(ambient music)
- Welcome to Plugged In with Fender.
My name is Kenny Beats
and now it's time to get down to the scary stuff.
That's right.
Recording guitars with microphones through amps
let's get it.
Today you're need two microphones and a pair
of headphones along with the guitar and amp.
That's all you need.
I'm doing this in my small studio
with carpeted floors in a very little room.
We don't have a bunch of things to choose from
but we're going to get a good tone either way.
I'm using an Oktava MK-12-01, and I'm using an RCA 74-B.
That's literally older than my mom.
Why am I using these two microphones?
Because they were on records that I love.
I know for a fact that this was the room mic
and a lot of the rooms that I liked records from.
And I know for a fact that this was the guitar
and snare mic on a lot of records that I loved.
That's why I bought them.
That's why I use them.
There's no deeper meaning to it.
It's not because I can tell you
about the science behind a capsule
and why this one works better than that one.
It's because I've tried a ton of mics.
This is what I like.
I've asked a ton of engineers
this is what they use.
Close mics don't sound how you
normally think they're going to sound.
That microphone right up on your snare drum
or this microphone right up on this speaker.
Isn't exactly what you're hearing
in the room and what you love about the sound.
That's why you hear all these scientist
ass engineers talking about the binaural head
and all these different things that are
actually routed in human perception.
It goes deep.
We're not going to go there.
My point is room mics are everything.
Room mics are everything.
Room mics, say with me
room mics are, yeah, you got it,
are everything.
I've learned that, that one room way back in the distance
whether it's for my guitar amps, for my drum kit
for a lot of different things
that's going to bring so much of that perception.
So much of what that room feels
like and what I was hearing whenever I listened
to that part, get recorded.
The room mic is a very dark vintage old mic
which is going to give us a lot
of body and a lot of low end.
So, normally with placement, you can move a little bit away
from the center of the speaker
and that's going to give you less brightness.
But in this case, we want the brightness
because both of our microphones are dull.
And we want all that sharpness from the tele pickups
and from the tubes to get picked up
without us having too much overbearing low end.
We're placing this microphone about four inches back
directly in the center of the left cone.
So we're feeling good about our two mics.
We're feeling good about our placement.
We know why we're doing this now let's dial our amp
in a little bit and we can get to recording.
(low bass music)
So I'm usually recording my volume at around a three
my treble to taste depending on which guitar I'm using,
but for this Telecaster, you don't need to over boost it.
It's got a very sharp sound.
So my treble is about five, I'm known to boost my mids.
I'm always trying to rip off queens
of the stone age or idols
or bands that have guitars that are piercing in the middle.
So my middle is at about six right now,
and generally with fender tube amps
they give you so much power.
That low end is never really what you're missing.
So on this amp, I've got it dialed back
to about three and a half for the base.
It's a Twin Reverb.
Why are you using it?
If there's no reverb on it?
I've always got my reverb on
at all times when I'm playing a Fender amp
at a minimum of a two, but for today, we're pushing it.
I'm going to say that's about a 3.1 4 6 8 2 5.
Not going to use any of the tremolo vibrato today.
It's just not necessary for the tone we're going for
But let's see how this is feeling.
(lighthearted guitar music)
So now we've got our favorite Telecaster
and our favorite Twin Reverb ready.
We've dialed in the settings on our amp.
We picked our two favorite mics
for our close mic and our room.
And we've got the placement of both of those all set.
Now, let's listen to some drums I recorded the other day
and we'll play on top of those and headphones.
(ambient guitar and drums)
On our first mic, our close mic
our condenser that's right in the middle of the cone.
This is what everything is sounding like
(ambient guitar and drums)
- [Kenny] It's a little shaky on the guitar playing
But, next our room mic,
the RCA 74-B, which is a couple
feet back and a little higher up getting more ambience
getting more texture from the space around sounds like this
(louder ambient music)
I'm not gonna lie to you.
Working in DAWs was always very easy for me.
And when I pulled up two sounds and I put them
on top of each other, unless there was an EQ problem
or a volume problem, they've worked.
That is not the case with microphones.
Let me tell you, I've watched all the old man
tutorials that you don't need to watch.
That's why you're watching this one.
Two mics together equals problems
equals phasing equals these things
are receiving the same sound at different times.
So when you play them back on top of each other,
we have these two tones we really like of the same recording
but they're not quite sitting in the same place.
How do we fix this problem?
When we have two microphones that we'd like to sound of,
but we want to play them together.
Some people are geniuses
and they know how to fix the placement.
So they're in exactly the same space in the room
and everything's receiving everything at the right time.
I can't do that.
So I use plugins.
You don't have to use plugins.
If you're in Pro Tools
you can do things like jump the transient.
There's a lot of ways to line up those two points.
But for me, I'm using a plugin that I love from Sound Radix
called Auto-Align.
- [Kenny] How does Auto-Align work?
You put Auto-Align on one track.
That's going to be mic number one, that's our close mic.
And we're going to send it to one.
We're going to put Auto-Align on our other track.
And then we're going to receive from one.
Now, our first mic, mic one, is sending all that information
to mic two, so that they can line each other up.
And those transients can be in exactly the right point.
So we have no phasing issues and we're getting the best
of both worlds from what both microphones are doing on top
of each other.
Same time.
See how not scary this is.
We got it.
I got you.
You got me.
Fender's got both of us.
Come on, it's e-
Come on, microphones, amps, come on.
- [Kenny] We're going to play them back right now together.
And we're going to hit this detect button.
So now mic two can detect all the differences
in the spacing of the room
and how far apart from the recording signal
these two microphones are, and it can align them together.
So now it's detected how far apart the two mics are.
We can leave on Auto-Align
on both and they should work together.
(ambient music)
So now we're getting that low end from mic two.
(soft guitar music)
And we're getting all that clarity from mic one
(ambient music)
without any of the phase issues at all.
(ambient guitar and drums)
Some of these things you can't emulate.
Some of these things are not the same
in that clean tone that you're pulling
up in that plugin might work for certain instances.
But when I want to sound how these classic records
really sound, oftentimes I'm picking up my Telecaster.
I'm going to my Twin Reverb
and I'm plugging in these microphones.
All the different scary studio stuff
that feels like it's unattainable
or it feels like you're never going to get to it.
Is really not that hard.
It just takes a couple
good questions and a few good teachers.
I've been lucky to have a lot of good teachers.
And I'm hoping that I made this process
a little bit faster for you.
This is Plugged In with Fender.
My name is Kenny Beats.
Good luck!
I'll see you soon.