Mike Shinoda's inside look at EHX gear

Electro-Harmonix have posted a video of Mike in the studio, working with some of their gears. Watch the video below:

[youtube]hhaI9nD8nzg[/youtube]
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Source: EHX.com via Sucre06

 

That's pretty cool Mike....

 

I see COLORS already.. Yay!

 

Pretty cool. I mean, I know it's a product demonstration, but it's cool to see him just fiddling with crap, starting to bob his head and enjoy himself. It's how you know they are in this for the right reasons.

 

Wow, so many possibilities...

 

Awesome. Good watch.

 

So inpirational! It really gives a ton of possible new sounds to make actually. I have a question though, I'm learning myself how to make music and all but I'm curious how they actually sample sounds and use them in songs. I mean, how do they record it? With a normal mic or something and then put it on a keyboard that can use samples?

 

That was pretty neat.

 

It depends on the set-up. It can be recorded through the line if it's connected through a computer, which is probably what they do. For non-digitized things, it's more likely that they'd run it through a mic and keyboard, but the possibilities are endless!!!!

 

The thing is, if you record it f.e. with your computer, then you'd have background noise right? Do they remove this and if so, how? 'Cause I imagine if they'd put more effects on the sample (after it's recorded), that the background noise would make the whole sample sound bad.

Sorry if this is off-topic though but I honestly want to start collecting sounds and make my own library of sounds to use but I just don't know how to sample the right way to make them sound ok.

 

oh man, am I the only one who hears a boss new song just from the shit he just sampled?

 

There are lots of ways you could sample things! Remember, Mike is at NRG Studios and has endless supplies of gear to throw around. He’s also working with Ethan Mates (the guy in the background) and between the two of them, they have a lot of experience! Let me explain what I think they’re doing first, and then I’ll suggest an alternative that you could try.

In this example, the sample is just coming straight out of Mike’s laptop from the headphone output. I imagine he’s playing the sample from Pro Tools, or the software for Native Instruments’ “Maschine” (you can see the Maschine on the table next to his MacBook). This then goes through the EHX pedals and the guitar amp/cabinet. I’m guessing that the actual cabinet is in another room (maybe the large live room, or one of the small recording booths at NRG). So the actual amp head is next to Mike, so that he can control it, but the loud cabinet is elsewhere, so it doesn’t deafen everyone. The cabinet will then be mic’d up and then the mic signal will then go through the large mixing desk behind Mike (a Neve 8068 console) through the preamps and then through analog/digital conversion hardware (a Pro Tools HD system), before arriving at the main studio computer, recording into Pro Tools.

In reality, you could try something similar all within your computer. Do you have the free version of Guitar Rig? You’ll find a small collection of effects pedals in there that are fun for experimenting with. Make a beat in your software. Then add Guitar Rig in, and play with the effects and the amp settings. When you find a cool sound, record it onto a new track in your software, or export it. Voila! You are now beat-mangling like Mike

You’re absolutely right in saying that recording something with a microphone can often result in background noise, and you’re right in saying that adding effects will only make this much worse! This is why the cabinet they’re recording will be mic’d up in an acoustically treated room at NRG. If you’re recording with a mic at home, sometimes you just have to try your best to record in a quiet location.

During the early days of Xero/HT/LP, Mike would have recorded samples straight onto an MPC sampler, and he could then play the samples back using the percussion “finger drum” pads of the MPC. Many people (Mike included) still do this today, but technology has progressed to the stage where you can do similar things all within your computer. It’s relatively inexpensive now to get some sampling software (sometimes this is even free, or comes with audio software) and a simple controller device like a MIDI keyboard, or MIDI version of the MPC percussion pads. Native Instruments’ Maschine seems to be many high-profile people’s personal favourite these days.

Is your heating/air conditioning unit making a funny sound? Put a microphone on it, record it. Is there construction work going on outside your house? Put a mic up to your window, record it. Is there a car alarm going off outside? Put a mic on it, record it (actually, I believe the old Hybrid Theory/LP song “Part Of Me” uses a car alarm sample). Does your Coke can make a cool sound when you drop it? Put a mic on it, record it. Then start mangling it! Chop them up, play them backwards, put effects on them, destroy them and rebuild them, retune them. Use them as percussion, synth sounds, anything!

 

@minuteforce; Thanks for the reply! I do not have a M-box, before you mentioned it and I looked it up, I didn't even know what it was so haha ;p. I do not know anything about Music Gear except instruments so yeah, you can blame it on that ;D.

But I am aware you can use some Noise reduction + some compression to reduce the background noise but you still will be in trouble when adding effects after that, and effects are pretty important to create a unique sounding sound f.e. you have compressed some background noise and when playing the sample, you hear nothing. However, when you put distortion and some reverb on it, you'll hear this hazy sound in the background and that's the thing I wanna avoid when actually using homemade samples.

@m_macdonald; Thanks a bunch for the advice man! Boy, would I be blessed if I had someone like you to coach me. I've been teaching myself to make music for like one year now and I'm getting the hang of it, I'm proud of myself that I got myself this far already but I just wanna keep getting better y'know.

The thing is that in order to get better, I'll have to learn more suffisticated stuff and that's tricky when you don't have a coach or something like that. These days I'm actually more experimenting with the structure of a song, I really wanna get the hang of this first before anything else since it's very important imo to get this unique and catchy, good sounding song structure.

It's really fun though and I recommend making music to everyone, you learn so much about yourself that you probably didn't know. F.e. I never thought I could write lyrics or make beats, rap or even sing yet when learning how to make music, I found out that I could do all these things after some practice.

Anyways, again, thanks for the advice! And good luck with the competition, I listened to your entry for the mash-up contest and I was blown away! ^^

Last but not least, I'm liking the beat Mike made, it's different and very fast-paced. Looking forward to the next album, ATS is still being listened every day here ;d

 

I think the sound Mike starts making at the end there is similar to that on I Have Not Begun.

 

That's no problem, happy to help! I learned exactly the same way as you did, by myself. I'm sure you probably do some online research, but if you haven't looked them up already, some great resources on recording are: MusicRadar, Sound On Sound magazine (and site) and the Gearslutz forum (Google 'Gearslutz' and any audio topic you can think of and you'll get some results). And of course, YouTube is full of great (and sometimes not-so-great...) video advice. I've learned more from online research and reading books than I ever did during my two years at College studying Music and Production, although College was good for getting hands on equipment experience.

However, you're very wise to be concentrating on songwriting/structuring. I think we all have to learn at some point that our productions are only ever as good as the songs we write (I know I had to learn that!).

Thanks for listening to the remix, really glad you like it!

 

Well, you heard it from the man himself. A good way to go about experimenting is fingering your jacks.