Make better music now

Edit: REthink Drums was formerly known as Drums Boot Camp

I am excited today to finally launch my new video tutorial series, REthink Drums! If you’ve ever tried to record or mix drums you know how complex and challenging it can be. And despite the wealth of information about it available online and in books/magazines I have never seen a tutorial series actually teach the art of drum recording and mixing like this.

www.REthinkDrums.com

The Tutorial I Wish Existed Years Ago

When I create a video product, I am trying to make something that I don’t see out in world; something that people could really benefit from right now. REthink Drums is truly the video series I wish existed when I was learning how to record drums, because it shows the beginner and budding producer exactly what to do, without wasting a second of time.

Improve Your Drum Tracks Today

The motto for The Recording Revolution is to help people “make better music now.” REthink Drums will do exactly that for your drum tracks. Within 10 minutes of watching the first video you will know how to get a better drum sound and will build a philosophy of drum recording that will serve you well no matter what kind of setup you have!

www.REthinkDrums.com

You can checkout two free clips of REthink Drums covering recording drums and mixing them. If you like what you see, please checkout the website for more information on exactly what the entire video series covers. And do me a favor, if you pick up a copy, please email me and tell me how it’s helped you and your drum recordings. Thanks!

In light of my soon to be released drum recording and mixing tutorial videos, REthink Drums, I wanted to answer a recent reader question on the subject. David asked me on twitter recently…

“Should I use Pro Tools’ Strike drum plugin or record live drums in a bad room with mediocre mics?”

David brings up a very relevant issue for the typical home recording person. We usually are limited to an untreated, bad sounding spare bedroom or basement in a house for our main recording space. With many elements of recording (vocals, guitars, keys) you can get by without much issue. But recording real drums is challenging and involves the sound of your tracking room a lot more than some of us would like.

Willing To Work? Choose Real Drums

As much as I love the ease of use and great sound of a virtual drum instrument like Strike or EZ Drummer, there is something so musical and dynamic about a real drummer recording real drums. I think most of us would agree. But David’s question points us to the dilemma, what do we do when our room sounds bad? If you’re willing to use a little bit of elbow grease and get your hands dirty then you can get a great sounding drum recording despite it all.

Poor Man’s Acoustic Treatment

If you have access to some thick blankets, do whatever you can to hang/drape them up against any nearby walls. This will help stop unwanted reflections of your drums from slapping back off the wall and into your overhead mics. You don’t need to deaden the room completely, just tame some of the sound. For a real shoddy example, check this post out where I recorded drums in someones foyer.

If you have a few dollars you can also pick up the Aural Xpanders kit from Auralex (less than $60) which gives you some helpful foam baffles that clip onto your drum mic stands and help block sound coming from behind the mic. These little guys are great for your drum overheads and snare mic and really help minimize the effect of a bad room sound.

The Question Of Microphones

David mentioned using “mediocre” microphones on the drums. I’m not sure what his definition of mediocre is, but you would be surprised how good of a drum sound you can get with one simple large diaphragm condenser mic, no matter the price tag. Take it a step further and pick up two $100 mics for stereo overheads, and some budget dynamic mics for kick and snare, you can get a killer drum sound.

People get up in arms about which mics to use on drums, but in terms of relevance to the sound you want there are three much bigger factors: sound of the physical drum kit, performance of the drummer, and placement of the mics. If you spend more of your time on those three issues you will likely get a better drum sound than if you dumped all of your money on more expensive or well regarded mics.

Practice, Practice, Practice

My recommendation to David (and to you ) is to take the opportunity to setup a real drum kit, learn how to get it to sound good by itself, learn a bit of simple acoustic treatment and how sound moves around a room, and learn good mic placement and technique with the mics you have. Then rinse and repeat…a lot!

This is how you learn and how you become a good engineer. Obviously a better sounding room will help, but that doesn’t help you make better music now if it’s not an option. Start with what you have and take the chance to improve your skill.

I always say it, but drum overheads are the backbone of your drum sound. If you can get those sounding just right, you’ll have a much easier time bringing all the other elements of a drum kit together. This applies to not only recording them well, but mixing them well.

In today’s video I cover how I like to EQ stereo drum overheads in order to “leave room” for the other close mics that I’ll mix in later. Enjoy!

[The following is a clip from my REthink Drums video tutorial series]

Capturing a great drum kit recording is a challenge, even for the most experienced engineers. If many inputs, preamps, and microphones are available to you, it might be helpful to use a complex mic setup to capture all elements of the kit well. But what if you only have one microphone? What if you only have a simple 1 or 2 channel audio interface? Do you need to go out and buy a bunch of new equipment to record good drums? Not necessarily.

Today’s video covers just one of the ways you can get a balanced and punchy drum kit recording using only one microphone. As you may have guessed, where you place it is key. Let’s take a look…

[The following is a clip from my REthink Drums video tutorial series]

If you are using Pro Tools 8 or 9 then you have access to a super easy to use and great sounding plugin called Elastic Pitch. As part of the Elastic Audio engine, Elastic Pitch allows you to make quick tweaks to any piece of audio in your Pro Tools sessions, shifting notes or regions up or down in pitch without affecting the sound quality. Today’s video covers making some tweaks to a vocal melody and harmony in a session. Enjoy!

If you follow the world of Avid and Pro Tools, then last year you may have noticed some serious changes. In a span of 4 months, Avid launched new HD interfaces, completely redesigned new Mboxes, the highly anticipated Pro Tools 9, and of course a “native” version of Pro Tools HD. When HD Native first came out I did a brief write up covering some of the main features of it but until recently I hadn’t gotten a chance to witness it in person. Until yesterday.

Hear What You’ve Been Missing

Avid has been taking Pro Tools HD Native around the country to demo it and show people just exactly what makes it so special. They call their campaign the “Hear What You’ve Been Missing Tour” and it just so happened to stop in Orlando last night. So I registered, grabbed up my notebook and camera, and headed over to hear things for myself!

Hosted by Avid Product Specialist Gil Gowing and Account Manager Jake Schaefer, the event was a setup as a demo of a brand new Pro Tools HD Native card running with the their Omni I/O interface, all running into a MacBook Pro. That’s right, Pro Tools HD running off of a laptop! They used a Magma chassi to get the PCI Native card to hook into the express slot on the MacBook. Pretty cool.

The Latency “Non” Issue

The biggest draw for a Pro Tools HD rig is the almost complete lack of latency when recording. Latency is that annoying issue of hearing an echo of sorts when you sing into your DAW let’s say because it takes a few milliseconds for sound to be converted to a digital signal by your interface, run through the software, be converted back into audio, and finally hit your headphones. There are many workarounds with host based systems like internal DSP mixers that can really help, but with HD you dont’ have to deal with that.

The big deal with this native version of Pro Tools HD is that you now have a host based system (like Logic, Sonar, Cubase, Studio One, etc) but you can track up 64 inputs and outputs simultaneously, with up to 192 voices (or streams of audio) running in a session, with tons and tons of plugins open, and all at less than 2 ms of latency (compared to a USB or FW device running anywhere from 5 to 7 ms.

HBO’s “The Pacific”

To give us examples and to show off the power of this system, Gil opened up a Pro Tools session for an episode of HBO’s “The Pacific” a war movie series. This session had 150+ tracks running tons of plugins with a million little edits (think music tracks, dialog tracks, guns and tanks sound fx tracks, etc). It was insane. They basically ran this complex setup along with HD quality video at a super low buffer setting of 128 samples and even recorded along with it…all on a dual core laptop using only 50% of the CPU. No hiccups, just pure audio goodness.

Imogen Heap Remix and EUCON

They also pulled up an Imogen Heap track she let them remix to show some of the new features in Pro Tools 9. Using the great sounding Elastic Audio engine, Gil took Imogen’s lead vocal on a song originally at 164 BPM, slowed it down to 142 BPM with no sound quality loss. Then used a bunch of the built in virtual instruments like Boom and Xpand to build a rhythm layer with some pad type effects.

Gil then proceeded to demo the latest Artist Mix EUCON control surface from Avid as he added and tweaked plugin effects and parameters to the mix. It was a pretty elegant control surface allowing him to do all tweaks with no keyboard strokes or mouse clicks. Nice.

Witnessing The Power

As someone who personally uses a non HD Pro Tools system in my studio, it was helpful for me to see Pro Tools HD Native up close and personal. And to see it in action in a few different scenarios gave me a clearer picture of where this product fits in for the Pro Tools user. Here are my thoughts:

• Pro Tools 9 with a simple USB or Firewire enabled audio interface (whether Avid or 3rd party) is still all that many of you will ever need. It’s fast, powerful, even more full featured and expandable than version 8 was, and of course is on the more affordable spectrum of things.
• Pro Tools HD Native, though, is actually not out of reach for a project studio that is doing payed work regularly and who wants top of the line A/D conversion, insanely high I/O, all in a practically zero latency environment.

I honestly was impressed with what Pro Tools HD Native can do. I don’t know of any host based system out there that can do what this is doing. For me it’s overkill right now. I don’t run into situations where I need to tracks more than 32 inputs at a time or have sessions with over 100 tracks. But, it tells me that computer recording is only getting more powerful and what Avid is doing on both a software front (with Pro Tools 9) and a hardware front (new interfaces that rock) is a good thing for the audio world and for us Pro Tools users in particular.

If you truly want to create great recordings, then don’t shoot for perfection in the studio. It sounds odd, but all that energy put into capturing the perfect tone, the flawless take, the “out of the park” mix is actually more of a hindrance to the music. Instead you could be channeling all that you have into what really matters in the studio, the song and the performance.

Perfect Garbage

Part of what motivates me to write and make videos for The Recording Revolution is the exciting fact that we have amazing, affordable, and accessible technology that allows many of us to produce music with professional results who wouldn’t normally be in a position to do so. The problem is that we are trying so hard to make “perfect” sounding albums (ones that sound like top label releases) that we may not even stop to consider if what we are perfecting is just a bad song.

If you’re like me, you can become so focused on firing up your studio and pressing “record” that you forget to slow down and figure out if you even have something worth recording. We take for granted how easy it is to lay something down that we just jump into the doing and perfecting, when in reality we may just be perfecting a piece of garbage.

Perfection Over Performance

Even if we have a well written and long thought out song to record, we can easily flow right into all of the techniques and workflows to make sure our song is captured perfectly, and then not pay much attention to the performance itself. Where the drums in time? Check. Was the guitar part doubled? Check. Were we getting a good vocal level into Pro Tools? Check. But are we considering whether the performance(s) had heart? Passion? Authenticity?

I know I’m bad at this when I record myself. When I’m laying down parts I’m already mentally beyond the recording phase and am thinking about the mix itself. How is it all sounding technically? Rarely do I slow down and think about my performance being unique and special. Some of the most loved recordings to date aren’t the most perfect recordings, but they are the most incredible performances you’ll ever hear.

Forget Perfection!

It’s time to change. Listen to me when I say, “Forget trying to create perfection, people!” It’s not worth it. You’ll drive yourself crazy trying to compete with the best of the best on a technical level. Instead focus more on creating quality recordings that have an amazing performance! Try to capture something special in the studio.

Because we have so much affordable gear and unlimited takes, we can totally become lazy in the studio and not worry about performance. But that pressure that used to exist is what allowed those “magic moments” to occur: talented people who were trying to deliver their absolute best performance. THAT, my friend is what we should focus on. Not perfection.

The best of the best Pro Tools users are fast. They don’t waste time fiddling around with the mouse when they could make an edit or a function happen with a simple keyboard shortcut. Neither should you. In fact you may already be using some common key commands to speed up your workflow. But today I want to show you a faster way…

The Normal Way

Normally when you want to use a key command in Pro Tools you use a combination of the Command (or Control) key along with a letter. For example, just a quick glance at the Edit drop down menu will show you some common functions. Command+Z will undo, Command+X will cut, and Command+V will paste, etc.

This is set up by default. And there is nothing wrong with using these keyboard shortcuts. But did you know there was a faster way? Have you ever noticed that little A-Z button in the top right section of your edit window? What does it do?

The Faster Way

If you’ve never bothered clicking on that button then you’re missing out. This is the Keyboard Shortcut Focus button. What it tells Pro Tools to do is allow you to use shorter shortcuts (ha!) which save you time. For example, after you press this button you no longer need to hit Command+Z to undo something. You only need to hit the letter Z. Same is true for cutting and pasting. Just hit the letter X to cut and the letter V to paste. That’s 50% fewer key strokes to hit!

That may not seem like a bit deal to you right now, but when you are editing and mixing, any seconds you can shave off of  having to fiddle with extra keys on the keyboard or your mouse, are seconds you can devote to making mix decisions and creating better music. And honestly, if there’s a faster way to do something, why not do it?

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For the ultimate in Pro Tools tutorials, download your copy of  REthink Pro Tools and start becoming a Pro Tools power user by this weekend! www.REthinkProTools.com

A while back, Nashville based mixing engineer Joe Carrell was kind enough to do an interview with me. He covered so many important topics related to mixing and offered real practical advice for a beginner mixer. Many of you after listening to the interview emailed Joe some questions for further clarification. Joe was kind enough to pass them on to me to post for everyone’s benefit. Enjoy!

Signal Levels In My DAW?

Q: When I mix and place plug ins on each track, should I still try and keep my overall output signal below Odb?

Joe: Yes definitely, avoid clipping before and after the plug-in if possible. You’ll often turn down the input or output of an eq type plug to avoid clipping when using substantial frequency boost.  Vice-versa, you’ll often use make-up gain to restore ouput level when using heavy compression.

Q: What can I do when I get a session where each track is recorded pretty hot before any clipping?

Joe: Concerning sessions you receive with “Hot” recording levels, if they aren’t clipping the channels LED or clipping your plug-ins I would probably leave them as they are and just turn down the faders to make certain I wasn’t slamming the master output.  If you receive some that are clipping during playback, I would use the “Gain” audiosuite plug-in to bring it down a few db.  You could also use the “trim” plug as your first insert.  Unfortunately, any distortion that was printed as a result of the overloading will not go away, you’ll just clear some headroom for that channel’s playback and plug-ins.

High End Converters?

Q: Do you use apogee, lynx converter and which of two is better?

Joe: Both Lynx and Apogee are great products that I have used with success. I wouldn’t recommend either one over the other. In my personnel studio, I use the stock Digidesign HD converters.  Since my room is primarily a mix studio, they are used mostly to send and return to outboard effects units, etc.

Q: To get more width in a mix do the converters help?

Joe: I don’t know that I would say high end converters give me more ”width”…there is just a difference in the air or reality of the instrument.  It’s hard to explain, but I compare it to looking at a photograph of a snare drum versus being in the room with that actual drum. If you have the budget..go for it.  But, don’t feel that you have to go out and get them right away to make a great record.  I’ve mixed top ten singles where every vocal part was cut into Digi 002 pres and converters.

Saturation Plugins?

Q: Distortion on the stereo bus, really?

Joe: Well…yes and no.  It is not commonly on my master, but i’ve most certainly used it a few times as I found it’s “flavor” very cool for that song.  Even then, it was very limited, as far as, the actual amount of the process I was using. It was 95% the sound of the plug with only a slight bit of distortion added.  In the interview, I was just listing the things I use.  All the others mentioned are there nearly always.

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Check out Joe’s work and discography at www.mojoemix.com

The recording world is a buzz about tape saturation plugins and all the magical “warmth” they bring to your tracks. Pro mixer Joe Carrell spent much of our interview praising saturation. Well there actually is something to it. Since most of the records we grew up listening too were recorded to tape and mixed on analog consoles, part of what we like about them is that analog sound. Turns out digital recording is so clean and perfect, we’ve noticed that something is “missing”.

Saturation (or distortion) caused by the analog components and namely the tape, really brings a specific sound that is pleasing to the ear. But thanks to saturation plugins, we can now have the best of both worlds. In this video I take a look what a mix sounds like with and without tape saturation as well as give you some pointers on how to best use it in your sessions.