TSRB Podcast 042 - Creative Recording Techniques

[00:00:00] Benedikt: [00:00:00] We're going to share some stories of weird creative making. When we talk about them, you'll see that there are very unconventional things that can absolutely sound amazing. Come up with those yourself as well. This is the self recording band podcast. The show where we help you make exciting records on your own.

Wherever you are, DIY stuff. Let's go.

Hello and welcome. Um, to the self recording band podcast. I am your host Benedict tine, and I'm here with my friend and cohost. Malcolm Owen flat. How are you? 

Malcom: [00:00:37] Hello? I'm great, man. I survived black Friday weekend. Somewhat. You did. Yeah, I think I did better than you by the sounds of things. 

Benedikt: [00:00:47] I didn't tell you though.

Whole story, like the truth. Um, we were talking about this last episode and I was, I said, I'm basically only going to do like business subscriptions, daily plan, save money, all that crap. And I [00:01:00] did that. But I also bought a lot of stuff more than I wanted to.

Malcom: [00:01:07] Yeah. I D I feel super jealous though. I've got like a link open to that camera. You mentioned. I'm like, Ooh. Yeah, yeah, 

Benedikt: [00:01:15] yeah. That camera's great. That camera's super fun. I bought like every accessory for it that you can imagine, like the, the stand and like a little cage where you can Mount it on the stand and like, The cam link where you can record directly to your computer without having to use a card.

Malcom: [00:01:32] How is that? Is that awesome? 

Benedikt: [00:01:33] That is awesome. You can use it as a webcam basically. And you can just record into ScreenFlow where it's just like recording into a doll and you don't have to search through files and cards and stuff. So it's awesome. 

Malcom: [00:01:44] Really cool. 

Benedikt: [00:01:44] Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:01:45] I definitely would like one of those 

Benedikt: [00:01:47] and that camera doesn't have the annoying, like, um, time limit when you do widows, because some cameras shut off after a couple of minutes or whatever, and you can do.

Unlimited basically with this camera until it overheats, but that didn't happen to me, so, 

[00:02:00] Malcom: [00:02:00] right, right. Did you get any music stuff? 

Benedikt: [00:02:03] Yes. Um, so I got this like, um, that I told you this, um, podcast, arm thingy, like, um,  

Malcom: [00:02:13] the stuff you see, like Joe Rogan use for kind of swoops in. 

Benedikt: [00:02:17] Yeah, exactly. This one, but I got like fun music stuff as well.

What did I get? I, um, I bought. Uh, the pulse arm you plug in that I was talking about last time I got that I've through finally upgraded to the whole sound toys suite. I almost got all the plugins anyways, just a couple of missing. So it was pretty cheap to upgrade to that, but it finally did that. Um, I did, I bought Saturn that filter.

You always talking about it. 

Malcom: [00:02:48] Um, I hope you like it. 

Benedikt: [00:02:49] Yeah, for sure. I'm definitely think I will. Then I got the, um, like, you know, uh, Cornell audio, like Dan coroner's plugin. 

Malcom: [00:02:58] Yep. The AIP. 

[00:03:00] Benedikt: [00:02:59] Exactly. I got that one. 

Malcom: [00:03:01] I got that too. That's what mine. Yeah, 

Benedikt: [00:03:04] that's super sick. Um, I, I, at least I hope it's gonna be super sick.

I mean, what I saw and heard from videos and other people is super amazing, but I haven't tried it myself yet. But it looks, 

Malcom: [00:03:15] yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I haven't tried it yet either. I just caved at the last moment last night. Um, and got it. Cause like I have their, uh, their pawn shop comp, um, which is like my, one of my favorite plugins.

It's just so fucking cool and good. Uh, so I was just like, you know what? I trust him. I'm sure. It's awesome. Let's do it. Yeah. 

Benedikt: [00:03:34] Yeah. I got, and like, I mean, you can always, always find ways to like justify 

Malcom: [00:03:40] purchases, 

Benedikt: [00:03:41] but in this case I really, I really. Um, needed or Vaughn wanted not needed, but wanted something you on my guitar or rhythm bus?

Uh, I went through a couple of options there during the last couple of months and there was never a hundred percent happy. So maybe this one will do the trick, but it's not like [00:04:00] people, I don't want to. I don't want people to think that some plugging or hardware or whatever, um, isn't necessary for anything.

Like I did find with what I have, but I just want it. 

Malcom: [00:04:12] Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's, that's just it, these aren't, they're just like for fun. It's like, that's all it is at this point. Like we have so many tools and it's just like, I just want this. This is just me buying. Like it's like me buying a new guitar just to play it's it's a toy really.

Yeah. A useful toy. Yeah. Yeah. I, so I got that corner of audio AIP channel strip as well, but I also got spiff, um, all good from ODK, which I'm very happy, but I've like demoed that like three times over the years, you know, like this kept renewing the demos every year being like, all right, you're allowed to demo it again.

And I was like, all right, I'll try it again. And every time I loved it, but I just, it's not something that I would use all the time. I think. So I just never bought it, but Hmm. I went for it. It was two with all the time, so, [00:05:00] yeah. And, uh, our mutual friend, Diego uses spiff constantly. Every time I send them like a mix of checkout, he's like opens it up and change the stuff with spiff and, Oh my God, that's pretty cool.

Benedikt: [00:05:12] Yeah. I use it all the time as well. And I basically have two applications for it. One is I just open it and use the default setting. Like just the default factory setting. Um, I love that on kicking snare and drums, it's just like, I dunno, it's instantly punch at, just dial in the mix novel that, um, the depth of whatever it's called to the point where I like it, but it's just increase, it increases the attack.

It jumps out of the speakers a little more. And I like it way more than a usual like trends in designer. So that's just the default setting that always works for me and kick and snare. I don't know why. So that's one of the uses and the other, and that's, that's what it's really, really great for it. Is like to remove pops, clicks, mouth noises, um, siblings and stuff, and vocals.

So I always run almost always run vocals through an instance of spiff [00:06:00] to clean up the top end and all the, yeah. The noisy stuff. It just, it's just so much better than a DSR and like everything else. So it's, I don't know that and soothing combination, like. Both very subtle. I use both, um, yeah. To not too much of the, of it, because it's it's, you can do too much, very quickly, but right.

Um, the combination of sooth and spiff on vocals, um, is the, the perfect DSR and cleanup tool. I don't think it gets any better. 

Malcom: [00:06:29] So. Awesome. Yeah. Very cool. Well, uh, that kind of segues into what we're talking about today. We're talking about like, The creative ways we use tools. Um, but the episode we're actually, we're wanting to talk about, Mike's specifically not software, I guess, but, uh, yeah.

That's cool. 

Benedikt: [00:06:46] Yeah, exactly. So we're going to share some stories of weird creative, my cane, um, that we did, or that we've heard of. And, um, yeah, we just went, this is one of those episodes where we just want you to [00:07:00] think outside the box a little bit, try and use stuff, come up with exciting things. So of course you can try all these techniques or tricks that we're gonna talk about.

But I think the better thing to do is take these as inspiration and then come up with your own. Um, things, your own stuff. So while these might work, it could also be that they just don't work at all for what you're trying to do. But you just, when we talk about them, you will see that there are very unconventional things that can absolutely sound amazing.

And you can come up with those yourself as well. And we'd love to hear about this as well, obviously. So if you have done anything like that, or if you come up with anything like that after you've heard this episode, Just let us know and write in, send us an email or post it in the Facebook community because we always love these kinds of things.

Definitely, definitely. So, yeah. I'm curious to hear your stuff here, Malcolm, because you wrote a whole list of things in like two minutes. 

Malcom: [00:07:59] So [00:08:00] I'm very curious to hear all of that 

Benedikt: [00:08:03] and, uh, 

Malcom: [00:08:04] yeah, I mean, some of them worked, some of them didn't so that's, they're not all successes. So on this list that 

Benedikt: [00:08:11] you tried, that didn't work.

Malcom: [00:08:13] I mean, it it's more like some of them were sometimes not every time, which is of course, but, uh, but yeah, some I would totally do. Like, it's funny. I kind of go through phases with my, I call them like dogs, Yella, remake. It's just like, this is we're finished making up the kit or whatever instrument. Now let's do one more thing.

And just, I like think of something on the spot. And I like, it's almost, I feel like if you're not doing that, you're really missing out. It's like you make it up a drum kit and you know exactly how you normally do it. And that gets you exactly what you want. Now, just do one more and throw it somewhere new and just see what happens.

Um, you know, I try to make that an educated guess. It's not like I just like walk and close my eyes and place it somewhere. Um, but it, it, it, I [00:09:00] try to think of something new. Every once in a while, normally I'll like, you know, find something I like, and then I'll run with that for like a few sessions and then I'll be like, okay, 10 time to change it up.

Benedikt: [00:09:09] Yeah. I feel that there's some things like one of the things that I have on my list here that I do almost every single time, just because I like it so much, but I always think I'm always thinking like, man, I should really change things up a little bit. I should do something different. But at the same time, I just like it so much that I always do it.

So I don't know. 

Malcom: [00:09:29] Yeah. Well, I mean, like you, you figure out what it does and now it's like a new palette you can, you can use, um, for when that's the right thing. So actually, you know what, I really ended up changing it up is when I think, okay, this isn't going to like suit this project at all. Um, like one right off the bat is, uh, down at the studio, down the road from me.

Uh, they have this long hallway that runs out of the tracking room, the live room. Um, it's pretty far away from where the drum kit is, and there's a door in the way as well, but we throw a [00:10:00] mic in there and it's like the darkest and so delayed. Cause it's so far away Slappy kind of, uh, like roommate is just so, so awesome.

I can't imagine not using it when I'm there. Um, 

Benedikt: [00:10:13] awesome. 

Malcom: [00:10:14] But I had a band that wasn't looking for bombastic drums, so I was like, okay. We're not going to do that. Like there's no point in setting up that mic at all. Um, so you know, you have to change it from there. 

Benedikt: [00:10:26] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. For, for those sorts of things.

Yeah. It's just, yeah. Just didn't fit the genre or the, the vision. So. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Um, so yeah, just, why don't you start, just tell me about the, those things like, um, the hallway mic. Of course you, you always taught, you already talked about that. But, um, some of the more unconventional, funny things, right?

I did. 

Malcom: [00:10:52] Yeah. The first one is the tree mic, which I might've even mentioned earlier. Like we're at the beginning of the show, when we started this podcast, I was probably my favorite thing to do. [00:11:00] And that's like an ass and 57 thrown into this literal tree trunk in the studio, same studio, silverside side.

They have like this giant. Giant tree root, just like straps to a wall. It's just like all roots and gnarly and it looks crazy. Cool. Um, so I found this little spot that, and know some 57 kind of just like fits like a glove slides into. And, uh, then that, you know, I typically, I just crush it with something like 1176 and, uh, the first time we did it, it was like magic.

It was like, this is awesome sounding. It really suits what we're doing. And I used it heavily in the mix. Um, and then every time after that it was a flop, but I stuck with it for so long because of how happy I was the first time. Um, but, uh, it was just kind of a fun thing, but it was like, okay, there's this giant.

Tree in the studio. That's pretty rare. I got to throw a mic in it and see what happens. So you would 

Benedikt: [00:11:58] need, if you're listening right now, you wouldn't [00:12:00] need a tree in your practice face or whatever in order to be able to, to do that. So, 

Malcom: [00:12:06] yeah. Yeah. If you don't have a tree you're missing out. No. Huh. 

Benedikt: [00:12:08] By the way, there was the story of like, um, another engineer.

That I, um, I had on my other podcast on the APAC recordings podcast, Yon Casha he has a great studio. He runs a great studio, like three hours from me, something like that. And they have big, huge live room. And then he told me that one day they decided to put a tree, like they just got a tree from.

Somewhere from the woods. And they put that whole tree with leaves and branches and all, and put it into the lab room just because it looked so cool for their videos and just, they like the vibe of, uh, of having a big tree in their life that's 

Malcom: [00:12:46] handlers. 

Benedikt: [00:12:47] Yeah. And they, like, they had it there until. The leaf started to fall off and you could hear like the noise from the Leafs in the room when they were dry and everything.

So at some point they just had to get rid of the tree because you always heard it 

[00:13:00] Malcom: [00:13:00] sense of nature. Yeah, exactly. 

Benedikt: [00:13:02] So, yeah. Trees and lab rooms seem to be a thing. 

Malcom: [00:13:06] Yeah, that's too funny. Um, that reminded me cause at the same studio, uh, it used to be a winery. That's what the room was originally. It was a winery.

So there's this giant. Big wine cask in there, like a big barrel and, uh, This tree mic kind of led to us, wanting to figure out what the wine cask would sound like. So we of course took up like the cork again as the 57 kind of fit in the hole, um, shoved it in there and it was awful. It had like a note, you know, like it was like a moon.

It was like, okay, that's not going to work for anything, but we had to try the dry. I 

Benedikt: [00:13:48] mean, you always need to try those things. I think I mentioned it before in another episode, but Kirpalu. An engineer that I admire and like really who does really great work. And they're having music world. [00:14:00] He got hired to work at, um, another studio.

So not his studio for some record. And they had a, for whatever reason, they had a canoe on the walls. Mm. And he just put, he couldn't resist, but put a mic in like inside the canoe, of course. And see what that sounded like. I don't know if that could use if that sucked, but yeah, if you have a wine cask or a canoe, you get a try.

Malcom: [00:14:22] You have to. Yeah. Yeah. That's funny. How are you, man? What's something that you've enjoyed. 

Benedikt: [00:14:29] So when it comes to drums, we're still talking about drums. So one thing that I always enjoyed, this is not too spectacular and I've, I've talked about it a lot, but that's just something I do all the time almost is like the center of kit, um, omnidirectional sort of mic thing.

And I, I love to use a measurement mic for this. So just the mic that came with Sona works, or I use the Jeep bearing, bearing a measurement measurement mic. One of those, like below a hundred bucks. And I just put that [00:15:00] right above the kick drum, like, so that it's the same distance from the snare kick and rectum basically.

And I just press it heavily. Sometimes I split it. Yeah. And I run one. Um, I run it through, uh, Nixon, um, sort of distortion, pedal guitar, pedal, or bass pedal. I love this enzyme for this because it has some extra low end and then I run a clean pass of it as well. And, um, that's just, I don't know. That's just the glue and the grit that I want in my drums.

And I do that all the time. So that measurement might can right in the center of the kid. That's one thing that I really love. Cool. And try that 

Malcom: [00:15:35] I've got like the sonar works reference mix. So I should give that a shot 

Benedikt: [00:15:38] to that yet. Like you get a lot of like snap and ring from the snare drum and like tons of.

Cool sounding like high-end transients. You just gotta be careful with the ride symbol because that's going to be next to it. So that's the only downside really, but other than that kick snare and Toms really sound cool. So, yeah, that's the thing. And then what I, um, actually [00:16:00] enjoyed as well, but it didn't do it as often.

I need to try it again. Um, is I put a lav mic on the drummer. So just the sort of mix that you see from video people, like you can put it on your shirt or somewhere like these small, mostly black, invisible sort of mikes. And, uh, I just did that and see, I just wanted to hear what it sounds like. We thought the thought process was, we want it to have something that sounds close to what the drummer he is when they play it.

Like, um, same as with the recorder, man, where you have the mic over the shoulder of the drummer, but we just figured what, what did it sound like if you had an omnidirectional, like, um, lav mic on the drummer and it didn't sound. As we expected it to, but, but it sounded very cool. It's like it distorted a little eclipse, a little, it added extra punch and attack to the snare.

And what's also cool. Was it added like, of course, some sort of movement to the drums, which was actually pretty cool because the mic is not still the drummer moves, [00:17:00] you know, so you got a little bit like, it wasn't as weird as we thought it would be, but it was actually kind of cool to have this. Yeah, I don't know.

It did the cool thing. I could just, I don't know how to explain it. Um, it was subtle enough to not be annoying, but it was a little bit of excitement and movement and it was a little bit of clipping in there in a cool way. Um, the symbols were better than we thought it would. They would be. So, yeah.

Malcom: [00:17:24] Interesting. I would've thought they would have been awful, 

Benedikt: [00:17:26] but they weren't beautiful, but not as awful as you would think. So. Depends on the lab maybe, but like, it was, uh, like the. The road. I don't know what it's, what it's called. Um, I think it's called laugh. Like I wrote, I think they don't have a fancy name for it, but the, the, the basic road went that, but that's what I've used.

Malcom: [00:17:51] Perfect. Yeah. So I have to try that. 

Benedikt: [00:17:53] Yeah, you can also, by the way, you can also use, um, that's not on the list here, but there's also a cool thing that I [00:18:00] tried. You can use earbuds as microphones. You can. Yes. You can just hang a pair of earbuds on a mic, stand somewhere in the room and just plug it into the iBox and then into your, um, interface.

And it works into your pre-amps and it really works. These are just like speakers or microphones in reverse basically. So you can use earbuds, you can use headphones, all sorts of things. So that works as well. 

Malcom: [00:18:24] Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I've been meaning to try that out. I've got a buddy who does that all the time and he makes some pretty cool stuff.

Um, so that's on my list. I like that. I'm going to write that down. So I remember do it today, uh, on the lab mic thing. Um, I was at the studio in Toronto and they talking to the engineers there. Um, and they said that to cure King came in one time to work in their studio. And that was like, well, that's pretty amazingly cool.

Jacare's like one of the. One of the biggest producers in history. Um, you know, this is like a legend and, and [00:19:00] unbelievably talented. Obviously I'm a huge fan of his work. So I was like extra stoke and I guess he was there because they were thinking about doing that. Like Tom waits. Biopic kind of thing. Um, where, you know, there'd be actors playing Tom waits kind of thing, and, and, and making a movie about Tom waits and they wanted to see if they could get live audio from the actors slash musicians.

Um, so they brought into care King to engineer at like a test run of it and they didn't want to see Mike. So, so he had to like, apparently mic up the whole band with just laugh mix within the round. And then, and they had one that, you know, like along the top of the acoustic guitar, kind of like taped away, hidden, and then like on the floor, his boundary mikes and stuff.

Um, and apparently the engineer said that it was the best sounding thing you'd ever heard of the studio. 

Benedikt: [00:19:50] I mean, yeah. I mean, it's secure King. Um, 

Malcom: [00:19:53] just makes everything work. Apparently 

Benedikt: [00:19:56] that's such a valuable lesson as well here, because no matter what you [00:20:00] have, what gears you have, what tricks you use, no matter what you're trying to copy.

Right. Everything you do always runs through your own unique, personal filter, like your ears, your brain, the way you perceive it, and the way you think. So you can like use presets and copying Mike techniques and learn and do whatnot. Like whatever you want, as long as you want, but it will never. Never ever sound like execute game production because it's his ears and his like, whatever it is.

So that's a valuable lesson here. 

Malcom: [00:20:30] Yes. Yes, definitely. Um, yeah, I mean, that's a challenge to make stuffs the whole band sound good, but laugh Mike's head is not, not going to be a good time. Trust me as somebody that works with lab mix pretty often. It's hard to make up, like somebody talking sound good.

That's true. 

Benedikt: [00:20:48] So, yeah. That's cool. I'd love to hear. Is that what record is that? Or what movie or what 

Malcom: [00:20:52] is that? Yeah, he never got made, I guess. Um, so that, unfortunately that is lost to time. I have no [00:21:00] idea where those recordings would be, but it would be fantastic to hear them. Oh yeah. That's the closest I ever got to Tom or to, uh, To, to cure King, just a story.

I was in the same room that he was once in, which, which is cool. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So let's, let's keep moving. We've got quite a few one here. Actually. We're going to cover drums, bass, guitar and blocks. We just kind of like made a couple of things and I, we should have actually added with drums because we have so many, but whatever.

Um, my latest one that I'm really into is. Uh, a lot of isolation booths use, like just, you know, like some, uh, PCB type, uh, tubing kind of connecting the walls, you know, like just as a little place to shove cables through. And sometimes there's foam in there to kind of seal it up or whatever. Um, that's just a common way people seem to do that.

And I decided to stick a mic into that hole the other day. So there's like, The live room and then there's a vocal booth. And I went into the vocal booth and then shoved a little mic into [00:22:00] the tube that would be used around cables into the vocal booth. Usually. Um, and it was awesome. It sounded super cool.

Uh, it was, it's like a total home run. I really totally gonna do that for the next year. 

Benedikt: [00:22:13] What did it sound like? Like what's the, 

Malcom: [00:22:16] well, first off, when I'm ever I'm doing room mikes, I'm almost exclusively looking for like the darkest thing I can find. Um, like my, my goal is dark and delay. Uh, cause I like bombastic room Mike's kind of thing.

So like I want it to have a pretty noticeable. Delay from the source. Um, and that, that hallway mic I mentioned earlier works because it's like really far away and behind a closed door. So that's definitely gonna have a pretty different sound. Um, and this is kind of the same thing. It's like, Hearing it through a lot of filters by the time it gets to the mic.

And, uh, to again, compensate for making like to bias things towards beam, to the dark, um, sounding, I usually [00:23:00] use a ribbon mic. And in this case it was one of those  um, I don't even know who makes those biodynamic. 

Benedikt: [00:23:05] Yeah. Then one six is about her mic. Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:23:08] Yeah. So it's this weird. Cardioid ribbon mic, which I didn't, I don't even understand how that works because almost all ribbon makes her figure eight.

Um, but, uh, yeah, shove that in the hole and it was dark and punchy and not a lot of symbols going in there for whatever reason. Um, And that's perfect. Yeah. 

Benedikt: [00:23:30] Did, did it, did it have like the slap delay kind of character because what you like, what people do and, uh, there's a pretty legendary effect based on the technique is you can use like a garden hose basically as a slap delay and depending on how long it is, you get different delay times and there's this right.

Cooper time cube, um, classics, delay effect. That's based on that. Exactly. It's like it sends audio through. Pieces of tubing. Um, and yeah, so I've I [00:24:00] figure when you do that, would you just describe, I thought it would be maybe a similar sound. 

Malcom: [00:24:04] I mean, it definitely was like more sloppy than I expected. I mean, it was so dark that slap isn't really the word that came to mind, but it is, it technically is that, um, you know, it's just like you bring it up in your snare gets longer, uh, because of it.

So it's definitely a really cool thing that I'm going to be trying. No again, next time I'm over there. 

Benedikt: [00:24:24] Cool. Awesome. Great. 

Malcom: [00:24:26] And then, uh, here's one I've never had luck with, but Mikey, like a piano in the live room, you know, like they're going to be ringing away. Um, and. Yeah. I ended up always just muting the piano and like shoving a moving blanket into it, going the opposite way with it, but I gave it a shot.

Um, and, uh, you know, I've, I've heard of people like taping down the keys that are, or like only leaving the keys open that are in the key of the song. Um, so you'd like if your keys, the key of the songs and see you take down everything, that's not in C. [00:25:00] Um, and then hopefully that resonates and, you know, would sound cool.

Didn't sound cool in that example that I saw either. Have you ever done that and had luck? 

Benedikt: [00:25:09] No, I, I think that's one of those things where in theory, it sounds like the best idea ever, and then you try it. It's just not worth it at all. But, um, I saw videos where it actually did work, but I don't know. Um, I, I can't, I can't say much about it because I don't have a real, like piano in my life room and I've never, I've never tried it.

So I don't know. What I do like though, and what I did, um, is like record, but that's not like that's not nearly the same thing, but you can do cool tricks with piano. I was like, play the fundamental notes, the stored them like crazy and mix them with heavy guitars and stuff like that. So I've had success with all sorts of piano tricks where you don't really hear that it's the piano, but like the, the room reverb, whatever you want to call it and make the piano in the room tricks.

[00:26:00] I didn't try it. And, um, I don't know. 

Malcom: [00:26:03] Yeah. Worth mentioning though. 

Benedikt: [00:26:05] It sounds like a good idea. And I can't see it working, but I don't know. Hm. 

Malcom: [00:26:10] Yeah. What about kick tunnels? Do you like kick tunnels? 

Benedikt: [00:26:12] I love kick tunnels. I love, but you gotta be very, or at least I think you've gotta be very careful and like it's really a trial and error thing for me with where to place the mic, because you could end up in a spot where you have.

Uh, weird or like yeah. Um, weak, low end. And then there could be spots where it's like super big and punchy and, um, So it, it takes a while for me to 

Malcom: [00:26:36] describe what a, describe, what a kick tunnel is for the audience, because maybe not everyone knows. 

Benedikt: [00:26:40] Yeah. There's several ways. Yeah, you can do that. So the most basic thing is you could just build like a Ford in front of the kick drone, where you just put a blanket over something, uh, isolate the symbols and everything else in the room and just put a microphone in that tunnel or thing you've built in front of the kick drum so that you can make the outside [00:27:00] of the kick drum without having all the bleed from the symbols.

But then you can build like real kick drum tunnels with like multiple kick drums. You can put a kick drum in front of a kick drum and you can put like three, four or five kick drums in front of a King from, and build a really long tunnel that way. And, um, yeah, as I said, I don't have the, like the technique that I like.

I, I do it every once in a while, but it's always a trial and error thing for me. I always need to figure out again. Um, where to put the mic where, how long to make the tunnel, how much isolation I want. It's different from session to session. So I don't have this one go-to technique here, but I've had great results with it.

Definitely. Cool. 

Malcom: [00:27:41] Cool. Yeah. I find when I've done it, I'm actually still making the kick in the same spot I normally would, but then I've got a tunnel. That's just sending it out into the room rooms in a different way. So like the, the, the original kick is still miked up. But the tunnel is just creating a different like room feel.

Um, [00:28:00] but maybe I should experiment with that more. 

Benedikt: [00:28:02] Yeah. I mean, I do the same thing. I still have, um, like Mike's on the kick drum, but then I have also a mic in the tunnel or in front of the tunnel or somewhere. And, and that's always like a trial and error thing for me, but you can get great results doing that.

Uh, sometimes it's just it's for me, just, um, an isolation thing, because I don't want symbols and the kick out Mike, but I want more distance to the kick drum. So sometimes it's just because of that. And sometimes I do it because I liked the different sort of low end and also the delay between the mix, so right.

Different applications here, but there's cool things you can do with a kick panel. Definitely. So you can definitely try to, um, experiment with that and come up with, with cool things here. Definitely. Yep. 

Malcom: [00:28:45] All right. Last thing on our drum list, Mike, behind a symbol and I haven't done this. So you've got to tell me what you're talking about.

Benedikt: [00:28:50] That's that's actually pretty cool. Um, I picked that up in a, on another podcast, I think, um, a couple of years ago. Um, and what it is [00:29:00] is, and I don't remember the podcast exactly, because I thought about it, but, uh, because I would mention it, but I'm not sure. So, but anyway, um, I think a couple of people do that.

W the idea is you put a big symbol, like a ride symbol in most cases, um, uh, or make you could work with any symbol, but I like write symbols, so that, and it just put it on a stand and you kind of create a shield between the mic and the drum kit. So you Mike, the symbol, you get as close to the symbol as possible.

And on the opposite side of the symbol, there's the drum kit. So you, yeah. You put a shield in front of the mic basically. And what that does is you, the, the symbol will ring with the snare and cake and Toms, but not so much with the symbols. So you get like isolation, like symbol isolation, you get a darker room, Mac sound.

Okay. Um, because the symbols, like, yeah, they don't come through as much because you have the shield in front of your capsule of course. But the Kickstarter, yeah. Tom's actually get a little more, a little longer [00:30:00] sustain because of the, the symbol that just rings with them. So it's a subtle effect, but I feel like it adds a little more.

Depending on where you put it, it can sound a little more snappy or bright, even in a weird way because the whole thing will be darker, but the kick and snare get this. I don't know. It's it's it must be the way that the symbol reacts. I don't know. It's just some, some overtones, a little bit of length and a cool isolation.

So you don't have as much symbols in there. And I've experimented with a couple of different symbols, put it in different spots in the room. There's actually an example of that in my course, that's about to, to, uh, that I'm about to launch. So, uh, there's an audio example of exactly that in there as well, because I find it interesting and awesome.

So yeah, you can use whatever you want and like, it doesn't need to be assemble. You can. Build a 

Malcom: [00:30:48] shield. Where do you normally place the symbol? It was that kind of up to you at that point, 

Benedikt: [00:30:52] kind of a front of kit thing. So it's a couple of feet away from the kit, uh, in the room, like a mano room mic, something like that, not [00:31:00] too far away.

And, um, it's, the mic is aiming at the kit, but between the mic and the kid, there's this symbol and the mic is as close to the symbolist as possible. 

Malcom: [00:31:09] Cool. 

Benedikt: [00:31:09] All right. A difference if you put it on the edge or the center of the symbol, it's all subtle differences, but there are differences and yeah.

Interesting. 

Malcom: [00:31:18] Okay. I'm totally going to try that. I'll let you know how it goes 

Benedikt: [00:31:21] here. Blue salts, uh, I guess, thinner or thicker symbols also make a difference. I haven't tried that, that as much. I think. But that could also make a difference. Of course. 

Malcom: [00:31:32] Yeah. Yeah. It would resonate the symbol more or less.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Right on. 

Benedikt: [00:31:38] Okay. So yeah. Yeah. Let's move on to base. I mean, I can, I could talk about tons more things with drums because it's set drums length of, I dunno, drum recordings, um, lend themselves to this sort of thing. I think it's just, 

Malcom: [00:31:51] they do. Yeah. I mean, they, like, they are the instrument that activates a room, like nothing else really does.

So. Um, it, it [00:32:00] just kind of, yeah, it lends itself to you see something like a canoe and you're like, I wonder what that will sound like when somebody hits the snare in the room, which, I mean, like guitar get loud, but they're kind of constant. They're not like transient, like drums are. Um, so it's, it's just kinda different.

Yeah. We do have some kind of fun things that we've done with, uh, other instruments that we're going to Brent to them as well. Exactly. Um, Ever since Royal blood came out, I've had bass players wanting to have guitar amps in their chain. Um, I don't know if that's the thing over in Germany as well. 

Benedikt: [00:32:32] Yeah, it is not so much probably, but yeah, the occasional one.

Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:32:35] Yeah. Um, it, uh, yeah, I mean, I've had some fun doing it. It's like splitting, splitting a base into like guitar amps and distortion channels and then still having a clean one and stuff. Uh, in my experience after doing that. I think like the, in the box ways, my preferred way of going about it, just recording bass as usual, and then splitting it into like [00:33:00] Saturn, like the plugins and you just got or something like that, you know, I, I haven't really, actually, he had any luck with the splitting live amps thing on a base.

Um, other than using like, uh, like a dark glass or sand Zemp pedal and taking a split into that. Um, but as far as like multiple amps in the room go, it's just been like a 

Benedikt: [00:33:22] mess. Um, yeah. I mean, I, I'm kind of the same with like bass. I love splitting guitar, amps, like guitars into different amps that actually works well for me.

Um, different, like with different applications with bass, not so much. You're right. But what I like is, but it's, it's just that the combination doesn't work for me maybe because of cancellations or whatever, because what I do like is. Like guitar amp on base instead of a pedal. So when I split it in the, in the box and the doll I often use for the distortion, that is the distorted high end channel top end channel.

I often use guitar drums actually, or guitar amp [00:34:00] Sims because they, they just work, especially for metal tones. It can work very well or have your tones. So I really like your times on base. I just think that it's that in the room it's difficult because like, yeah, because of low low-end that's canceling and that's basically everywhere in the room and you can't really isolate that stuff.

It's so like the lower you get, the more omnidirectional it is. There's not much phase 

Malcom: [00:34:26] mess. It's a phase it's very soupy. Um, 

Benedikt: [00:34:30] Yeah, I think 

Malcom: [00:34:33] it'll lead up time in a session like nobody's business as well. You'll spend hours trying to figure that stuff out and then you'll find the, convince them to just record a DEI and do it.

Benedikt: [00:34:44] You say you can do that. I mean, you can always like record through a guitar amp and track the eye at the same time. You've technically split in as well then. And that works way better. Um, So, yeah, that's, that's the thing that I do a lot actually, but I don't bother [00:35:00] using multiple base amps users. 

Malcom: [00:35:01] Yeah.

Yeah. I'm always here, but I've tried it, it was worth mentioning. Um, yeah, I would love to see how they do the Royal blood stuff, because that does sound amazing. Those records are great sounding. They do a fantastic job with those. 

Benedikt: [00:35:14] It does. It does. It does. Um, I'm not sure how they do it. I assume, um, that.

You gotta, you just get a control of the low end and you got gotta, I don't think you need as much low end. I think you need a tight controlled, low end. And, um, 

Malcom: [00:35:29] yeah. I also wonder how much is doubled rather than split on those records. Cause they got like panning and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. There's there's all sorts of stuff.

Got to dissect it a little more. Yeah. Um, but it's, it's a very cool sound. That's become very popular. But, uh, yeah, I mean, feel free to try it and do it that way, but I would recommend an in the box 

Benedikt: [00:35:48] approach. Yes, totally, 

Malcom: [00:35:50] totally. Um, the only other really kind of, and it's kind of weird that this is considered weird, but, uh, setting up roommates on a base isn't, isn't that common, um, people [00:36:00] tend to just go for the very direct thing, but I've had some great luck with roommates on, on base.

It, it can sound very, very interesting. 

Benedikt: [00:36:08] Yes sometimes. Yep. You're totally right. When I use them, I often like high pass them, so that put a locale cut at like 400 or whatever, 300, 400. And then I make them super wide. I use, I like stereo roommates then because yeah, if you plant it in, you can just get the base to be a little wider.

Like you, I don't know. It's almost like. Sometimes these things are so hard to describe because usually you have a base up like right up the middle, that it's a mano thing. It's pretty narrow. Um, and that's what you want most of the time, but it can be pretty cool to also have some of that information on the side.

It's not the low end, but just some of the base. And it kind of, it's still as loud as it was in the center, but it feels like it's, there's more space in the center in a way. And it also blends well with the guitars and it's just, yeah, it can be a cool thing to [00:37:00] have some sort of stereo aspect to a bass guitar just subtle and just low in volume, but it can be cool.

And it went one, one way to do that is with roommates on base. You're totally right. Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:37:09] Yeah. Yeah. I, I, the reason of getting it to blend more into the guitars is the reason I like it. Um, it's definitely just like that little bit of stereo information kind of like let's touch the guitars on the sides and it kind of glues it all together.

Benedikt: [00:37:23] Yeah. A little bit. Yeah. Chorus on those as well. Sounds pretty awesome. 

Malcom: [00:37:28] Yeah. So definitely. 

Benedikt: [00:37:29] Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:37:29] Yeah. That's something just a side tangent, but like, cause normally you don't get a room mic when somebody sends you tracks to mix that's on a base. Um, but uh, I I'm lately I'm often splitting a channel doing the same thing, high passing it and then some course to make it wide.

Um, and then mixing that in there usually steadily and that, yeah, that goes a long way. 

Benedikt: [00:37:50] Yeah. Agreed. Cool. Um, That's it basically for base. I think I don't have any weird things that I like to do with basis. [00:38:00] I don't know, 

Malcom: [00:38:01] insist that they use a pick a new strings. Yeah. 

Benedikt: [00:38:06] Can't say that often enough. Yeah. Um, yeah, I mean with basis, it's really like, you can get very creative with base of course, but it's, that's a thing that I do after it's recorded more than I do.

Malcom: [00:38:18] It's more of a mixing thing usually. Yeah. Yeah. I'm with you on that. 

Benedikt: [00:38:24] So guitars that's where it gets interesting again. Um, so room mikes, same as with bass, not so common as with drums to use room on guitars. It depends on the Shaundra. In, in some cases it is common, but like, The heavier or the rock stuff is usually pretty in your face and pretty close to the cap.

So, but roommates on guitars can work well. Um, any specific things you think of, or any specific techniques here, 

Malcom: [00:38:52] the roommate kind of guitar. I tend to be kind of on the closer side. Um, It just kind of becomes, so [00:39:00] trevally that like, if you go far away that it's kind of useless to me. Um, so I ended up being pretty close, but it's just like, sometimes it sounds too direct for whatever style of music, so bring it up.

Um, and then again, sometimes maybe you're doing like a clean intro part or something and you just wish there was some width to it. Um, so like a little X, Y pair. Pretty close to the app can really just bring that in. Um, it's yeah, nothing groundbreaking here as far as guitars go, but it's just, again, I feel like people don't use room mix enough and it's worth, worth trying.

Uh, one weird roommate situation actually is I had a guy, um, recording in, in the live room. And it, it shed monkeys again, I always talk about shed monkeys, but they're just the best. Um, uh, and he had like, you know, we had like three apps in there and he's got like this big, huge, giant fuzz pedal set up going on.

He's he's a monster. Like he's just got toned in his hands. Like you can turn all the pedals off and it still be the heaviest thing he heard. And, uh, [00:40:00] I threw a talkback mic in there for him and I forgot to mute it and I accidentally recorded it. And. It was awesome. It was like this SM 58 point in the wrong way beside his head, you know, you can like hear the scrape of the pic in it and stuff.

Um, cause it's like so close to him and, and he's in the room with the apps and stuff. Right. So it's, uh, it, it was just like chaos, but it was like the perfect chaos. And it was like instrumental into the tone of those songs. It was so great. 

Benedikt: [00:40:26] Oh, that's that's cool. That's I need to try that. That's actually pretty, pretty good.

Malcom: [00:40:31] Yeah. It's like a happy accident, but it totally worked 

Benedikt: [00:40:33] in this case. Did you do it again after that? 

Malcom: [00:40:36] We did, because we did another bunch of songs that I set up the talk back and I made sure to record it. But in this case, it, it, it didn't the magic didn't happen. 

Benedikt: [00:40:44] Yeah. You could do pretty exciting things that way you could also, Mike, just, you could make the electric charge just as you would an acoustic guitar and blend in the drumming and pick noise and finger noise and, and stuff like that.

For me, 

Malcom: [00:40:56] which is probably what I should have gone for, because that's like really what I. I [00:41:00] liked about the first time was that I could hear that stuff. Not him breathing. 

Benedikt: [00:41:05] Yeah. Cool. That's that's actually cool. Um, yeah, so roommates with roommates, I've mentioned it in another episode. Um, what I like with guitar room mikes sometimes is that I when attract the whole band and if I track everything in the same room, I just leave the drum overheads up for everything else.

So I just recorded guitars. And just record the drum overheads in the same spot as they were with the drums. And I do the same for bass and vocals and everything. And if I need a little glue, a little extra, um, yeah, a sense of cohesiveness, then I just blend in those, those overheads, because it's a really great idea.

Yeah. So it just gives overdubs more of a band in a room feel so, right. 

Malcom: [00:41:45] Yeah. I get that for sure. Um, I sometimes do something a little similar, but it's my room pair that kind of just stays put for the whole session. Yeah. Usually. 

Benedikt: [00:41:54] Yeah, exactly. Um, yeah. Then there's the splitting thing with [00:42:00] guitars actually works pretty well.

I think so you can obviously just combine different types of guitar, amps. That's always fun to do. And when I do stuff like that, I tend to go for the extremes because two similar amps. All you get with like using similar setups and splitting and splitting it between those, at least in my experience is face problems because it's too similar and it's not really worth doing it.

But if the two things that you're going to use are not similar at all, if they are very different, there is not much, um, They won't have much in common also when it comes to face. So it's easier to blend them. And as always, when I blend things same with, with microphones, I like to blend extremes. I like to have two faders with completely different things on them that I can blend and make one sound out of them.

So for example, when a track, a really heavy modern band. I set up one amp that's 51 50 or a Mesa or something like that, like a heavy or a partner or whatever, like a heavy high gain [00:43:00] amp, maybe a little scoop, the typical modern metal sound. But then I'll add to that. Something like, um, I dunno, an AC 30 or, um, maybe a marshal or maybe some pocket amp.

That's got a lot of mid-range, but nothing else. So just something to add to the other amp, um, to give it something that it doesn't have. Um, so that can work pretty well. Also. I like blending that that's probably my favorite thing. I like blending an AMPAC V4 bass amp, and I crank like everything, uh, the mid range, the, um, the gain and the master volume.

And you can use a power soak so that it's like, Um, not super loud, but that thing is just such a great guitar amp with such a cool sort of mid range. It's that Queens of the stone age sort of tone, they use that amp all the time on guitars. And if you like dial back the low end and just use it for the mid range and the distortion from it, it's such a cool vibe and grit that I only get from this amp.

And I love blending the before or [00:44:00] with other guitar amps. So. 

Malcom: [00:44:02] Cool. Cool. Yeah. I don't, I don't do much blending. I'm pretty like. Like often we'll just use one mic, two mics. I'm just like the one gets the job done, but it definitely does happen. And, uh, yeah, it just depends. I think it depends how big the tone needs to be.

And like maybe the more distorted, the more I'm curious about bringing in like additional tones to kind of supplement things and fill because. Like really hard, heavy tones, like at one amp kind of, there's always like a sacrifice for getting it as heavy as you want. So they tried to make up for it with like, yeah, like you said, a Vox or something is going to bring kind of like a cleaner mid-range presence back into it or something that's when it kind of go down that road.

Um, yeah. Now you were mentioning earlier. Uh, splitting for, for base purposes. Um, and I want to dive into that a little [00:45:00] bit, um, maybe talk about what, what you did and then I can share my story as well. 

Benedikt: [00:45:03] Okay, cool. Yeah. Um, I think there's. That's that's nothing to do with, uh, the usual split your guitar to get to blend the guitar tone thing.

But that was what I did. There was I had a band in the studio. They were two people, a drummer and the guitar player and the guitar player was also the vocalist and they had no basis and they didn't want to play bass on the record as well. So we need to figure out a way to make, to get the low end we needed from the guitar.

And the sound like a fuller sound than just the guitar, his guitar sound with the drums. So what we did was we split the guitar and we use the bass amp and the guitar, but not in the way that I just described with the we four, but we use the clean bass amp. Um, we dial back all the mid range and top end, we just left the low end in there, basically.

We, uh, made sure it's clean and big. We put the biggest thickest string on his [00:46:00] guitar that we could fit on there. Um, the lowest string, um, we've figured out a different way to tune and a different way to play the songs actually. So we really did like everything. We redid everything from scratch so that they would work.

And then he basically was able to play all the chords with one finger on the. Low string and play the bass note along with the chords basically. And what that did was we had that it was hard to get the guitar to stay in tune basically. So because of that one, we already fixed string and the rest were like some, some other, a set of strings.

So it was kind of weird, but we, we, uh, uh, got it done and. Yeah, what that did was it kind of sounded like a bass and a guitar playing at the same time, but obviously very in time, because it was the same performance, but it really sounded weird. It sounded like a very, very tight double. And like the bass amp didn't get much of the, um, the other strings because we like really just kept the low end.

And for the guitars on the guitar amp, we [00:47:00] like dial back the low end and just kept the mid range and top end and distortion. And this sounded pretty filtered and kind of weird, but also pretty cool. So yeah, it was just an hour. Way of playing guitar and bass at the same time. And I think we didn't even use a guitar string on as an E string.

I think we put on a strain from a bass or something like that. So the thickest thing we could fit on there. So, yeah. Right. 

Malcom: [00:47:30] Yeah, the it's pretty similar to what I went through. Um, but the band I had and actually. Like that's their thing already, but he has a bass amp on stage. He's already doing this. Um, what's that, uh, knob on the back of a subwoofer called it.

So like the cross, uh, crossroads coming to mind, but it's not called a crossover, but 

Benedikt: [00:47:52] you can see. 

Malcom: [00:47:52] Yeah. So he had a crossover built into his pedal board. To only send a certain frequency point and lower to [00:48:00] his base chain. Um, so it would go through a totally different set of pedals and, uh, into a bass amp.

Um, and he had it set pretty accurately so that like a lot of notes wouldn't even make it. They're really right. Uh, so it was pretty much just like his low, low, Eastern getting through to that. And then he already had the processing for it. I did so much on that session because I like didn't know what to expect.

So I grabbed like a clean Dai that guitar, a wet D of the guitar chain, the amp as well. And then we had a clean of the bass signal. I cleaned the, I have it. And then like the process signal of it and the bass amp being miked up. And then I think I had a camper going on. Some, I think the Keppra was running on the app side of things.

Maybe it was on the bass side of things, but it was like, like seven or eight lines running from this one. Guitarist. It was insane. Yeah. 

Benedikt: [00:48:48] Yeah. I mean, yeah. Same thing. Same idea basically. Um, 

Malcom: [00:48:51] yeah. Yeah, but yeah, they wanted to attract live and they keys the basis and the guitar. So we had to, we had to get it going that way and it worked [00:49:00] cool.

Benedikt: [00:49:00] Cool. Yeah. Try it, try those things out. Um, sometimes those, yeah. When you need to solve a problem like that full things can happen. So. Definitely. 

Malcom: [00:49:11] Um, 

Benedikt: [00:49:11] yeah. Right. What else do we have here? Leslie speaker? Yeah. I mean, 

Malcom: [00:49:15] yeah, this is just like a fun thing that a band brought in a Leslie speaker for the guitar once.

And I was like, this is the coolest sounding thing ever, but I mean, there's not really any engineering going on there. That's just the bad happen to have a Leslie speaker. So if you can check one of those down, it sounds pretty cool. Yeah. 

Benedikt: [00:49:30] Yeah. 

Malcom: [00:49:32] Then, uh, we got to talk about your beer mic. I know we've talked about this at some point on the podcast before, but it's just such a good 

Benedikt: [00:49:37] story.

I think so. Yeah. I mean, I'll be quick. This, the thing was I was striking a band and there was a song about, or some songs, but one in particular about drinking and about, um, the, a day in the life of a pretty miserable, um, person, um, like, and. [00:50:00] This song is like, it's almost like a story. So not only the lyrics, but the music itself is telling the story.

So the way everything sounds, kind of fits the lyrics and like walks you through the whole, the whole story and there's ups and downs in the life of someone who has a serious like drinking problem. And at some point in the song, we wanted to have a part that sounds disgusting. Like when you, you, you're just about to throw up basically, um, And we want it to have that sort of sound.

We want it. We want the part to sound as if someone is like, Almost throwing up and we tried a couple of different things and what we could do, and what we ended up with was the idea was we started with a bottleneck because a bottleneck already sounds kind of, you know, like this loose undefined thing.

So the, the guitar player played some chords, used the bottleneck and made some like, yeah, chords that we thought would fit the part. Then we reversed it. So we played it [00:51:00] back backwards and then revamped it. So that already felt pretty weird. This bottleneck, cords and bet, and like slides and then backwards ramped.

And then we put, um, a class, the first idea was we put a glass of water in front of the amp and put the mic underwater to make it sound more, even more weird and distant and like disgusting in a way. And then we thought, if we going to, if we're going to do that and it just fit the band as well. If you knew the band, like water didn't make sense.

So we needed to use beer for that. So we got beer and we needed to have a certain kind of beer. The singer insists that w if we use beer, we need to use the sort of beer that he always likes to drink, because otherwise, like everything else just won't work. So 

Malcom: [00:51:43] start, sorry. It wasn't authentic enough. 

Benedikt: [00:51:48] Yeah.

We needed to get that sort of beer. We put it into an authentic Bavarian. Beer glass with like deer engraved in it and trees. And, uh, [00:52:00] um, we put that in front of them, the guitar cab, we put an SM 57 in like a plastic back and we wrapped it in a plastic bag and a rubber band. And then we just. Dumped it into the glass of beer.

Uh, and then we played back, we revamped the reverse bottleneck courts, so that all already sounded kind of weird. And we knew that it was gonna, um, it was recorded through beers. So that was cool, but it still didn't have the effect that we wanted. So it was still not disgusting enough. So what we did was the guitar player.

Went into the live room, um, went in front of the cab and put a straw in the, in the glass of beer. And then he made bubbles with that straw, uh, so that there was movement in front of the mic and underwater. So you have these, this weird bubbly underwater sound with reverse bottleneck chords actually recorded through a glass of beer.

And that was exactly what we were looking for. And now when that part comes up, you cannot tell. How that's done. It [00:53:00] just really sounds disgusting. So 

Malcom: [00:53:04] it's weird. I I'm curious, uh, it would have been funny to do a test, to see if different beers had different tones. Like if you got a Guinness in there, is it going to be like a darker or thick?

I mean, I would think so. So I, um, 

Benedikt: [00:53:20] but yeah, but it was definitely a fun, fun thing to do. Anyway. I was kinda surprised that water alone or beer alone. Didn't make that much of a difference. I mean, it got darker, it was kind of a filter, but it was not nearly as drastic as I thought it would be. So we really needed to have that bubbly sound in there too, to really make sure that it sounds like underwater.

So 

Malcom: [00:53:42] yeah. Awesome. Awesome. 

Benedikt: [00:53:45] You gotta do what you gotta do 

Malcom: [00:53:46] right on. 

Benedikt: [00:53:47] I got to post a picture of that in the show notes I have. 

Malcom: [00:53:50] Yeah. Oh yes. Do do. It's a great photo. I remember when you posted that into like our group thread, I was like, awesome. Um, yeah, total side note. [00:54:00] But when I went to India to record some drummers with the documentary I work on, um, there was a drummer called civil Amani who.

Had like the S the symbols, like attached to a strings that he would hit and he would dip them into water and it was totally wild sounding. Cause they would change the pitch or the symbol as it entered the wall. Oh, um, it was, yeah. I was like kind of like thing and it was really, really crazy. Um, and then, yeah, we also recorded this other guy that had like drums that floated in buckets of water and they had different pitches because of it.

Like you had to like. Have the perfect amount of water in there. It was crazy. Cool. 

Benedikt: [00:54:37] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, uh, I, I figured that you probably saw a lot of like crazy or creative making techniques on your, like the whole documentary journey. 

Malcom: [00:54:47] Yeah. It's a, I mean, a lot of it's trying to keep the mix out of the shot, so I have to be creative that way.

How can I get as close without being in the shot? And then sometimes I'm just like, I'm in the shot guys, like too bad.

[00:55:00] It depends on like the situation we are or if we're outside, you know, if we're outside, I gotta get close because there's so much noise. Um, but if we're in a studio, I can probably make some roommates and overhead sound awesome, you know, with a clever placement. Cool. But yeah, so interesting drums and performances.

That's that's the coolest part. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the last thing we need to talk about is vocals. Um, and, uh, nothing, nothing too crazy here, because we've talked about this a lot. We had like episodes about being more creative with, uh, well, it can just came up in ramping. Cause we talked about sending vocals through pedals and stuff, which is like one thing.

Um, so setting up like an additional vocal mic, which you're going to do something different with is kind of a cool thing. You can try. Um, or you can just, you know, have a parallel process of the vocal and the mix, but having a different mic is kind of a way to do it in real time. That's kind of fun. 

Benedikt: [00:55:58] Um, 

[00:56:00] Malcom: [00:55:59] and then, uh, the other thing that I'm really into, which I may have mentioned on the podcast before, but is actually just getting like.

Another double of a performance. So say they sing the verse and it's perfect. That's your lead vocal. Get them to do it one more time and then use that as say your reverb, um, channel. So rather than throwing reverb on the lead vocal, you're just doing a a hundred percent wet blend of reverb on this. Uh, totally different performance.

And I'm really enjoying doing that because you've got like subtle differences between the two performances and it's like, it just feels different. You still want it to be pretty close. I don't want it to be distracting, but, uh, it's a total different sound than if you have it on the, on the same vocal.

Benedikt: [00:56:40] Yeah, I agree that that's, that's a thing that I like a lot. Uh, it even makes a difference if you like send an uncompressed thing to reverb compared to like the compressed process thing, that's already a difference, but if it's a completely different performance, um, that's very interesting for sure.

You're going to have slight variances in there and yeah. 

[00:57:00] Malcom: [00:57:00] Yeah. Like even other instruments, like I've, I do that with lead guitar sometimes to get them to do like another pass of like a solo or something. And then that becomes the big delay track kind of thing. That can be really cool. Um, just give you more options and it's something that's a little more unusual, so it just stands out your ears, like what what's different here.

Cool. Um, which is always, always cool. I don't really do any like room mikes on vocals, unless I'm in like a church or something, you know, that really projects vastly like that. Um, but generally recording studios are more on the controlled side. Um, so it's just, it's never really been worthwhile. 

Benedikt: [00:57:36] Yeah, same here.

I don't do that as well. Um, yeah. Yeah. What I do, like that's the last thing I have to offer her with like vocal max. What I do like is the fact that you can, especially when you do heavier or grittier vocals, the fact that you can scream into almost anything and record it. So anything can be a microphone and that's pretty cool.

So you can use a guitar pickup. And just put it into a DIA box. So whatever you can steal, or you can like [00:58:00] literally grab your guitar, just scream into it and record that it will work. Um, yep. You can grab, like you can use old phone. Um, what's the English word for it? Like the, the part of the phone with B, is it the microphone or I don't know what it's called.

Yeah. Yeah. I guess it's 

Malcom: [00:58:16] the microphone of a phone. 

Benedikt: [00:58:18] Yeah. It's screaming to old parts of like telephones, if you like, just cut the wire and like solar plug an XLR to it or whatever. So. Uh, you can scream into speakers, headphones. Um, that's also pretty cool, like, uh, just a pair of like over ear, like headphones that you can just hold in your hand and scream into it.

That has a cool sound. Um, so anything that's a speaker or some sort of microphone can be used for that. And I've had a lot of fun with those types of things, for certain parts or certain doubles. Um, that's, that's basically all, I'm all I'm experimenting with. There is a cool microphone for, um, that [00:59:00] telephones radio sort of effect that we all have heard of a couple of a million times, but yeah, it does it in a cooler better way.

I didn't spend money on it because I thought only for that, it's a little too. I don't, I don't know. But if you feel like if you want to have something fancy, there's a microphone called the copper phone. I don't know if you knew that. That sounds really, really amazing. Like it has a really cool tone. Yeah.

You can get the same thing with just filtering it distortion. So it is the radio or telephone effect, but in a very cool way. So I've heard it a couple of times and it always sounded great, but I just can't, I just didn't want to, uh, justify or I couldn't justify spending a lot of money on, on such a thing, but, uh, yeah.

That's a fancy way of doing a thing or 

Malcom: [00:59:44] maybe there's a black Friday deal. Oh yeah. It's like $275. Yeah. That's a little bit much for the radio effect. 

Benedikt: [00:59:55] Exactly, exactly. But it does sound cool. Really? It does really sound cool. So, um, but that's [01:00:00] basically all I do with vocals. Like, as I said, I leave the overheads up.

Sometimes I use pedals for vocals. I have them scream and do different sorts of. Phones or speakers or pickups, but other than that, um, There is not like a, a position in the room or anything like that, that I like for, for vocals. 

Malcom: [01:00:16] No, it's, it's certain instruments lend themselves to being messed with while you track.

And certain instruments lend themselves to being messed with in the mix. Um, and drums are one of those things. That's definitely like a, you can really manipulate it on the way in very easily, um, where vocals are more about getting a clean vocal. And then from there you can take it. 

Benedikt: [01:00:37] Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

So, 

Malcom: [01:00:40] all right, cool. Hopefully that was a fun episode for our listeners. I think 

Benedikt: [01:00:44] so. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely. It's one of those things where it's so hard to describe this for me when it's not like English is not my native language, so I do my best, but whenever I try to describe cool abstract things, it's kind of hard to describe those things I know in my head, what I [01:01:00] want you to describe and I hear it, but it's so hard to describe it, but, uh, yeah, it's fun talking about those things.

And, um, I think the most important takeaway here is just that you experiment with stuff like that. Yeah, 

Malcom: [01:01:10] definitely. Uh, yeah. I hope some people try stuff we mentioned in this episode and we get to hear about the results. That'd be great. 

Benedikt: [01:01:16] Yeah, totally cool. Thank you for listening. And by the way, uh, before we leave here, the last thing I want to say is episode 29 and episode 20, one of our podcast are.

Related to what we've been talking about today, 21 is called spice up your recordings with creative ramping and unique effects. So it's basically what we've been talking about this time, but it's not about Mike positioning, but instead it's about running your already recorded stuff through gear and cool thing.

Cool things. And then we have episode 29. Um, which is called, how do you develop a unique drum sound, which is also like the things we've been talking about today are part of that, um, answer to that as well. So if you want to check [01:02:00] out some of our older episodes, these two are a great start. If you want to learn more about those, the creative side of things.

Yeah, 

Malcom: [01:02:08] definitely. All right. Thank 

you 

Benedikt: [01:02:10] for listening. 

Malcom: [01:02:10] I got to run to a session, but thank you for listening and we'll definitely see 

Benedikt: [01:02:15] you next week. .