era compared to today where hundreds of plug-in manufacturers offer thousands of plugins to hopefully help turn your subpar recording into something palatable .
Photo : Chris Schmitt www . chrisschmitt . com
Here are a couple lessons from Al Schmitt that will help make your recordings sound a lot better . Summarized from the first offering of the upcoming ICON SERIES , Recording and Mixing Drums : Chuck Ainlay , Niko Bolas , Ed Cherney , Frank Filipetti , George Massenburg , Elliot Scheiner , & Al Schmitt Share the Secrets Behind How They Created Arguably the Best- Sounding and Most Successful Music Ever Recorded ( to be released in August 2021 ).
LEARN YOUR MICS Learn what different types of microphones sound like on lots of different instruments . Practice ! Too often , we buy a new mic and use it for what somebody told us it was good for , but we simply don ’ t listen to the mic side-byside with our other mics to hear for ourselves why it ’ s so good . This is a great lesson to learn from Al . He knew what his mics sounded like and he knew how to position those mics for the sound that he knew he wanted to have for the mix .
Listen to your mics in different acoustical spaces , and practice using every polar pattern available on each mic . The room you record in is critical and each polar pattern offers a unique sound and emotional impact .
One of my all-time favorite big band recording is on Quincy Jones ’ “ Let the Good Times Roll ” from Q ’ s Jook Joint . I recognized from the moment I heard it when the album was new in 1995 . The clarity and openness of that recording stands above other big band recordings I ’ ve heard - and I ’ m a big band junkie since the ’ 70s ! Al recorded that track and I was able to confirm what I suspected about how he got such a fantastic sound . I knew that Al used a lot of omnidirectional and bidirectional mics and when I asked him about that track in particular , he confirmed that he used virtually all omnidirectional mics and that he was in
Al set the console up so that during tracking , his fader moves controlled the record levels for each track . His sense of balance and musical flow was so finely tuned that he could ride the mix levels while the track was being recorded , creating a recording that was essentially already mixed after tracking .
a fantastic-sounding studio . The musicians were stellar and the charts were impeccably arranged , but it was Al ’ s understanding of mics and acoustics that enabled the capturing of that magical sound !
A great course of instruction for us all would be to lock ourselves in a studio - or any other nice-sounding room such as a church . Record musicians and mix their music using mic choice and technique alone - no EQ , compression , or other plug-in gadgetry . If there are several parts that don ’ t work for the mix , go back and re-record those parts using mic choice and technique that captures the sound needed in the mix . If we could all do that , at least we ’ d started on our journey to recording the highestquality music the way Al did it !
CONTROL YOUR LEVELS Al was a big proponent that finding the right balance was more important than radically changing the sound to make it fit in the mix . He was a regular teacher at Mix With The Masters in France . He had his students bring files of music they were mixing along with the Pro Tools files with all of their mixes . He took great pleasure in disengaging all of the plugins and EQ , and quickly balancing the mix so that it sounded substantially better than the student version . Al ’ s sense of balance was masterful ; that ’ s an important trait to emulate . And , the better we all become at capturing the sounds we need for the mix , using mic choice and technique , the better we ’ ll be at forming a beautifully balanced mix from our tracks .
Here is one thing that Al did that is simply mindblowing ! He mixed the song while tracking , but not using fader automation . He switched the main mix faders on the console so that they were controlling the level to the recorder instead of simply controlling the monitor level ! Yes , you heard me right . Al ’ s fader moves were printed as level changes to the recorder , not as data changes in automation . This gives us an amazing insight about why his recordings sounded better than the rest of the kids . He learned the arrangements quickly and had a great sense for musical flow , finely honed over the course of 60 + years working with the best artists in the best studios . He didn ’ t need compression on vocals or other instruments because he was riding the gain during recording