Me too...but don't you find it difficult when you add voices and other instruments? Solo cello isn't that difficult but getting it into a mix well is! I've given up to be honest because the more I EQ it the worse it sounds LOL
Thanks for sharing your process! Love the sound you captured of the cello. Did a little further research to learn more about EQ sweeping and notch EQ. Now feeling confident to try home recording with professional cello player friend.
@@GrimaldiSound I'm totally beginning in mastering. We record essentially piano and cello on our channel so anything about good techniques for recording an acoustic duo like us (eq for the piano, reverbs etc...) is welcome. Keep up with the great job and take care!
Music At Home Pro are you recording an actual piano? What kind? Grand? Upright? Cellos are easy but it really depends on the room you're in and what type of vibe you're going for! Get a large diaphragm condenser and put it about 1 foot away pointed at one of the F holes - that's how I typically record them and they come out fantastic! You can also put a room mic somewhere in the room. It's cool to get a ribbon mic and point the null towards the cello so it's getting the room and no direct signal from the cello. Or an omni mic picking up everything!
I'll try to get something up soon but in the meantime: For piano it depends on the vibe. I typically mix a plate and a hall reverb together! My favorite reverb for hall is Valhalla Vintage Verb set to the "very nice hall" preset. I adjust the parameters a bit depending on the song but it's pretty solid right from the get go. I do almost always turn off the modulation on it though! For plates I go for abbey road plates from Waves - it's fantastic! Same with Cellos - I typically mix a few different verbs together. A plate, hall, chamber or a room - depends on the vibe of the song! Also, like in the video of mixing Cellos I throw in some delays here and there!
@@GrimaldiSound Thanks a lot for your return! I work with Cubase (with revelation and reverence among others for the reverb). Maybe I'll get theses reverbs (Valhalla and Waves) later then... Thanks again so much for all your advice!
Just noticed that you don't have your Echoboy delays at 100% wet in the plugin, even though your sending your cello signal to them. Is there a reason for this?
No particular reason - its just another way to balance the delay signal with the dry signal! Changes every mix - just fiddle with it until you like the balance! I also do this with reverbs all the time!
I wrote neoclassical music and use a cello, violin, piano and female voice. How would you EQ all that together and give them space to breathe? I feel like they occupy similar frequencies
@@pianissimo369 Production is where it all begins! Start here to achieve maximum separation. For example, the piano might be set lower on the keys, while the violins are higher, with the cello sitting in the middle of those 2. This way, each instrument group has its own frequency range and now the female vocal only fights with the violin instead of everything. Instead of jumping right into EQ, focus first on panning and volume. These two elements are foundational, and if they’re off, no amount of EQ will fix it. Sometimes, simply panning an instrument slightly can make it more audible without needing EQ adjustments. Once you’ve nailed down panning and volume, move on to EQ. High-pass and low-pass filters are especially helpful here, as they’re essential tools for creating space. Start with the primary instrument-in this case, let’s say it’s the piano. Set its volume, then bring in the cello, and finally, the violin. As you add each instrument, listen carefully to how it affects the instrument you brought in before that one. For example, if the cello causes some frequencies of the piano to disappear, note those frequencies and use EQ to reduce them in the cello after you’ve set your volume and panning. Follow this same process with each instrument you add for a clean, balanced mix!
May I ask you to tell us how to record a cello? What mic are you using, how do you position the mic, mono or stereo, etc ;) Also, how to mix cello for pure classical recordings, without giving it any sounds effects like here (eerie effect as you've named it) Thanks a lot! Great content, subscribed :)
Absolutely! The mic I used was an Avantone Pro BV1 Tube Mic - a great mic for a lot of different things! I use it for cello all the time! These were recorded mono and then we double tracked the cello so we could spread it left and right or wherever else. The best thing to do is to point the mic directly at one of the F holes like 2-3 feet away. I personally like pointing to the F hole on the side which the player holds the bow on - so you can cross over the string to get the string noise then get the projection from the hole - but you could point it at whatever one you want! Cellos are very dynamic and can get super super loud. The distance depends on how much of the room you want to hear and how dynamic the performance is. My room sounds great so it was further back so I could capture some of that sweetness! Mixing wise for pure classical - I'd just mix a couple reverbs together. A short plate reverb mixed with a hall or a chamber - the decay time depends on the song, the feel and the tempo. Mix those to taste with the proper pre-delays set and you'll be good. Also, don't forget to EQ your reverbs. A good trick is to high pass filter to 600 Hz and low pass filter down to 10,000kHz. This is an old abbey road trick! I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions! - Marcus
@@kenjon93 So for this particular recording, it was on cardioid. I didn't want to pick up really any room ambience for this piece but you could go either way - depending on how your room sounds of course!
Amazing, thank you so much. I don't understand what you mean by "I'm sending each of these two a dotted eighth note and a dotted quarter note". Would you mind briefly explaining? Or even just give a keyword that I can research on my own about what you're doing at that moment. Thanks!
For sure! So I've set up 2 different delays - a dotted 8th note delay and a dotted 1/4 note delay. I'm simply 'sending' a signal from the cello to each of these delays. Sending this signal to the delays will allow the delays to work! You'll then be able to turn the faders up on the delays and determine how much of them you want to hear! Hope this helps!!
I'm a cellist trying to learn how to mix a little and very very new at this, so forgive my ignorance, these are genuine questions: -What is the purpose of rolling off the low end at all? 😂 I know there's probably a good reason, it's just as a cellist I'm like NO THE LOW END NEEDS TO BLOW EVERYONE'S FACE OFF THAT'S THE POINT. - How would you go about tackling a nasaly sound? I was trying to do it by lowering the part of the EQ you boosted. It seems like if you want the bow sounds you have to also have the nasal sound and if you try to edit it out you lose some of the brightness and bow sounds. It's that true?
Great question! Forgive my super long response! 1. Rolling off low end - why? Answer: more headroom while mixing, removing unwanted rumble from the room or outside environment creeping in, etc. If you have an upright bass playing alongside a cello, you'll want to roll off the cello lows so you can make room for the lower bass frequencies from the upright bass so they can be heard and have more definition - you don't want those things fighting for the same frequency space. You can also make something sound 'tighter' by gently rolling off the low end. If the cello is playing alone, at standard tuning, a cello's lowest note that can be played is a C2 - which is roughly 65 Hz... So if that's the lowest note, you can roll off anything beneath that - which could be room rumble, an Air Conditioner outside a window in the distance, car rumble, etc. All of that stuff is unwanted and should be removed! Also, what playback systems will this be played on? As humans, our hearing range is 20Hz-20kHz (but most people don't hear anywhere near the lowest frequencies at all. Because of that, you can 'roll off' those frequencies because you're not going to hear them anyways and it's just added energy. If you're listening to country music, there isn't much down in that range like in Hip Hop so you can roll off the lows to get more headroom! Now there's nothing wrong with low end, but because those frequencies have a lot of energy, they tend to eat our headroom faster (headroom is the amount of dynamic range we have before we're clipping.) 2. Nasal Sounds Answer: This can range anywhere from 800Hz-1.5/2kHz. It also depends on the room it was recorded in, the mic, the cello, etc. So if you're trying to 'find it' and learn those frequencies, you can boost an EQ with a narrower Q and move it along that spectrum (called sweeping) and when you hear that nasal sound, stop moving, and then pull the gain of the EQ down to remove it! Yes, you can lose some of the bow sounds, but when you're removing the nasal range, you don't have to take out a ton of it. Use a narrow Q and notch it out so you're not taking out a bunch of other frequencies at the same time! Tip: Say the bow sounds are coming from 900Hz-2000kHz but right at 1000kHz there's a nasal-sounding frequency. You can do a gentle, wide EQ boost of 900-2000 to bring the bow out more and then use a little notch EQ to notch out that nasal range at 1k! I hope that helps!!
Hi - I am testing the same setup on a solo acoustic guitar but finding the dotted 1/8 and 1/4 delays are really prominent unless I dial down the send volume significantly. Am I missing something or have you done the same?
Yeah! Dial down the sends until you feel them rather than hear them - or until you like the balance between the guitar and the delays! Also, make sure they are pre-fader! If they aren't, then the level that your acoustic guitar is at on the guitars main fader is the level that's being sent to the delays!
@@GrimaldiSound Thanks very much - that's a big help. Both sends were post fader and the send from. the delays to the reverb also so now all corrected and sounding better!
Cellist here. Would you be up for mixing one of our tracks? Would love to chat to you about getting a professional Mix done! Also, excited to hear more about Abbey Road Plate! I'm going to see if youve done more videos about this 👀
1. Mud - I want you to start talking out loud right now reading this response and while you're talking I want you to completely cover your mouth with your hand and keep talking. Now while you're talking, remove your hand from your mouth and keep talking and all of a sudden your voice is clear again. When you covered your mouth, your voice got 'muddy' sounding. Mud Frequencies - typically anywhere between 200-500Hz give or take! 2. Boxiness - can be different for every instrument, vocal, etc. But it tends to live anywhere between 300-900 Hz and - when there is an excess amount of these frequencies in something. In a kick drum, for instance, boxiness quite literally sounds like the kick drum batter is hitting a cardboard box. In vocals, it can almost sound 'hollow' in a way like if a singer stuck their head in a box and was singing - reducing that particular frequency or frequencies can make it sound less hollow.
@@GrimaldiSound very interesting- especially the way you described the “mud”! Thanks a lot for such a detailed and dare I say ingenious explanation to my question! Really appreciate it. 😊
What delay and reverb FX techniques are you using on your mixes?
I like a short bright plate on strings in a pop song setting
I use Valhalla Shimmer for very long drawn out notes like the ones in this video. Shimmer seems to give the sounds a nice sheen and sparkle to them.
Great explanations - I'm mixing cello for the first time (in a folk song) - really appreciate your detail and clarity
Me too...but don't you find it difficult when you add voices and other instruments?
Solo cello isn't that difficult but getting it into a mix well is! I've given up to be honest because the more I EQ it the worse it sounds LOL
It's very helpful especially when we start to record cello thank you so much for these tips !
Bro, you are only one on youtube for cello mixing 😊
Amazing! So well explained! Thank you!
Very cool ideas, I like the use of delay in your overall reverb effect. I'm trying this technique with my next mix!
Bam! Heck yes! I would love to hear the final product!! You can reach out to me on Instagram when it's done!!
Was mixing Cello in a project and this helped a lot. Thank you for this video!
That's great to hear! I would love to hear the final product!
Great Tutorial!
Great breakdown of the main effects you use.
thanks!!!!!!
Thanks for sharing your process! Love the sound you captured of the cello. Did a little further research to learn more about EQ sweeping and notch EQ. Now feeling confident to try home recording with professional cello player friend.
Wow! This is super helpful! Love what you did with the reverb and delays!
Thank you!
How about logic stock alternatives? I’m working on a project with cello and love this tone you created. It’s haunting and warm.
Hey! Unfortunately I don't use Logic so I can't recommend any of their stock alternatives!
Did you find anything? I'm using logic too
Great video! Thanks a lot!👏
Beautiful! I subscribed.
cooldaze57 Thank you!!
Woow! Thanks!
many thanks. Good tutorial for my first cello mix!!
Great video, thank you very much!
Great video 👍👍
Thank you for the tutorial..👍👍
Thanks so much for this. I learned so much! 👍😃
So awesome to hear! Glad I could help!
this is really interesting! thanks a lot for this video!
Anytime! Is there anything you'd like to see on the channel!?
@@GrimaldiSound I'm totally beginning in mastering. We record essentially piano and cello on our channel so anything about good techniques for recording an acoustic duo like us (eq for the piano, reverbs etc...) is welcome. Keep up with the great job and take care!
Music At Home Pro are you recording an actual piano? What kind? Grand? Upright?
Cellos are easy but it really depends on the room you're in and what type of vibe you're going for! Get a large diaphragm condenser and put it about 1 foot away pointed at one of the F holes - that's how I typically record them and they come out fantastic! You can also put a room mic somewhere in the room. It's cool to get a ribbon mic and point the null towards the cello so it's getting the room and no direct signal from the cello. Or an omni mic picking up everything!
I'll try to get something up soon but in the meantime:
For piano it depends on the vibe. I typically mix a plate and a hall reverb together! My favorite reverb for hall is Valhalla Vintage Verb set to the "very nice hall" preset. I adjust the parameters a bit depending on the song but it's pretty solid right from the get go. I do almost always turn off the modulation on it though!
For plates I go for abbey road plates from Waves - it's fantastic!
Same with Cellos - I typically mix a few different verbs together. A plate, hall, chamber or a room - depends on the vibe of the song! Also, like in the video of mixing Cellos I throw in some delays here and there!
@@GrimaldiSound Thanks a lot for your return! I work with Cubase (with revelation and reverence among others for the reverb). Maybe I'll get theses reverbs (Valhalla and Waves) later then... Thanks again so much for all your advice!
Just noticed that you don't have your Echoboy delays at 100% wet in the plugin, even though your sending your cello signal to them. Is there a reason for this?
No particular reason - its just another way to balance the delay signal with the dry signal! Changes every mix - just fiddle with it until you like the balance! I also do this with reverbs all the time!
I wrote neoclassical music and use a cello, violin, piano and female voice. How would you EQ all that together and give them space to breathe? I feel like they occupy similar frequencies
@@pianissimo369 Production is where it all begins! Start here to achieve maximum separation. For example, the piano might be set lower on the keys, while the violins are higher, with the cello sitting in the middle of those 2. This way, each instrument group has its own frequency range and now the female vocal only fights with the violin instead of everything.
Instead of jumping right into EQ, focus first on panning and volume. These two elements are foundational, and if they’re off, no amount of EQ will fix it. Sometimes, simply panning an instrument slightly can make it more audible without needing EQ adjustments.
Once you’ve nailed down panning and volume, move on to EQ. High-pass and low-pass filters are especially helpful here, as they’re essential tools for creating space. Start with the primary instrument-in this case, let’s say it’s the piano. Set its volume, then bring in the cello, and finally, the violin. As you add each instrument, listen carefully to how it affects the instrument you brought in before that one. For example, if the cello causes some frequencies of the piano to disappear, note those frequencies and use EQ to reduce them in the cello after you’ve set your volume and panning. Follow this same process with each instrument you add for a clean, balanced mix!
May I ask you to tell us how to record a cello?
What mic are you using, how do you position the mic, mono or stereo, etc ;)
Also, how to mix cello for pure classical recordings, without giving it any sounds effects like here (eerie effect as you've named it)
Thanks a lot! Great content, subscribed :)
Absolutely! The mic I used was an Avantone Pro BV1 Tube Mic - a great mic for a lot of different things! I use it for cello all the time!
These were recorded mono and then we double tracked the cello so we could spread it left and right or wherever else. The best thing to do is to point the mic directly at one of the F holes like 2-3 feet away. I personally like pointing to the F hole on the side which the player holds the bow on - so you can cross over the string to get the string noise then get the projection from the hole - but you could point it at whatever one you want! Cellos are very dynamic and can get super super loud. The distance depends on how much of the room you want to hear and how dynamic the performance is. My room sounds great so it was further back so I could capture some of that sweetness!
Mixing wise for pure classical - I'd just mix a couple reverbs together. A short plate reverb mixed with a hall or a chamber - the decay time depends on the song, the feel and the tempo. Mix those to taste with the proper pre-delays set and you'll be good. Also, don't forget to EQ your reverbs. A good trick is to high pass filter to 600 Hz and low pass filter down to 10,000kHz. This is an old abbey road trick!
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any other questions!
- Marcus
@@GrimaldiSound sooo incredibly helpful! Thank you for sharing! 😊
@@GrimaldiSound Nice recording!
BTW, which polar-pattern you switched the BV1 to? Omni or Cardioid?
@@kenjon93 So for this particular recording, it was on cardioid. I didn't want to pick up really any room ambience for this piece but you could go either way - depending on how your room sounds of course!
great video, man!
Amazing, thank you so much. I don't understand what you mean by "I'm sending each of these two a dotted eighth note and a dotted quarter note". Would you mind briefly explaining? Or even just give a keyword that I can research on my own about what you're doing at that moment. Thanks!
For sure! So I've set up 2 different delays - a dotted 8th note delay and a dotted 1/4 note delay. I'm simply 'sending' a signal from the cello to each of these delays. Sending this signal to the delays will allow the delays to work! You'll then be able to turn the faders up on the delays and determine how much of them you want to hear! Hope this helps!!
@@GrimaldiSound thank you so much.
I'm a cellist trying to learn how to mix a little and very very new at this, so forgive my ignorance, these are genuine questions:
-What is the purpose of rolling off the low end at all? 😂 I know there's probably a good reason, it's just as a cellist I'm like NO THE LOW END NEEDS TO BLOW EVERYONE'S FACE OFF THAT'S THE POINT.
- How would you go about tackling a nasaly sound? I was trying to do it by lowering the part of the EQ you boosted. It seems like if you want the bow sounds you have to also have the nasal sound and if you try to edit it out you lose some of the brightness and bow sounds. It's that true?
Great question! Forgive my super long response!
1. Rolling off low end - why?
Answer: more headroom while mixing, removing unwanted rumble from the room or outside environment creeping in, etc. If you have an upright bass playing alongside a cello, you'll want to roll off the cello lows so you can make room for the lower bass frequencies from the upright bass so they can be heard and have more definition - you don't want those things fighting for the same frequency space. You can also make something sound 'tighter' by gently rolling off the low end.
If the cello is playing alone, at standard tuning, a cello's lowest note that can be played is a C2 - which is roughly 65 Hz... So if that's the lowest note, you can roll off anything beneath that - which could be room rumble, an Air Conditioner outside a window in the distance, car rumble, etc. All of that stuff is unwanted and should be removed!
Also, what playback systems will this be played on? As humans, our hearing range is 20Hz-20kHz (but most people don't hear anywhere near the lowest frequencies at all. Because of that, you can 'roll off' those frequencies because you're not going to hear them anyways and it's just added energy. If you're listening to country music, there isn't much down in that range like in Hip Hop so you can roll off the lows to get more headroom!
Now there's nothing wrong with low end, but because those frequencies have a lot of energy, they tend to eat our headroom faster (headroom is the amount of dynamic range we have before we're clipping.)
2. Nasal Sounds
Answer: This can range anywhere from 800Hz-1.5/2kHz. It also depends on the room it was recorded in, the mic, the cello, etc. So if you're trying to 'find it' and learn those frequencies, you can boost an EQ with a narrower Q and move it along that spectrum (called sweeping) and when you hear that nasal sound, stop moving, and then pull the gain of the EQ down to remove it!
Yes, you can lose some of the bow sounds, but when you're removing the nasal range, you don't have to take out a ton of it. Use a narrow Q and notch it out so you're not taking out a bunch of other frequencies at the same time!
Tip: Say the bow sounds are coming from 900Hz-2000kHz but right at 1000kHz there's a nasal-sounding frequency. You can do a gentle, wide EQ boost of 900-2000 to bring the bow out more and then use a little notch EQ to notch out that nasal range at 1k!
I hope that helps!!
Hi - I am testing the same setup on a solo acoustic guitar but finding the dotted 1/8 and 1/4 delays are really prominent unless I dial down the send volume significantly. Am I missing something or have you done the same?
Yeah! Dial down the sends until you feel them rather than hear them - or until you like the balance between the guitar and the delays! Also, make sure they are pre-fader! If they aren't, then the level that your acoustic guitar is at on the guitars main fader is the level that's being sent to the delays!
@@GrimaldiSound Thanks very much - that's a big help. Both sends were post fader and the send from. the delays to the reverb also so now all corrected and sounding better!
Cellist here. Would you be up for mixing one of our tracks? Would love to chat to you about getting a professional Mix done!
Also, excited to hear more about Abbey Road Plate! I'm going to see if youve done more videos about this 👀
Hey! For sure! Email Olivia @ Olivia@nextlevelrecording.com and she'll give you all the details needed about working with me!
- Marcus
What do you mean by mud and boxiness exactly?
1. Mud - I want you to start talking out loud right now reading this response and while you're talking I want you to completely cover your mouth with your hand and keep talking. Now while you're talking, remove your hand from your mouth and keep talking and all of a sudden your voice is clear again. When you covered your mouth, your voice got 'muddy' sounding.
Mud Frequencies - typically anywhere between 200-500Hz give or take!
2. Boxiness - can be different for every instrument, vocal, etc. But it tends to live anywhere between 300-900 Hz and - when there is an excess amount of these frequencies in something.
In a kick drum, for instance, boxiness quite literally sounds like the kick drum batter is hitting a cardboard box.
In vocals, it can almost sound 'hollow' in a way like if a singer stuck their head in a box and was singing - reducing that particular frequency or frequencies can make it sound less hollow.
@@GrimaldiSound very interesting- especially the way you described the “mud”! Thanks a lot for such a detailed and dare I say ingenious explanation to my question! Really appreciate it. 😊
@@DhruvBhan haha no problem!! Best of luck!
tnx 4 tips
tnx 4 tips