where_ the highpass filter is in the chain? Or the tube amplification? 50 years ago, audio engineers did not have much choice about where to choose the polar pattern of their mic. If you control this via DAW plugin today, where is the difference to simply EQing the signal? All that matters to me is to get the best possible reproduction of my instrument. Everything else I do after that. Which also gives me more options. If I find out that the frequencey response curve of my recording ends up compensation too much of what I wanted, it's back to the EQ anyway.

How can this be applied to, for example, a bass guitar plugged into an audio interface or an electronic drumset? I use Logic Pro and there is a selection of amps for bass guitars/electric guitars where you can choose the digital mic type to place near the amp. Is the process the same? Idk... I'm new at this stuff. Thanks!

Were it me, for most songs, I’d use the ribbon. It would be easier to place in a mix IMHO. I have a vintage RCA and obligatory Cloud Lifter. I need to use it more.

Hello you Can make a tutorial on the mixing vocal in Reaper please

I would use 3 or 4 mics and then choose the one fitting better in the mix… One take for all

I've been telling you for decades, "Record it correctly in the first place and you won't NEED all of those plugins !" Bill P.

this is just my opinion....the first mic for me sounded more natural and better i guess than the second mic...the second one for some reason, captured that resonant strum of the guitar which to me sounded kind of wonky 😵😵😵

Great explanation Kyle.. I see you use Reaper. I use cubase 5 and it's an old version. Then i installed Reaper and no vst instruments found. I just want to know if i can use Halion one of cubase in Reaper, because i found that Halion one sounds are fantastic. Thanks again Kyle

Martins are always bass heavy. Try a Taylor or a Gibson. They're much easier to record.

So do those mics just emulate the polar patterns after the fact in your daw?

Very good videos!!! I can see you own both an Austrian Audio Oc818 and a Lewitt LCT640 Ts. Are their sounds much different? If yes, wich one do you prefer? thanks!

very good, but i didn't plan to record an acoustic guitar 😞 so first you need to know your target sound, then you wisely chose microphoning and positioning to achieve the "final sound"? It seems like a relly great method, even for syntesizer sounds or distorted guitars. Generel Sounddesign. Begin at the start. I keep it in mind for my deathmetal project

The John Ford of recording then.

did you record with your mic and direct to DAW at once ??

You use Reaper? Interesting.

I was listening on my phone and they all sounded the same. I guess eq is the easier option!

Hey there. Let me hip you to few facts. A mic with 2 capsules is a pressure gradient microphone. And when set to omni, is NOT a true omni, and has some proximity effect. Only true single diaphragm pressure omni mics have No proximity effect. Like my favorite a Neumann KM 253, Schoeps, DPA, and Neumann make true pressure omni microphones. Ribbon mics exhibit a lot of proximity effect. As do all mics im Fig 8. Lastly I would suggest only SDC or ribbon mics to record an acoustic guitar. Just based on my experience of recording acoustic guitars for almost 50 yrs and working with many of the greatest acoustic guitarists. Just trying to help. Better musician, better guitar, better mic, better room = better guitar track. Good luck and keep at it

nice

Is there a way to do this if we are on piezo pickup acoustic guitar connected through audio cable?

I’d change out the guitar😊

But…. You used a plug-in

Does your tattoo say “Money”? Lol, I knew you were gangsta.

"Sounds good" is such a subjective standard..

You just gotta lay some schmitt down and record it.

No disrespect to Al Schmitt but, all engineers do this.

First comment Great

This is not productive, and you're using a plugin to change the eq curve of the mic, which you could do with the eq plugin anyway. I came to a point where I don't use a mic for other than vocals and acoustic instruments, and my project template is fixed with preset tracks for each instrument and I play with the eq mostly when I'm changing to a different electric guitar than my main one. I don't have to fine tune my sound each time I want to record a song idea

Is this really something that needs to be said to people? Yeah step 1 in recording.. get the sound you want.

Man that room you’re in sounds brutal. Definitely not suitable for professional recording and especially not mixing

Nahhh this boomer probably used Pro Tools 😭

Interesting but I would NEVER mix with headphones.

Hello I am new to all this and I have ordered a Maschine and a Minilogue XD. I would like to be able to play live whilst simultaneously recording the track to my DAW. Will i be able to hear my music live on my studio speakers whilst at the same time recording the track in the software? sorry for the noob question but cannot find answers anywhere. Same applies with recording a youtube video, can i play, record & hear it live whilst also having audio synced to video or will i need to wipe audio from video and sync in editing? thank you so much

nice work

all of the top tier pro musicians(guitar players/vocalists) used to know how to position themselves in front of a microphone, whether on stage or in a recording studio... in the case of singers, it was often syllable-by-syllable movement.