VOCALS: Why an $85 Mic Beats a $4000 Mic. 

Innteresting... I'm not sure what tips I can offer, usually what I offer that's of greatest value is 'clarity'. But it sounds like you see and understand your situation quite well, including the sources of the exhaustion and your continued devotion to those sources. Ok, how about this: I see an embedded story hidden in your last sentence (they often hide there). Here's the story: changing your patterns in a way that frees you from this exhaustion is the same as "giving up". That's an interesting phrase, "give up." Your mind thinks it means "surrender into defeat". Maybe it just means "give up," as in "give up beating your brain into a pile of mush and depleting it so utterly that it can't possibly deliver on all the promises it never actually made to you." I'm 50 years old and I don't know much but I do know this: surrender ALWAYS leads to something better. Every. Single. Time. But it involves confronting a certain pain, the death of a mythology, a fantasy identity that our ego constructed and which, with the best of intentions, our younger self agreed to become at all costs. And then life responds (as it always does) with clear signals of what is working and what is not, and more often than not we see the signals for what is working and we ignore the signs for what is not. This selective filtering of reality is what exhausts us, ignoring obvious truths takes a lot of energy. So life ramps up the intensity and frequency of the signs, and we ramp up the denial as we cling to the myth. Letting that go isn't failure, it's success, IF you can then see clearly and learn the truths time gifted to you. And that letting go is absolutely essential to leveling up, you can't pass thru the gate until you let go of some of the crap you're clinging to. You literally can't fit thru the gate. I don't have any clue what exactly you're supposed to keep and what you're supposed to shed, but I would bet a lot of my own money that YOU know, if you just pause, take a rest, and assess your life honestly. Here's another thing I know: collaborating, sharing the work and the effort and the glory, is exponentially more rewarding than going it alone. Consider trading in and trading up, two geniuses means half the pain and twice the payoff. But it also means you gotta compromise, negotiate, and flex. I wonder if that's where your real work lays. That's true for most of us, so take heart. Note: I am not a lawyer, and the above is not legal advice. 😊

@@TheHouseofKushTV Thanks for sharing Gregory, your insights resonate with my own path. I feel you Zac, like part of me is still there but another just keeps surrendering forward.

@@TheHouseofKushTV thank you for this

@@TheHouseofKushTV you need to make a video about your response to this comment - this is some next level Yoda ish. Brilliant.

@@TheHouseofKushTV This has to be the greatest response to anything I have ever read!

Indeed! It's not called After Hours for nothing, love the way he talks in this subdued late night soothing voice. I wish we could have a new one every day for bedtime, no better way to find peace to go to sleep than some new fine knowledge about how to make things even better tomorrow to contemplate on and integrate with your own experience and sometimes misconceptions.

are you sure the appearance of TayZonday didn't subliminally influence your choice of words here? ; )

Weird.

Oh yeah!!!!!

@@prototype8137 but wonderful

That's some Buddha-level wisdom.

This is why Greg and Nathan are the best tech advisors on the interwebs!

For those that don't know, Greg and his colleague Nathan Daniel did over 150 podcasts about pro audio, and they hold seriousness and foolishness in the same container, which is also some Buddha-level shizzle.

www.ubkhappyfuntimehour.com/

“Be lamps unto yourselves.”

Thanks! And still, there are no shortage of trolls complaining that I'm whispering for no good reason. People! 🤦🏻‍♂️

@@TheHouseofKushTV Haha, so true...People with a POPPING P! I love listening to you, your way of explaining things, directing my/our senses to new and different points, the whole tone of your voice and being, the love for music & sound....and the HUGE plus being on top of it all, the music you use in these lessons is good and interesting and biutiful. I'm sure you can relate when i tell you, i watched hundreds of videos, trying to learn more about recording and mixing....but the god awful music ruined it for me completely. I really don't get, why such an overwhelming majority of music production videos, exclusively use the most bland, boring, overused and uninventive music in their examples. Okay, back to getting lost in your soothing teachings... .. . . . . . .

You're right. Sylvia Massy would be another great example of sweetness ;)

The House of Kush It's good to see audio production videos where care has been taken over the sound. So many people on RU-vid unironically talking about sound quality through their phone mic.

Dan Worrall.

You're welcome!

And the step-brother of Kevin Parker (Tame Impala)

@@thomasaustin8477 He gives me more Alan Rickman vibes in all honesty

Nah, more like a wholesome version of Bob from Twin Peaks

@@stiflingluxury Hey, who you callin' wholesome??

Gotta say, I wasn't expecting to see you here.

And so glad I did

Whoa. When worlds collide holy molly ITS HIM!

I'm not surprised you're here

holy fuck

One of the most painful lessons to learn, that 😁

That's the golden fucking ticket right there. Gear means shit. It's all about the talent.

@@theshizon exactly! There was never a viral song that didn't go viral just because it didn't benefit from the most expensive gear out there. Gold in -> Gold Out. There's no crap turning into gold if ran through expensive gear.

Exactly, you can’t polish a turd.

Indeed. I have never in my entire life heard someone exclaim "Wow this song is incredible! But the sonics are bit lacklustre they should have used better gear. PASS!" However I hear the opposite every day "Sonically it sounds like a million dollars but this song is just awful. HARD PASS!"

Here's a crazy thing I once did for a song-recording: recorded the vocals several times through different mics, besides two very different pro types also several very lo-fi ones, like an old crystal mic and then some. The in the mix I would altenate between them, for sentences or even wordsa or a full verse, sometimes mix'm and pan left right etc. Made for a very intersting very alive soundscape, especially because I also mixed in an old tube radio scanning inbetween stations from time to time on the transitions and sometimes mixing with one of the mic-episodes.

Badass engineering right there. ☝️

Could you record vocals with multiple mics at the same time, or would you get feedback or interference or something....??

The best thing to do for vocals with a Warm 251 is to plug it into a Warm WA12 (or WA12-500) preamp and press the magic "Tone" button. :-)

@Noah Farver No, it was more like a dialed-down Evanescence type of rock. The girl can sing the paint off walls but she didn't have the grit she wanted. She's very clean-toned. But she wanted some weight behind her and the end product worked. It makes me wonder if that group ever released that record. (ha! "record" That just shows how old I am)

I personally haven't really had that problem, but I must say it does make a huge difference hearing your voice and the music in the room as opposed to the headphones. Will definitely try this, crazy I haven't yet, considering I usually record my vocals with a dynamic stage-mic up close. If it works on stage, well, why wouldn't it in my home-studio really? Of course it's going to cause some bleed, and it will add some probably interesting acoustics, that can be manipulated with some creative use of monitor placement, blankets and pillows if need be.

@@Erudotic Also try Open Backs. Or semi-open. 770s say, w LDCs can maybe be swapped for 990s or 880s with a SM7B or RE-20. Play with the levels. Performance trumps mic bleed though no matter what.

I think it also has to do with you hearing your own voice in the space, which is what you're normally used to adjusting your pitch with. But yeh, that advice is great. I have felt the difference myself, how somehow the feel is always better when I record without headphones but I was still shy to really go for it and to use that method for final vocals but I will definitely be more daring with it after watching this video

I've struggled with this myself in the past. My remedy ( if you have to use headphones) is the same as lots of singers. Pull one side off. Concentrate on the sound of your voice in the room. Just use the one side if the headphone to get timing and the pitch in relation. It helps a lot. But he is right if you can hear your voice in an open space it usually corrects the pitch issue and makes you feel more connected.

@@thelapgods7374 i do this as well, take one headphone off, or alternatively, just say fuck it and accept a bit of mic bleed from my speakers lol

I'm just really, REALLY lucky/blessed because I don't feel like I *have* to do that. I'll always welcome more subscribers and users of Kush gear, and I love that people are discovering my music because of this channel, but yeah, that's not the point nor will it ever be. Life has always been very generous with me, I feel obliged to pay it back wherever I can. Thanks for your support and for digging what's what here :-)

He's got that 'I'm about to fuck yo wife' energy with every vid. One of my favourite new youtubers with such 'call out the bullshit on the internet' advice. I think this is the stuff all the gurus save for their paid courses and Gregory shares it for free

Indeed!

@@DDRMR this doesn’t even scratch the surface of what him and nathan talk about in their ubkhappyfuntimehour podcast. I’ve learned so much about the entire process from those two men, it’s nuts

@@colliemon thank you so much for the recommendation brother. Will DEFINITELY check it out now

This guy is the Bob Ross of music production

the beers are in you? how selfish of you

@@WiihawkPL hee hee - bloody typo!!

This!! I’ve been using a cheap-ish broadcast mic for alternative music vocals lately to great effect. Sounds boring straight in but when you compress & saturate- it just comes to life. Then add any “room” sound totally in the box.

I recently got the SSL 2+ interface, which has analogue circuitry in it, activated by a "4k" button. I can't believe what it did to an old 58 in my less than ideal room. The sizzle without the crickets outside. I also think there is something to be said about holding a mic on the psychological level. That act is so connected to the performance of singing for most of us--I recently did an internet project singing Radiohead's "Nude" that way and I think anything, no matter how small, that takes me out of the "I'm a person recording music that will be judged" mode is a good thing. I think I will record it again with the monitors and let all the inner Thom come out. Thanks, Greg!

@@aarongrubbs8311 I guess it also helps a lot in dynamics, it's so much more intuitive to bring a mic up close when soft and away when loud, fade-ins and puts and all those tricks you can use with a handheld mic to make it sing right, then it is to have to move your head to and from the stationary mic. Great suggestion, I recall having done it a few times, way back I don't remember when; will definitely put this in the toolbox for my future-recordings. Especially since I'm using a Shure dynamic stage-mc for my vocals anyway. (not SM58: BG-3.0, more or less comparable, I believe it's like a budget version, no idea I got it second hand so long ago...)

gabe roth at daptone records often uses radioshack mics allegedly

It doesn´t really matter that much what those people are gonna listen through right? If you know you can do better and you want to keep chasing certain sounds? To me the most important thing seems to be making it sound how i want it to sound.

@@delievegoedesint well yes, agreed, especially if your main job or only job is as the engineer or producer. But if you're also the artist? And everything else that you need to do, like all the business and management, etc? You really can get sucked into an extreme time commitment... In general, the chase for perfection is what's to be careful of, ESPECIALLY if you're wearing tons of hats like I do. See, since music is a competitive industry, this demand for perfection can take you all the way into the rabbit hole and beyond, and that rabbit hole includes the world wide web which is vast... and when you come out on the other end many years later having finished MUCH less music than you could have, and feel like sh*t about it, and then you watch someone like Gregory Scott here tell you that you can get by on an $85 mic and it actually gives you the character you're truly looking for, then, well, you may wonder if you had spent your time wisely all those years. I can say personally that I've worn too many hats and have gone too deep and guess what I've discovered? A lot of things really don't matter. I mean, like, AT ALL. Most of it is hype, companies needing to sell things, people needing to keep relationships in tact with those companies - when you watch them reviewing stuff, they don't really tell you the absolute truth... For instance, all these plugins? eh. Perfect preamps? eh. All kinds of different mics? eh. All not necessary to make great music. Just be very careful with how you use your time. Time is limited.

Great advice Mike, thank you.

@@MikeBrayton Finished is better than better.

Yes, audio quality does matter. It won't save a garbage performance, but it does matter. If you use a phone or laptop to record, people will notice even if they use cheap earbuds vs. a quality (or even budget) XLR mic. Maybe you want to have lower audio quality on purpose for a given project, but that doesn't mean audio quality suddenly doesn't matter at all and we should throw it out the window. High quality equipment exists because audio quality DOES matter.

I know im late to this comment. But just wanted to say I do this myself

Awesome idea, noted!

​@@TheHouseofKushTV YES! How to pick (or what makes a great) reference track. May I ask a related question? Is it any advantage to find mix reference songs available as (bass/vocal/drum/guit/etc) stems, and mix your song to those?

This would be legendary.

I exposed the Produce Like a Pro Mix Academy to the Sneaky Little Devil 96k wavs and everyone in chat immediately grabbed them for future references. I'm so glad you're going to up your videos, Greg, thanks for all you do! I will ponder a question that could be useful to everyone rather than babble on as I am wont to do. Have a great day, Teacher.

@@aarongrubbs8311 Are those files available somewhere (for a not-member of Pro Mix Academy) ? Would love to check them out.

laughed more than I should`ve lmao

hahahahaha that got me xD

This is such a common story, and as or more often I think it comes down to the vibe and mojo of the perfomance, which has little to do with the tech used to capture it!

Ha! That kinda nonsense happens when you improvise shit at 4am... 🧐

Welcome!!

I mean, it's possible for both thoughts to be true 😁

Right on, welcome to the game my man!

Said every pubescent human that ever existed 🥳

It would also be impossible, because the dynamic is held right up to the lips, which would completely alter (by physically blocking) what the LDC, 18" away, would hear. Also, a HUGE part of the "sound" of the dynamic isn't the sound per se, it's the performance, the feel and groove that are made possible because you can move around, sway, dance... if you park yourself in front of the LDC, you lose that. 😊

🤜🏽🤛🏼

Excellent! good advice; I will try that. I've never heard that before; how using headphones, can possibly cause a person to sing off pitch. I have the feeling, and going by what I've seen in in the past in regards to recording studios, that if I was to suggest doing a vocal using monitors only, the engineer would look at me as if I had 2 heads. Now certainly not all engineers, but some of them seem to think that they are God. It's their way or the highway. If Gregory Scott lived in my hometown, or even state, I would make a beeline to his studio. He seem to know what he is talking about; besides, common sense gives credence to what he is saying. I wonder if part of his profession, involves mixing music for other people?

Also 1 finger partly plugging 1 ear under the head phone. For me it depends on the song. The one cup off ear is very popular and always has been. Hearing yourself in the room is a good way to hit the pitch.

Wow, thank you. I almost didn't air this one because I wasn't sure it worked. Friggin' artists!

Amen to that.

Nice! The AEA R84, which I thinnnnnk is partly inspired by the 74B, is one of my favorite kick mics, esp in conjunction with something more papery like an re20. Ribbons on kicks have such lovely, slow, deep subs.

@@TheHouseofKushTV I acquired my 74B from an AM radio station I worked at when I was a teenager. I found it tucked away in a storage closet at the station, and asked the chief engineer about it. He had retired it many years earlier, and he told me to take it if I wanted it. It looked so damn cool, I couldn't resist the offer. I tried using it on a couple of recording projects, and found it to be utterly useless. I eventually ended up giving it away to a fellow audio enthusiast. Here's a link to some info on the 74B: www.coutant.org/rca74b/ Due to the nature of the TV work that I did, I rarely had the luxury of fully mic'ing a drum kit. I did a fair bit of music recording on the side, and a couple of times, I used an EV 666 on the kick drum. It worked like a champ. I frequently used the 666 on acoustic bass, and it worked very well in that application. The 666 was a high-end dynamic cardioid that EV sold in the 60s and early 70s. It exhibits a pronounced proximity effect, so it has a really warm sound when used up close. I believe its characteristics are very close to those of the RE20.

Interesting, I'll check it out! I'm verrrry wary of plugins that mess with my phase, but I'm always open to being shown the light!

@@TheHouseofKushTV i hope you will find it usefull, any feedback would be great...and man your channel rocks.... your are from the true ones

Truth. I learned the hard way, and from a mentor finally explaining to me, to never sell my mics. Sell the comps, sell the preamps, but keep the mics, even the ones I never use because there'll come a time when I want that color. I've sold a lot of gear in my day and the only thing I truly regret selling (because I can't find them anymore) are the mics.

​@@TheHouseofKushTV I see that your experience has also proven the point. I guess, every unique gear is priceless. As long as we have the room , it seems wise, to keep it. Once it has desapeared, no amount of money can buy it.

I absolutely do this, on almost every major transition. BUT, the move is tiny, up 0.2dB, down 0.2dB. The master fader automation isn't creating a dynamic, it's reinforcing it. All the real work is done inside the mix, on the channels and busses and fx.

You're very welcome!

Love the image!

Thanks man, I can relate to feeling lucky, that's actually a big part of what motivates me to share what I've learned. 🙏🏼