ok Jamez, this is long. I will post twice
I always hated "use your ears". Is code for im not going to tell you...or every room is different. Ok, lets stay with that theory. So your cutting acoustic, or drums where room can matter, but you dont have the room. When you have the room, mic and the reflectivity of your floor. celing/ size of room is everything. But if you dont have the room, so what. Eliminate it. A room only matters if your capturing the room for a sound. With no room, eliminate it...ive gotten absolutely killer drum sounds that are on records in a 12x12 foot bedroom. How? dampen the walls completely, and close mic. Take your head off your kick..mic the beater, then take two chairs and make a tunnel with a nice thick blanket over the chairs so the tunnel is straight out from your kick drum about 4 feet long and chair high. Take your vocal condenser and mic at the end of the tunnel. Head off kicj drum, D112 or Re20 close up to beater, and condenser inside tunnel.
Put on headphones and move them around slightly till you get the ENTIre beat everytime your drummer hits it with a tail at least a second long on the tunnel mic. If its 2 seconds or more-too long, move the mic. Close mic your toms with sen 421.s...dont have them, 57's will be fine, condenser like 4033 on hi hat...you want this flexibility...dont worry about double snare and flipping the phase. Thats only good for a room sound and were eliminating the room. Overheads. Stereo XY above drummers head and slightly behind...if you dont have them, use a mono mic over you top top right INSIDE the kit about 2 feet over kick angled in. Sometime stereo overheads can become more of a problem than theyre worth. You pan them wide and loose the kit. Most records, especially rock, that are worth their salt, listen to how the crashes are right in your face, but yet dont hide the kit...Expander. Anyway, after you close mic, each drum separately and the room is now gone. You will recreate the room with convolution, and when your done it will be exactly as if you had a Zepplin room. The things to watch for are phase problems and bleed you cant fix. Phase is simple. Whenever you mix, check simultaneously by simple switching your board, or DAW mixer in mono. Whatever disappears, its out of phase, so just flip the phase with a plugin.
ok, so acoustic. When you need a room for acoustics, its only because you want the wood floor reflections or the brick and glass, etc. Same theory here...eliminate it. However, acoustic is going to fight you. If want big and natural, never use a compressor on a ratio higher than 2 or 3:1. Whenever you track, track flat. For anything, it doesnt make sense to commit to something you can change later. Many times the problem becomes that an instrument alone never sits in a mix the way it will when everything else is tracked. So flat. The only reason to use compression and eq on the input stage during tracking is when the room is what your capturing. Absolutely crushing drum rooms (not overheads) or eq with a narrow Q, is because when your adding the room sound as part of the instrument sound, what you do on input cant be changed unless you record or punch in with the same pres and every setting the same. Many times its necessary for the room, but other than that track flat. Mic for acoustic. Stay with large full body condenser. U87..cant beat it no way...unless you can find a Neumann small condenser KM184. For acoustic, piano, and overheads, it is my go to mic. $1100 for a matched pair. On a budget...AT 4050..i swear there isnt anything you cant do with it. Celine dion cut her entire first album with that mic, and now they are only like $300.
see, pages did it to me again..hope you can read this
I like stereo for acoustic. I play one side, then the other. Do not be an amateur and cut a track, copy it, and shift the timing. Believe it or not, those small things add up 1 by 1 to the summation of a pro sound. But if your only going to do one, put the large body right in from of the hole about 12 inches up and slightly to the side. Take your second mic (any condenser you have, and depending on the reflections of your guitar, mic the neck above your fretting hand, same distance up, and move it till you get your sound. Now here is the important part. Acoustic guitars love to muddy up at 300 cycles and they stick to the floor. That means you will get a bass frequencies that are non-directional below 150hz and you cant tell where the problem is. So, here is how you remove it. If you like a wooden floor, cool. Sounds awesome. Make sure you dampen the ceiling straight above it so you dont get comb filtering. This is obvios in vocals, but with a string instrument and just about every freq possible coming at you, you cant hear it. Dampen the ceiling for the highs. Nest, dampen any windows- This is huge...windows are the worst. Third, take care of the mid lows by putting anything,..pile of towels, blankets, mattress, etc from floor to knee level on wall in front of you and behind you, then throw a small pil of clothes in each corner of the room that is bare. Now your ready. Play your stereo mic'ed axe, and have someone listen in steroe, then A/B to mono. If the middle gets sucked out when you do like a rock and roll vampire, your mics are out of phase. Start with the 3 to 1 rule for stereo micing. Google it, it is very simple.
Once youve got your track, here is the trick to making acoustic sound great. 2k...never never never! That an electric guitar. If your acoustic is sitting in a busy track, use a channel roll off..everything under 150 cycles...yep...cut it. Since your increasing your headroom with that move, suck about 3 db at 400 cycles to un-muddy it, but the main reason is so that when you push the top, at around 10k (not 12...too harsh. We want bright and lifting strums) you get separation from piano and electric. Also, your vocals, if your a male, have thickness around 250 cycles, presence at 3-5k, so this separates the acoustic from your vocal. Now if your acoustic is the main instrument, even the only instrument, this will be too thin. Now this is loosely based on how your record it, but do not roll of everything below 150...roll of everything below 50 cycles. Look for you meat, not where most people tell you at 150-200..no look at 300 cycles. You said how do i hear it on small speakers. This is how. 300 cycles, or close to it, is where bass frequencies are most noticeable on small speakers. Remember, subtractive EQ is always best, but right now we are talking a different animal. Keep a Q of around 1 octave, and if your 300 boost gets too muddy, use another band at 100-200 with a smaller q and roll it back a half db...thats it. Now you got your low end, but for a crisp single acoustic where meet and attack is key, now you can go to your 2k if you want. I still find this too harsh though. Try this...add a touch of 7k, no more than a db, and roll back 2db at 3k . You want to hear chops man that doesnt step on a vocal. If it isnt light enough yet, add 2 db in the air section (15k). Your done man..listen to your hit!
Hey man, i hope im not trying to sound like a know it all. I just despised that no one, and i mean no one would help me..that is until i got my first record deal. Weird, but suddenly all those "nope" and vague guys, were all on the phone with diarrhea of the mouth. I will give anyone who asks everything I know without holding back. Please, go get a damn hit! And if your near Detroit and you need a mix, stop in...ill do it for nothin. I make my money elsewhere and im blessed and lucky to be able to. In this failing world, the least anyone can do is reach out a hand.
Hey guys, im really enjoying reading your posts. Many many of you sound like you really know what your doing, so i hope im not insulting anyone by assuming you dont know what Im telling you. Thanks for the inclusion guys. I look forward to some good discussion
