Mixing Live Recordings - Warren Huart: Produce Like A Pro

I found the answer i needed on the t-shirt for sale, lol

i fucking love you Warren Huart

Thank you!

Simply beautiful! Thanks for sharing.

Great vid, very useful, thanks

after watching this video, I realize it take a lot of work to improve the quality of a live recording. original file of a live recording always sound thin and weak. Thanks Warren for this very informative video.

Thanks Warren 🇬🇧👌

Hi Warren. I am mixing my 1st live gig. I noticed that the vocals the band sent me have more bleed than your vocals from this video. Do you recommend to automate the track to clean it up? or leave it like it and mix it with bleed.

thanks so much for making sharing this one Warren exactly the reference I need for my latest assessment, merry Christmas have a fantastic new year :)

Xiadsheild

Hi Warren, want to say that I’m so much thankful for this video. I’m just finishing mixing a live recorded rock opera performed in a stadium. A rock band with 7 people, a symphony orchestra with 33 musicians, a choir with 127 people, and 27 actors. Your video helps me resolve some issues that I didn’t know how to do before.

For every issue, you have a solution. Thanks Warren! 🤘🐍

So far the best tutorial on this subject I've seen. ***

a very interesting and clear understanding of mixing concept thanks Warren Huart

Doing my first live Mixes nowadays, and this little course is very helpful! Thank's!!

Wow Warren, you are so talented. You have so much experience. We can see the years of experience coming through loud and clear. Impressive :)

Hi Warren. Do you use a drum replacement app? Do you have any decent drum samples I can download thanks.

The bleed in the overheads usually determines my mix picture and I work with it instead of against. But the one thing I struggle with is getting enough room sound. I usually don't have crowd/room mics set up, but I'm gonna start. Because I don't have them, I kinda lean on my overheads and the bleed from the compressed lead vocal for the crowd sound. I definitely need to start putting up a couple mics for the room/crowd though. My mixes end up sounding like a studio cut until the song stops and you can barely hear them applause. Can't wait till I have a couple extra mics to throw up and ride up and down in between songs.

Hi there, Warren. Thanks ever so much for sharing your knowledge and experience. Absolutely marvelous! I am in the process of mixing a live recording with a synth band called Agregat with some backing tracks, SPD drums, baritone electric guitar and vocals. To what extent would you say that the overall norms or 'rules' that you describe in this video would apply to a setup like this? All the best, Eirik

Great video, Warren. Thanks.

When you described the random bleed in Anthony Kiedis' mic as he moved around the stage and how it was more noticeable to hear silence in the spots where you cut it out.. It reminded me of when I had to remove a creak in the floor from a recording of "a moment of silence." But, the blank spot was noticeable because the sound of the "air" in the silent room was gone for two seconds, so I copied a piece of "silent room air" from the recording and patched it in where the creak was and the edit was undetectable.

In the case of a editing unwanted stage bleed, you would have to replace the blank spot with the identical part of the song from a different section of the song, if you can get it, where the bleed was not offensive and hopefully the patch would be unnoticeable.
Just a thought.

Hi thanks for the vid.
Do you think room mics are usefull if there was no crowd for a quarantine live show for exemple?
It creates phasing issues but doesnt bring a real energy. Could it be better to send the mix in a convolution reverb bus ?

I've done a bit of live mixing and I'd agree with not trying to fix details too much. I like to think of all the microphones on stage as giving a 3d picture of the overall sound. In theory if you get the panning, volume balance and phase issues sorted, you should have the sound in the room. You can't really get rid of anything but you can sculpt it as a whole. Then you can use the close mics and DIs to effect the mix. I'd love to see more on live mixing, there some good tips there.

Is that vocal rider also from waves?

Whenever I see you... I sing your focusrite bundle song.....pa rum pa rum parum pa.....

This video was golden. i was definitely having issues with a live vocal mix trying to chop out most of the bleed. you learn very quick that you are better off just leaving it and working with what you got.

Helpful thank you

Hi Warren, thanks you for this video, it's amazing, super useful. I have a question, do you ever "gain down" your vocal when the singer doesn't sing like you do with the toms ? Or do you let the bleed into the mix ? Thanks again and cheers from France !

Really cool video thanks! I run a digital mixer live though most of my instruments are electronic. Wondering back in the 70's that some bands would actually record live (though maybe seperated by different rooms) ? Love this channel thanks for the great support!

You are the game changer, this whole new generation (including me) needs you. Much Love from the Philippines, Warren. God bless you!

I’m doing my very first live recording mix and it’s a huge challenge, but this was incredibly helpful. Thank you so much for putting this together! It’s incredibly insightful

I just turned down a mixing job of a live recording, because they didn't record room mics (let not even mention the mediocre performance of the musicians).

For a convincing live recording you NEED room mics! And I'm not going to add crowd noises from some library. How could they even forget about that? Goes to show just how important proper planning is! They could have just talked to me beforehand!

Damn, in 25 minutes you gave me so much usefull info. Thanks allot!!!

I'm currently mixing a live night of worship music for a local church. There are around 25 instrument/vocal tracks and 5 ambient mics for an hour-ish of music. I had to add an extra heavy guitar to fill out the bottom end in some spots, and I have used a ridiculous amount of reverb to simulate the feeling of the room it was recorded in, because the room mics just didn't have enough of the echo present. The lead guitarist also didn't tune before a song, and I had to pitch correct his guitar without making it sound weird (which is MUCH easier said than done when the guitar is drenched in reverb). I think there are audible drums in every single mic'd track. I've run into a lot of problems, and am currently on "final mix 10" or something like that, but I have really enjoyed the process of mixing live music in post quite a bit. They also are paying me for mixing the songs, and also are paying me to master it. I'm being super hard on myself to make sure they get their money's worth, but the mastering portion I'm just having the worst time with.

Sooooo, are we just ignoring the pitch correction on her voice? It's killing me :P

Any reason to manually automate out the bleed out of the toms instead of using something like a noise gate to do the work for you?

Thanks Warren!! I have learnt so much from your videos, I love recording live!

So what about the BGVS. As in how do you deal with them because most probably they were standing close to the band so the bleed is just massive. Also, I see some guys end up doing overdub on the vocals but mixing it with the live recording cause there are some things the singer does on stage they cannot replicate so I guess what I am asking is if you have the capability of doing an overdub, should I?

Great video. Did you ever make a video about mixing in 5.1 as it seems to me there isnt all that much about it ?

Thank you!

Thank you. This was super useful. Most of what I mix is live, bleedy, spikey & prone to accumulated mud & boxiness. Gates and heavy rolloffs are a double-edged sword, as you say. It’s a difficult balance to strike, and a very different job from mixing clean studio tracks. If you’d please consider more content like this, maybe mixing a sub-par live recording on a livestream, that would be absolutely amazing. Cheers

Q2: Any idea how to divide the multi tracks for smaller files to use in batches instead of HUGE files? Anyone?

Thank you. Question about getting the multi tracks into the computer. Mid size like Midas M32 feed out the USB. Others don't have that and don't have expensive outputs. Any idea how to get out of, say a Yamaha LS9? Anyone?

Ive been doing "small" recordings for a few years, studio and live and I rather enjoy reinventing the wheel to some degree to see if I can figure out solutions to problems.

That being said, I was very pleased to hear that some of the things I found helpful a pro like you also did; mainly allowing bleed and working around the bleed to keep the "live, stage" sound. Im always trying to learn and find out how to do things better.

I have yet to really work with a good room mic sound. Can you advise the type and placement of room mics to achieve a nice stereo blend of the crowd and room?

Also working with drums I really have only gated the toms. Very little hi hats as it seems the players usually are slamming those pretty good in live music. Using an RE20 inside the kick has yielded a good thick kick (with some channel magic applied lol)

The locations of the players has a huge impact on bleed, I have found that, as much as possible, arranging the players in as straight a line so that the sources are all firing on the same axis as much as possible helps to some degree.

Thank you for this priceless experience and advice you provide. If it is something that you do and is appropriate, I would love to send you a few songs from a recent live recording I did for you to briefly review and provide some advice on things I could do better.

Thanks again brother and keep up the good work!

As a live audio engineer who is working on some tracks of a recent gig, this was awesome. Do you have any tips for choral stuff with drum bleed in the choir mics? You answered many of my questions in this video. Thanks for all the information!

Hi Warren. This video was really helpful as I am currently mixing a live show recorded in a hotel ballroom. I was just wondering if you could tell me more about the reverbs you used. Did you use the same reverb for everything or did you use different reverbs for the drums compared to the vocals? I'm trying to work out how to make everything sound like it belongs in the same space/room. Thanks as always for the videos they are great.

So you use the big reverb on the kick drum too? This won't muddy up the mix too much?

Hi! Hope you answer me, what is the best way to mix a show recorded? I have to make a mix song by song? About the eq, compressions and effects?

Awesome video, man! Thank you a lot!

Warren my friend you are a godsend. I'm in the middle of mixing a private Music Festival weekend that a friend of mine thrown with a lot of pretty good bands in it and this is exactly what I needed to see. also it's got a lot of different styles and it goes from like reggae to rock to Bluegrass which is presenting a challenge in and of itself trying to mix with the genres in mind. how do you approach something like that that has widely varying genres?

What did you use to print the Snare and kick samples?