in this video i'm going to see if i can record and mix a song using only what's included with
the focusrite scarlett solo studio bundle so i'm going to use the audio interface for recording my
guitars and the microphone for recording my vocals and for the actual recording and mixing i'm only
using the software that's bundled with it so i'm using ableton live lite as my daw and it only has
eight tracks available to it so can we create a song using only eight tracks i think we can and
i think it's going to be fun to find out i'm Zane welcome to audio tech tv this video is sponsored
by Sweetwater they sent me this amazing recording bundle to make this video with and if you want
the latest pricing or if you want to get any more information on this focusrite scarlett solo studio
bundle be sure to check the link down in the description and i just gotta say that sweetwater
do an amazing job every single time that i order from them i live in canada and it still only takes
two to three days every single time that i order from them and that's amazing for living
in canada and everything is so well packaged when it arrives they do an excellent job the
next time you're looking for gear for your home studio be sure to check out sweetwater
now i'm just going to connect my bass guitar and we're going to start recording this song
all right so i've got everything connected i've got my bass guitar connected it's nothing fancy i
don't know if you can see it there it is a glarry bass guitar so it's a pretty cheap bass guitar
and you can see on the screen i have everything kind of mapped out for my
song i like to do that i like to map out my intro verse all of that stuff i've got the
tempo set i've got all the tracks that i plan on using set up over here and my bass guitar is
ready to record so what i'm going to do is just show a little bit of the recording and then
i'm going to edit it we'll move on to the next part so this doesn't drag on and on we're just
going to hear a bit of it and then we'll do the mixing all together so let's get this recording
all right so i have my bass guitar recorded you can see that in here
i recorded it into parts it might just turn out to be a scratch guitar depending
on how it sounds all together but now i'm going to record my guitar one which is just a squier
guitar i'm not sure if you can see it but it is a squier guitar again nothing too expensive
and also you can see on this track i have a guitar amp sim it's one that comes
with ableton live lite so here's what the guitar sounds like with that guitar amp sim
and that's what we're going to be recording right now so let's get this set up for recording here
all right so i recorded the guitar in and i actually recorded a second guitar and i didn't
want to show that because it's the same thing i just recorded it a second time so it's slightly
different and i used a bit different setting in the guitar amp sim here so we have our two
guitars i've got them panned left and right and next thing i normally do is add drums so for this
i'm using EZdrummer 2 that's the drum plugin that i've normally been using here and what i like
about this is it has its own mixer section built into it so i can kind of control each individual
drum in here maybe not as much control as i'd normally have where i would route these to their
individual tracks but because we're only dealing with eight tracks i'm just going to deal with it
all within the plugin itself and another thing that i like about this is when i'm building a
song i can just go into the browser here and i can go into i like this pop punk for this
uh we have verse and we'll just give it a listen so we'll start from the beginning here
not what i want for that part right there
i think we'll use that for the intro i'll just drag that
so that's going to be our intro section and this might work for just the verse
okay that's too crazy i just want this one for the verses drag that into there
then we can use this for the in between verse part let's hear how that sounds
sounds good to me we'll copy the verse back over to this next verse part and
then again we'll copy this to here and now we've got our chorus section to deal with
so let's go to chorus and hear what we have
i think i like this first one here we'll bring that in that'll be for our chorus part here
and i'll just continue doing this i'll build it all together
then we'll get into the next part which is the vocals you can see i've put together
the whole drum pattern here for our song and this is what we've got going on so far
again it's not really mixed or anything yet i've got the levels kind of set up a little bit
but nothing's mixed yet so it's not sounding the greatest but we're going to record
the vocals now and get that going so here we go
all right so i've laid down all my vocal parts in here i've sectioned them off and kind of trimmed
them up a little bit i'll play a bit of the chorus so you can hear what's going on again this
isn't mixed or anything so it's not going to sound the greatest messed up
and you're out of touch the things around you no matter much people coming and going every day
and you wonder why you have no place to stay why you messed up
all right so that's a little bit of what's going on right now and now we just have our
backing vocals to do so three more tracks left to do backing vocal one two and three and that
will make up our eight tracks that we're going to be doing so one and two backing
vocals are the same thing so i'm just going to record one and then i'll do the second one
and you're out of touch the things around you don't matter much people coming they're going
every day and you wonder why you have no place to stay why you messed up all right so now what
i've done is recorded both of those vocals plus i recorded the third which is kind of the same
thing where i just copy the where you're messed up part and then i just do it ooh in there just
gotta edit this all up but it's going to sound alright i guess when it's put together so now i'm
just going to go through and edit this thing and i'll show you what i came up with all right before
we continue on i just want to give another big thank you to sweetwater for setting me up with the
focusrite scarlett solo studio bundle it's been a lot of fun working with this it sounds great and
if you're just getting into home studio recording this is an excellent bundle to get started with
so be sure to check out the link check out Sweetwater for any of your home studio gear
purchases they do a great job and have amazing prices and we'll get stuff to you very quick now
let's get back into this mix alright so i've got this all edited i'll play a little bit and then
i'm going to kind of walk you through what i've done here and i'm really happy with the results
so i'll just play the chorus because i really like the chorus for this song so here's a part of that
the things around you don't matter much people coming and going every day and you wonder
why you have no place to stay why you messed up
so yeah that's how it sounds right now so let's start with the top which is the guitars here
and you can see i've put them into this group so i have guitar one and two in this group which is
like a bus and it's really nice that ableton live light allows you to do this kind of gives
you another track to use the only effects i have on the actual guitar tracks themselves
is that guitar amp sim on each one and that's it and then i have them panned left and right then on
the group track i've got this red compressor which comes with the focusrite red plugin suite and
after that i have this saturation knob so this is the soft tube saturation knob which comes
with the time and tone bundle that comes with the scarlet solo studio bundle and after that i
have another instance of the red eq and after that i just have this mid-side rack eq here
and what i do with this is send it to the side so it kind of makes it sound wider and i also
add a little bit more up the middle so when we're listening to it in mono there's a little
bit of guitar there in the center and this is an ableton live plug-in it's built right into ableton
you can just easily add that into your tracks so that's our guitars now let's look at the
bass which is probably one of my favorite parts of this song is the bass and what i have going on in
here is a cabinet mic mixer which is kind of to emulate a base cabinet i have that red eq again
and then i have this red compressor which is the other plug-in that's included in that
red plug-in bundle suite i have this boom capture which is actually the channel eq that's built into
ableton so it's another eq rolling off a lot of the low end and kind of adding some of the mids
here which is nice for the punk rock sound and then i take out a lot of the higher stuff that
we don't need for our bass guitar and again we have another compressor at the end here to just
smooth it out again smooth out those transients so here's what the bass sounds like in the mix
i really like the bass line in this song let's move on to our easy drummers so
you can see what we've done here i've added an eq in there it's that red eq
the compressor in there just to again control those transients a bit make it sound a little
tidier and then this is again that channel eq i just found one of the presets in there and use
that and then at the end here i have the drawmer s73 which comes in that time and tone bundle
that's included with this whole bundle package so this is kind of like
multiple effects all in one it has compression in there and i think there's some eq in there
it's mainly for mastering but you can use this on buses as well so moving on from drums we'll
go to our lead vocal track and on the lead vocal i have the red eq again then i have this red three
and then i have this mid-side rack eq in there just to add a little bit more eq at the end
and also another thing in here you'll see is that i have the lead vocals sent a little bit to our a
bus which is our reverb and also sent to b which is a tube delay and this comes with that time and
tone bundle it's kind of a cool little sound just adds a little bit of interest to the vocals and
the reverb that i'm using is this tsar1r reverb again comes with that time and tone bundle it's
a very cool reverb plug-in that's super easy to use and it has a lot of presets built into it to
help get you started and i also have a little bit of the guitar sent to the reverb and a little bit
of drums sent to the reverb plus some of the backing vocal sent in there as well so it kind
of will blend everything together make it sound like it's sort of in the same space and now on
to our backing vocals you can see i put the first two backing box one and two into a group or a bus
and i don't have any effects on the individual tracks just on this bus i have the red eq
the red compressor and again that mid side rack eq in there and that's it for that and we also
have this third backing vocal which is just like a ah part and on this track i have the red eq
and the red compressor and that is it now the last thing in here is our master track
and on the master i have this master full chain which is an ableton live uh audio effect and i
just dragged it down in here i've added a little bit of base gain took away some of the highs
and added a little bit of compression in there that was about it for that then at the end here
we have our drawmer s73 which is that excellent master track effect and with this you can go in
and dial in a preset if you want start from there or it's very easy just to work with on its own
for this i wanted a wider mix so you would just click on wide mix down here and then
you can just dial in how much of it you want to add with this big knob here you can also adjust
the wet and dry mix of it and add more gain if you want and you can even turn on this air effect
which kind of brings out some more brightness and highs it's awesome that all of this came included
in that bundle and if you want to check out this full song i've included a link to it on youtube
so you can check it out on youtube you don't have to leave and the full song sounds pretty good let
me know what you think of it and if you want to check out more information and the review i
did on the focusrite scarlet solo studio bundle click the video on the screen right now if you
liked this video please give it a thumbs up also subscribe to the channel for more videos like this
thank you so much for watching for audio tech tv i'm zane keep creating and we'll talk soon