How to record and mix a drumset with 2 microphones (with video sample)! PART 2/2

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Last week we have seen how I have recorded a drumset using only two dynamic microphones, now we will take a look on the way I have processed the signal.
This time, with the exception of Jst Finality, I have fiddled only with the Presonus Studio One 3 bundled plugins, trying to achieve a mono drum sound with enough punch and separation to be understandable in a rock mix.

Starting with the KICK track,  I have opened as you can see some preset to see how they sounded, but eventually I have modified them all in order to fit them in my mix.
The first plugin of the chain was a Gate, to try to isolate the kick from the rest of the drumset.
The second plugin is a Compressor, with a quite strong setting in order to keep the sound stable and consistent.
The third plugin is a Peak Limiter, and I am using it to fatten the kick, make it sound more "round" and even more stable.
The fourth plugin is an Eq (in this case to be precise it's a channel strip in which I have deactivated the compression section), with whom I've tried to emphasize the attack of the kick while reducing the boominess.

Moving to the SNARE track, which actually can be more considered the "rest of the drumset" track, I obviously have not used a gate, because I needed all the drum parts together in this track.
The first plugin is a Compressor, set strong enough to make all the drum parts (even the farthest ones) be audible without compromising the sound of the snare, which is the closest drum part to the microphone.
The second plugin is an Eq (actually also in this case a channel strip with the compressor section deactivated) with a boost in the high area to help the cymbals and the "air" of the snare to come through.
The third plugin is a Peak Limiter, to help furthermore the less audible drum parts to be heard and to add some fatness to the general sound.
The last plugin is a Reverb, just to add a pinch of space to the whole track.

As you can see the plugins are more or less the same for both tracks, it's the way I have used them that is quite different, since they needed totally different tweakings to obtain totally different results, but I think it's an interesting example of how just basic tools like Eq and Compression can help us in solving the tone problems of raw tracks and turn them into a more coherent mix.

Here you can here the result of this rehearsal (it's 2 guitar tracks, the drumset and some keyboard track), let us know in the comments section what you think about our method of recording and mixing a drumset with just 2 dynamic microphones!

CLICK HERE FOR PART 1/2


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How to record and mix a drumset with 2 microphones (with video sample)! PART 1/2

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article! 

In these first summer weeks, as I have written also in our Facebook Page, it is going to be a bit harder for me to post with regularity since first I went for a holiday, next I'm going to move in another country for work, so I apologize in advance if this will cause a slowing down in my posts for a while.

...Anyway, I have today accepted the challenge of helping some friend of mine to record a scratchtape with one prog-metal song they are writing, and doing it all with two directional, dynamic microphones, no virtual instrument. 

We have started trying some of the most common dual miking drum recording technique that can be found online: 

- the one with one mike outside the bass drum and one vertically set 1,5mt from the drumset, towards the center

- the one with one mike pointing to the kick drum beater and one above the shoulder of the drummer

- the one with just two overheads

...and so on.

Eventually I've come to the conclusion that in our case the best thing to do was putting one mike inside the bass drum very close to the point where the beater hits and another one next to the snare drum, between the hi hat and the toms.

This way I've been able to record two decent mono tracks that were tracking evenly the whole drumset (except the floor tom that unavoidably sounded lower than the rest of the set, but still clearly audible), and the result was surprisingly good: in the next part of the tutorial I will also post the mp3 and explain the way I've mixed it.

By the way we have used the same microphone (a Shure Sm58) also to record the amp, a Mesa Boogie Studio 22+ combo using the single microphone technique, and we will use it for vocals too.

CLICK HERE FOR PART 2/2


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HOW TO TURN AUDIO DRUMS INTO MIDI! (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

In this article we are going to discover an interesting way to use our drum replacers, such as ApTrigga or Drumagog (click here to discover what they are).

Let's imagine one of these 3 scenarios (but there may be many others): 

1) we have a set of not so good drum microphones and no trigger but we would like to record the performance of our drummer and give it a good sound.

2)  we want to record our drummer in acoustic but at the same time we want the editing flexibility of a MIDI track.

3) we want to keep our acoustic drum tracks, but at the same time we want to add drum samples to fatten the sound.

In all these three situations we need first to load a drum replacer on each track we want to turn into a MIDI (for example one for the snare and one for the kick track), and then set it (usually with the threshold control) in a way that lets it detect only the transient of the drum part we need (and ignores the bleed of the other drum parts). 

With the Velocity control (or equivalent), instead, we will set the dynamic range that our drum replacing software will translate from the audio track to the MIDI one.

Last, we must tell our drum replacer also to which note of the piano roll send the impulse, in order to avoid sending a snare inpulse in the kick key (which is usually C1) or vice versa.

Now we can create a MIDI track for each drum part we need (for example one for the snare and one for the kick) and choose as input source for the MIDI track the drum replacer of the desired drum part (es. Drumagog).

Now if we arm the MIDI track and press Record, it should play the whole song and record in the MIDI track (or tracks) all the impulses taken from the drum replacer software, so that at the end of the song we'll have a MIDI track with all the kick hits and another one with all the snare hits (obviously kick and snare are just an example, we could choose to trigger only the toms and it would be identical).

Now we can reunite all those MIDI tracks in one single MIDI, so that we'll need just one drum sampler to play the whole set, thus saving resources; in order to obtain this we can drag and drop the various MIDI tracks into one, being careful of having them starting all at the same point.

Once we have our "MIDI drum track" reconstructed with all the parts (in some Daw we're gonna need to use the Paste tool to merge the tracks) we need we can load our favourite Drum sampler and choose a sound we like.

The last operation is (if we feel we need it) to Edit our MIDI drum track to perfection, correcting timing errors, the strenght of the hits and so on.

Hope this was helpful!

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Review: Presonus Studio One Professional 3

Hello everyone and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a Daw, Presonus Studio One Professional 3!

Studio One is a Daw made by one of the most famous audio equipment producers in the world: Presonus, a company famous for its mixers, preamps, monitors and its audio interfaces, among the other things.

Studio One comes in 3 versions: Prime, Artist and Professional, and the differences in features among the three versions are listed HERE.

The basic version, Studio One Prime, it's FREE and has, like the other versions, unlimited tracks, buses and Fx Channels, but without the support to external Vst plugins (it has some bundled, though).   

There are also versions of the daw that comes bundled with the Presonus audio interfaces and mixers. 

This Daw is at the moment my main workstation because it offers more or less the same tools of any other high level Daw, but it does it in a faster, more comfortable and intuitive way.

The interface is elegant, graphically it's the most good looking on the market, and you can create large projects in a breeze, just dragging and dropping virtual instruments instead of having to route them, and in general it all feels faster and less complex.

Another thing I have appreciated a lot is the search browser, that lets you find easily what you need without navigating through endless menus, and this is especially useful when you have a lot of plugins or virtual instruments.

The version I am reviewing is the most complete available, and comes with 14 gb of samples, many virtual instruments, loops, the full array of plugins, the arranger track and scratchpad, and the support to 64bit (floating point) audio resolution, which is a pretty uncommon feature.

The latest update, the version 3.2, introduces some new feature, here are the most interesting:

- Vca Faders: similar to a bus track, it's a level control in which we can route other tracks, but unlike a group channel track, in this case when we change the level, all the automations are mantained, and so effect ratio applied to the tracks. 

- Console Shaper: a new plugin that allows us to set the "noise", the "drive" and the "crosstalk", which are characteristic of the old analog mixing boards, in our single tracks, groups or in the whole mix, so that we can choose what part of the mix to keep hi-quality and what may need some extra grit to sound the way we want.

Quoting the producers, here's how the console shaper works:

"The biggest news in version 3.2 is Mix Engine FX, a new plug-in paradigm exclusive to Studio One Professional that can modify or bypass and replace Studio One’s native mix engine. In contrast to conventional plug-ins that must be inserted independently on each channel, with limited or no interoperability, Mix Engine FX can process every channel routed through a bus, both individually at the source and at their summing point. Any bus, including the main stereo bus, can have its own Mix Engine FX assigned, allowing for limitless sonic possibilities.
Console Shaper, the first Mix Engine FX plug-in, uses State Space Modeling to re-create analog mixer system topology and componentry, turning Studio One’s 64-bit audio engine into an “analog” console with control over drive, noise, and true crosstalk across multiple channels. Console Shaper provides a compelling software alternative to expensive analog summing hardware while offering far more flexibility. Console emulation is only the beginning. PreSonus, Slate Digital, Softube, Acustica Audio, and other third-party developers are planning to release more Mix Engine FX in the coming months."

In conclusion, we suggest everyone to give this daw a try, downloading the free version on the Presonus website. 

Leave us a comment and tell us what you think!

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Review: Pod HD

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are reviewing a Line 6 product, Line 6 Pod Hd Desktop!

Here you can read an article about the story and evolution of Pod, through all the Line 6 product lineup

This model is part of the Pod lineup, and it has been in production since 2012, although in 2013 is produced with the name POD HD X, because it has received a bump in the CPU specs in order to process better certain dual amp simulations that were particularly heavy in terms of resources.

The Pod Hd comes as usual in desktop version (this one in review), floorboard and rack version, and the difference between them is essentially in the amount of inputs and outputs.

This desktop version is really a swiss army knife: it can be used for the first time by two musicians at the same time, for example for a live acoustic duo with one guitar and one voice, and it has for the first time presets and amp models also for voice and bass (this is, in facts, the first generation of Pods that doesn't have a Bass Pod version).

The Xlr input has useful advantages, since it turns the unit finally into a full featured Usb audio interface that can finally be used for recording vocals, bass and guitar with good quality and low latency, also thanks to good drivers and a good managing software, that lets us also get into deep editing with relative ease.

The new hardware lets us enjoy great effect models and a good preamp section, although it's unexplainable why line 6 has chosen to not make the unit compatible with impulse responses, damaging the product when compared with an Axe Fx and Kemper, since we all know that the weak point of digital amp simulators has always been the speaker simulation section. 

Anyway the modeling is quite realistic, especially in the clean and overdrive area, in which for the first time in the Pod history we can really feel a good dynamic range and touch response.

The Pod Hd has also received through the year several firmware updates that has added more free amp and effect models, plus the support for additional paid model packs (a practice that to be honest we don't support, because we think that these software expansions should all be included in the price of the hardware unit).

The final judgement is positive, because the unit lets us (with a very good quality to price ratio) have amps and effects simulations, and a full featured audio interface good also for recording vocals and bass at 24 bit and up to 48khz. 

Specs taken from the website:

List of modeled amps:

• Fender® Twin Reverb®
• Hiwatt® Custom 100 (DR103)
• Supro® S6616
• Gibson® EH-185
• Fender® Bassman®
• Fender® Blackface Deluxe Reverb®
• Divided by 13 JRT 9/15
• Dr. Z® Route 66
• Vox® AC-15
• Vox® AC-30 (Top Boost)
• Marshall® JTM-45 MkII
• Park 75
• Marshall® JCM-800 (2204)
• Bogner® Uberschall
• Mesa/Boogie® Dual Rectifier®
• ENGL® Fireball 100

• 19 delays (including cool tube and solid-state tape echoes)
• 23 modulations (including both blackface-style opto and brownface bias-modulating tremolo, phasers, choruses and pitch effects)
• 17 distortions (classic stompbox distortion, to vintage fuzz, to thick metal chunk)
• 26 filters (including wahs and several exclusive custom filters)
• 12 compressors and EQs (including stomp comps and studio tube compression)
• 12 reverbs (from surfy springs, to studio plates, to cutting-edge digital room sounds)

• 512 user-writable preset locations and built-in tuner with signal mute
• Essential Project Studio ins and outs: ¼-inch input, XLR input, stereo balanced outs, phones, USB 2.0, S/PDIF out and FBV expression pedal control.

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How to use the arranger track and the scratch pad in our DAW (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!

Today we are going to talk about an interesting tool that will help us when writing or arranging a song, present in many of the most famous DAW in the market: the Arranger Track.

The arranger track is a sometimes overlooked instrument which can actually make us save a lot of time when writing a song, or when preparing different versions of the same song (for example an extended version, a radio edit, a 30 seconds commercial soundtrack version etc) without having to create a new project for each one.

Usually the arranger track works like this, for every Daw: you create it, then with the pencil tool you draw the parts (for example you can draw a part long as all the song's intro, and call it "intro", another one long all the verse and call it "verse", then one for the chorus and so on...), and then you can "move" those arranger track segments (e.g. "the verse") from one point of the song to another, and it will move all the single track parts below it.

This is particularly useful when writing a song, right after we have laid down all the single parts: we can move verses, choruses etc from one part of the song to another, multiply them etc with great ease, until we find the "perfect sequence" that will represent the final structure of our song.

This method described so far can be considered the "linear" structuring method, but in some Daw (like the latest versions of Cubase) we can also playback our songs in a sequential way: from the arranger menu, we can create a sequence and decide how many times to repeat a certain part, so that our project gets played as a sequencer (for example we can set: 1 x Intro part, 2 x Verse Riff, 2 x Chorus part.... and so on), and save multiple "chains" for the different arrangements we need, always using the same recorded parts.

One last thing, that is instead a prerogative of the latest versions of Presonus Studio One, is the Scratch pad.

The Scratch pad is a sort of "sandbox", a separate part of our project in which we can copy our project or our arrangement, and start modifying it without risking to ruin our main project (this is particularly useful in huge, multi song projects with a lot of tracks): we can copy there the parts we need, modify them, and if we like what we created, we can paste it back in the "official" project, otherwise we can get rid of it without risking to damage anything important.

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How to use markers in our DAW (a guide for dummies)

Hello and welcome to this week's article!
Today we are going to talk about a topic that is particularly important when mixing all songs in the same project (click here for a dedicated article), or during the mastering session, if we import all the tracks in the same mastering project: the marker track.

A marker track is a track that can hold markers, and these are used to locate specific places along the timeline of our daw project.
What does it mean?
It means, for example, that if we want to record 3 tracks in the same project we are going to add a tempo track (click here for a dedicated article), to tell the project that from a certain minute we need the metronome for example at 150, from another minute we need it at 200 and from another at 250, and then we can add a marker track to create 3 markers, one for the beginning of each song, so that we can move through them lightning fast.

So, once we have added a marker track in our project, how do we add these markers?
We set the cursor to any point we need to set a marker, and press the "add marker" button in the marker track: it will create a flag with a progressive number (1 for the first one, then 2, 3...), that we can move if we need, or rename it, for example in our case with the name of each one of the 3 songs in our project.

How do we move from one marker to another?
This varies from one daw to another: on Cubase there is a marker section in the transport bar, so we can choose them from there, in Studio One we can navigate through them with the skip controls, in other daws there is a vertical menu on the left sidebar with the list of the markers, but the concept is that somehow we have the ability of moving through them, and when we select one, the cursor will set at the marker's position.
This is very useful when mixing or mastering large projects, for example with 10 tracks, so that we can find easily the track we need, or we can use it to break down one single song among verse, bridge, chorus etc.


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