hi hello and greetings earthlings welcome back to podcastage my name is bandrew
and this is another casual friday video meaning we're doing whatever i feel like
and what i want to talk about is microphones are you shocked there is an artist that i really enjoy
his name is jacob collier and here are a few of his albums the format is a compact disc and can
you believe it there's music on there somebody's going to get that reference that's an obscure one
anyway jacob does these insanely in-depth logic procession breakdowns where he walks through all
the tracks in his session he shares his production techniques how he arranged the track what kind of
processing he's doing and in his recent video where he was breaking down a christmas song
he shared his microphone selection because he did something a little bit different and when
i heard that i just got excited and had to make a video about it but i don't want to start with
the microphones that he discussed in that video i want to start with the microphone that i've been
using this is the shure sm58 this is an incredibly affordable dynamic microphone and the reason that
i'm starting with this is in an esquire video that he did he shared that this was his only microphone
that he owned and that he used until he was 19 which would have been about 2015 i think and that
means that he recorded and released some amazing music using a very affordable microphone and the
reason i wanted to point this out is i want to drive home the point you don't need expensive
gear to make great music the most important aspect of any recording is going to be the actual music
and the performance the microphone is secondary to that and you can make amazing sounding recordings
with affordable gear but now let's jump to the two microphones that he discusses in his recent video
and the first microphone up is the neumann u87ai and to be 100 clear i don't know if he has the
vintage u87 or the modern u87 but regardless this is a studio workhorse microphone and this is
called a condenser microphone it gives a really realistic and detailed sound so it's going to
be great at capturing all the information of the sound source that's right in front of it and with
a condenser microphone like this it's going to capture a lot of that higher frequency information
a lot of that airiness a lot of that shimmer a lot of that liveliness really a great studio option
if you want to capture a relatively accurate image of what sound source you're putting in front of it
and something that's special about the u87 in my opinion is it doesn't do your voice any favors
it captures exactly what you put in front of it that can be a very good thing or a very bad thing
with me that may be a problem but with somebody like jacob he has such a distinct and great voice
i think it's a great fit and the microphone that he paired with the u87 is the aea ku5a in the
video he calls it the r88 but then he holds up the ku5a so i'm assuming he did in fact use the ku5a
and the thing that makes the ku5a different from the u87 is the fact that it's a ribbon microphone
as opposed to a condenser microphone and as soon as i switched over to this i'm sure you heard
a massive change in the sound much darker much less of that higher frequency information and
a lot more in the low end a lot fuller sound if i can sound stupid for a second a little bit of that
you can really hear that come out and because of that difference in tone i think that's what
makes this pairing so interesting because with the ku5a you have this robust low end and really
smooth top end which is really appealing and vintage sounding but then you also have the u87
which gives you this really realistic and accurate representation of what's in front of it
and it just gives you this really great full sound which i think is represented in jacob's recording
now right here i want to include a very short clip from jacob's live stream where he describes
why he chose to use the u87 and the ku5a because i think it's really insightful and we could learn
something from it so let's jump to jacob's clip this is a really kind of warm paint brush
and then this one is a slightly more brittle paint brush but in a very kind of clear way so
i had both these microphones set up like this um what i would do is i would move from one to the
other as i was recording and so half the audio tracks are done with the ribbon and half of them
are done with this one and what it means is that it sounds like there's lots of different textures
all going together because i did an arrangement of a song called moon river and moon river was all
done on this microphone and what i found at the end of that arrangement all those walls of sound
was that a lot of the same overtones were being exaggerated by um by the mic and so for this one
i wanted to achieve the same thing but with different paint brushes so that's what i did
for this and i'm just going to dive straight back into the sesh and show you so
what did i tell you incredibly insightful and something that you're likely not going to notice
if you're just recording four or five vocal tracks but when you're recording a thousand
like jacob you will really start to notice what overtones microphones are accentuating
and that's all that i wanted to talk about i was just really excited hearing him talk about
the two microphones and describing them as different paint brushes to paint with
because i think that's what it really comes down to there's not necessarily a microphone that's the
best there's not a microphone that's necessarily better than another there are just microphones
that have different tones to them meaning they're going to excel at different things
meaning each microphone can be a very specific tool for an application or as jacob so eloquently
put it different paintbrushes to paint with or different microphones to paint with or
paint brushes to record with however you want to phrase it and before i close out the video
because i'm a complete nerd and weirdo whenever i see a microphone i take a screenshot and try to id
i will throw up some screenshots from jacob's video and tell you what microphones they are
there is the aea r88 which he mentioned before which is a stereo ribbon microphone i saw him use
it on the upright bass and kick he has the akg c12 which i saw him use for vocals quite a bit
in the background you can see the electro voice re20 on the electric guitar i think that he has
a stereo set of akg c414s on the piano i saw a c414 xl2 on the snare drum i think and then he has
a stereo set of mojave microphones i don't know the exact model i'm thinking maybe the m201 fets
but i can't be certain there and i do want to make a really important point here i'm not making this
video to get you to buy these microphones or to inspire gear envy or gear acquisition syndrome or
anything i just find it incredibly interesting seeing what people's microphone selections are
and seeing how they actually use microphones in the real world because i think we can learn a lot
from that so this is just for education purposes and because i'm interested in it because i'm a
nerd and that's going to wrap up for this video i know it's a bit different than usual but i saw
jacob talking about microphones i got excited and i had to make a video and share it with you and if
you don't know jacob go check out his music the guy is an absolute genius in terms of production
in terms of arrangement in terms of performance the guy is way too good so go check out jacob's
music i'll link all the videos in the description if you found this video fun interesting or helpful
go ahead and give me a thumbs up if you hated it give me a big ol thumbs down
i probably shouldn't be slapping and punching people in a video where i talk
about jacob because he's such a peaceful kind of guy so let me go ahead and take that back
that was gross sound okay i took back this lapse and punch but still if you
liked it thumbs up hated it thumbs down if you do want more videos like this feel free
to let me know in the comments down below and subscribe i do publish at least one video per
week if you want to hang out in the discord server podcastage.com discord and thank you
so much for watching thank you so much for listening i'll talk to you next week