The Al Schmitt Way of Making Recording Bleed Work For You, Not Against You

Al Schmitt has 18 Grammys.

When he talks about recording, people listen.

He’s the type of guy that knows that the best EQ at all. He switches microphones instead.

He was on the cover of Mix magazine this month and I had the pleasure of listening to him and a bunch of other big-shots at AES.

During the Q&A session someone asked,

How do you manage bleed when you record everyone at once http://tabsmall.com/otc-viagra/?

That’s an interesting question I thought, definitely something these guys are used to since they spend all their hours in million dollar live rooms instead of our all too familiar bedroom studio.

What I learned were 4 things:

1. Leakage is Your Friend

You’re trying to capture a performance so focus on the performance. Not the technical perfection of all your gear. If you’re too hung up on your MOCG(that’s mic obsessive compulsive disorder), then your performance will suffer when you’re finally up and running.

2. Use Great Mics

If you’re using great mics then the leakage will sound better than if you were recording with crappy microphones. Bleeding a great performance into a great microphone is infinitely better than bleeding a bad performance into a terrible mic.

3. Put People Close Together

This one really blew my mind. Instead of separating each player with baffles, gobos and never thought about that before.

4. Minimize Slap and Delay Issues

Finally, he positions them for minimal slap and delay issues from the room. You don’t want the sound slapping off the back wall into the microphone causing all sorts of coloration. You want to position the players so that the walls aren’t interfering with the sound coming into the microphones.

Conclusion

Those tips are pretty invaluable if you want to make bleed work for you. Don’t be afraid of bleed so much. Just focus on the performance, make sure everybody’s positioned correctly and just let the recording speak for itself.

If you want even more tips to help you with recording AND mixing, check out the Strategies Bundle.

Click the link to get started:

www.audio-issues.com/strategies

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About Audio Issues and Björgvin Benediktsson

We help musicians transform their recordings into radio-ready and release-worthy records they’re proud to release.

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