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Mixing Creatively Using Overhead & Room Mics with Brian Deck — Transcript

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0:00[Music]
0:04hi
0:04my name is brian deck and i am sitting
0:07at
0:07uh narwhal music studios in chicago
0:10today
0:11here to talk to you about how to
0:13creatively use
0:16drum overhead and room mics when mixing
0:19in the box
0:22[Music]
0:27this first song that i have up here is
0:30uh
0:31by chicago band moritat it's a song
0:33called promises
0:34on this song we wanted uh very
0:38tight and present drums for about the
0:42first
0:42two-thirds of the song and then we
0:44wanted to gradually grow them to where
0:46they sounded
0:47roomier and more powerful and
0:51i'm going to play you some of the front
0:52of the song so that you can hear
0:56how sort of tight they sound at the very
1:00[Music]
1:10top
1:17[Music]
1:22so there's a lot of intricate drumming
1:25going on
1:26we wanted that to be articulate and
1:28pointed
1:31and present as the song goes on
1:35we get to sort of what what is the
1:37beginning of the second half of the song
1:39and i found
1:40that we had recorded scratch vocal mics
1:45which the singers didn't really sing
1:47into
1:48by the time we got the take they didn't
1:51need to hear the singing anymore to get
1:53through the song
1:54so they'd stopped singing and those mics
1:55were sitting in the drum room recording
1:58still
1:58and it turns out that they sounded
2:00pretty cool on the kit
2:02so you actually can hear a little bit of
2:05humming
2:06in the background but here's what
2:09those scratch vocal mics sound like when
2:12they come in
2:26a little bit of singing but not enough
2:28that is going to interfere with the
2:30actual vocal tracks i'm going to solo
2:32the drums
2:33along with those scratch vocal mics
2:37you'll hear a couple seconds of the
2:38drums and then you'll hear those scratch
2:40vocal mics come in and you'll hear what
2:41they do to the presence
2:43and the sound of the drums
3:02so they're panned um at roughly
3:06i'd say uh nine and three o'clock
3:10and they give a greater sense of space
3:12when they come in but they don't wash it
3:14out they're still pretty controlled
3:16we recorded a separate room mic which
3:18hasn't been in the mix yet
3:20when that room mic comes in these
3:22scratch vocal mics go away
3:24and i'll play it for you so you can hear
3:26it solo it up and then i'll show you
3:28what i've done to the room mic to get
3:30the sound that's there
3:32[Music]
3:50see here it gets quite a bit roomier
3:52it's not a big sounding room
3:54but it's the room mics are very present
3:56when they come in
3:57i say room mics there was actually only
3:59one room mic and you can hear that
4:01something very stereo happens
4:04so the first thing i did on that room
4:06mic
4:07was instantiate the universal audio 1176
4:12compressor and it looks like i've got
4:16all buttons pushed in
4:17so that is very limiting and let's see
4:20what kind of gain reduction i have going
4:26on
4:30a lot and it's it's doing more than the
4:32meter is probably showing because that's
4:34what
4:35happens with the the real physical unit
4:38now i wanted it to be stereo so i did a
4:41fake
4:42stereo thing i put in a
4:45stereo delay a digi stereo delay
4:4818 milliseconds on one side 22
4:50milliseconds on the other side
4:52uh 74 wet on both sides
4:56so there's still some center image to
4:58that here's
5:00what the microphone sounds without the
5:02compression
5:03without the stereo
5:13pretty cool but here's the compressor
5:14and the stereo delay
5:26noticeably larger when you do the fake
5:28stereo thing
5:30um it's probably worth mentioning also
5:31that you can see when this room mic
5:33comes in
5:34there's a mono overhead
5:38right there that goes away um
5:41the room mic has a fair amount of symbol
5:43in it and we just didn't need
5:45a lot of extra symbol so you know that's
5:48another thing you do when you're mixing
5:49you're
5:50making decisions prioritizing one um
5:54element over another and that seemed to
5:56need to happen
5:57in order to make it possible to make
5:59that move to a bigger sound
6:00let me put it in context with the rest
6:02of the music and i'll start it playing
6:04where the scratch vocal mics are and
6:07then it'll move to where the room mic
6:08comes in
6:21[Music]
6:32do
6:33[Music]
6:44gets big and powerful they're a trio and
6:47uh
6:48you can hear it really breathe like that
6:50is believably
6:51a performance by three people in the
6:53same room together and i think that that
6:55sounds really cool
6:56okay for the second example of how to
6:59creatively use overheads and room mics
7:02in drum mixing
7:04again i'm working with the band moritat
7:06this song is called selfish ones
7:09there's a middle section a quiet section
7:11in this song
7:12where we wanted to go from a fairly
7:14natural sound of the drums to something
7:16that's been
7:17really squashed and controlled
7:20dynamically and i wanted to hear that
7:22compressor
7:23whooshing and doing its thing here's the
7:26regular overhead
7:27channel i just duplicated it and
7:31sliced it out so this middle section is
7:33the only part
7:34that has this fairchild compressor on it
7:37and i'll play for you how much that is
7:42compressing
7:48[Music]
8:00so you can see that's a lot of gain
8:02reduction it's metering
8:04six or seven db and it's probably more
8:06because um
8:07the meter is not as fast as the tubes
8:09inside it are
8:11and then i'm i'm also sending that
8:13highly compressed signal
8:14to this
8:18plate reverb the emt 140 by uad
8:24very realistic modeling of the classic
8:26emt
8:28plate reverb and that was originally
8:33instantiated for vocal reverb i believe
8:38which i then mostly abandoned and just
8:40end up using it
8:41on the drum overhead let me play for you
8:44how that sits in the mix and what it
8:46does to the feeling of spaciousness
8:58[Music]
9:17we are
9:22[Music]
9:23you may have noticed when it gets into
9:25this back half of the song
9:27um that mono overhead that we talked
9:29about in the previous song
9:31comes in and the room mic comes in
9:34and again the room mic is hitting the
9:371176
9:39and i'm doing the stereo delay so we
9:41were we were doing similar maneuvers in
9:43several songs to affect
9:45the perspective of the drums okay and i
9:48have the api
9:49channel on the mono overhead when it
9:51comes in
9:52looks like it's compressing let's see
9:54how much
10:08that's interesting so i am dumping mid
10:11and low
10:12um and compressing a little bit the
10:14overall
10:15effect of the plug-in is that it sounds
10:19a little bit compressed
10:20distinctly brighter but i'm not doing
10:22that by brightening it i'm not boosting
10:24high frequencies
10:25i'm cutting low frequencies and bringing
10:28the whole
10:28signal up so here it is with no
10:32processing
10:34[Music]
10:38and here's the processing
10:46really taking it from sounding like this
10:48to sounding like this
10:49uh i think was the basic intent there
11:02[Music]
11:10it doesn't become as overtly powerful
11:12and
11:13and uh roomy and forward as the previous
11:16song but it definitely
11:17makes a difference in the perspective of
11:19the drums all right let's hear another
11:21example
11:22all right for the third example of how
11:24to
11:25use uh interesting processing and
11:27decision making
11:29on overheads and room mics i've got a
11:32song
11:33called vinegar by chicago band
11:36um wreath of hogs and
11:39i am not actually using a room mic
11:43or an overhead to uh to do
11:47what's been done here we have a
11:49microphone here
11:50uh it's a microphone from the 70s it's
11:53a shore brothers sm82
11:57and it's an old announcer mic it's a
12:00dynamic microphone
12:02that has its own power supply it doesn't
12:05need a power supply if you just plug it
12:06in
12:07it'll pass signal like any dynamic
12:09microphone
12:10but the power supply is for a built-in
12:14limiter on the microphone that is just
12:17insanely broadcasty squashy uh
12:21so we use this as a separate weird mic
12:24on the drums frequently
12:26and wreath of hogs used it on all their
12:29drum recordings and we found different
12:30cool ways to use it so the beginning of
12:33this song
12:34is all that microphone it was placed
12:37um if i'm sitting at the drum kit i
12:39shouldn't move away from the microphone
12:41but if i'm sitting at the drum kit
12:42i've got the snare drum right here the
12:44kick drum is right here tom's
12:46symbols hi-hat right playing like this
12:48that microphone comes in
12:50over the top of the kick drum
12:54pointing at the snare drum try to get it
12:56sort of equidistant from the two toms
12:58and it does a pretty good job of picking
13:00up the whole kit and the
13:03the internal limiter does the rest of
13:05the work for you
13:07so here's the beginning of the song
13:09featuring that microphone
13:19[Applause]
13:22[Music]
13:31pretty cool there is some plug-in
13:33shenanigans going on
13:34i've got the api
13:37vision channel instantiated here i
13:41am boosting
13:446db at 5k and
13:48it looks like i felt like i needed more
13:50compression so let's see what that's
13:51doing
13:54a lot
13:55[Music]
14:00bypass
14:04pretty cool all on its own
14:06[Music]
14:11that 6 db at 5k really gets the snare
14:14more sizzling
14:15and you know that compressor is clearly
14:19stomping on it uh you could also hear
14:22that i had some dub style delays sending
14:26there's the send each time
14:30[Music]
14:34this first one seems more audible
14:36[Music]
14:42so that looks like it happens at regular
14:44intervals through the intro of the song
14:46the rest of the drum mics on the drum
14:49buss you can see
14:50that they come in at about
14:54minus seven and a half db and gradually
14:57fade up
14:58and when the crotch mic which has been
15:01called here
15:02stops right there um
15:05the drum buss goes up uh
15:08another two and a half db and and takes
15:11over the
15:12song so i'm going to play it from about
15:14right here we'll hear it roll through
15:15there and you'll hear the perspective
15:17switch as you get through the first
15:24verse
15:26i scratched my head for weeks until
15:29it changes my part
15:33i still don't know who i
15:38was
15:46see what i did
15:58[Music]
16:02so you can hear right there the drums
16:06become a lot more
16:07focused and normal and that was a
16:10really interesting and fun mixed
16:13decision to make
16:14so those are some of the kinds of things
16:17that i like to do i like to prioritize
16:20what's going to take the forefront
16:23and sometimes you need to make room for
16:25that here on this song i
16:27muted all the other drum mics up to a
16:30certain point
16:31there's other things that could be done
16:33you could be using reverb you could be
16:34flanging things you could be panning
16:37them around and making them
16:38travel the idea is to
16:42open up your mind and try different
16:44things and be open to the idea of the
16:46perspective on your drum mix
16:48shifting and changing to serve the song
16:50hopefully
16:51not just to serve your curiosity to have
16:54fun while you're mixing
16:56but to help make the song effective and
16:59engaging
17:00thanks for being here today and uh hope
17:02this
17:03helped open up your mind on various
17:05things to do and
17:06hope to see you soon thank you

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