Jazz music can be one of the most rewarding styles to record. Many times, the performances are all done live, with the players in the same room, moving the same air. In this tutorial, Grammy Award Winner, Fab Dupont, shows how he approaches the complexities of having all of the players in close proximity to each other and adapts to the player's needs.
Learn how to:
Record a Jazz Drum Kit with 3 mics
Record an upright bass to get a balance of low-end definition and clarity in the individual notes
Record a Jazz Pianist
Manage bleed from players in close proximity
Once you have seen the video, download the stems and listen to the different microphones and test your skills at mixing the session!
AKG C12
AKG C28 C
AKG C60
Neumann SM2
4.9
28 reviews
Mr Rambolini •Monday, October 10, 2022
Fascinating to see the relationship between artist and engineer. Another real world example of what it’s like.
nielsbc •Thursday, January 14, 2021
Really like this video. Comes to reality where musicians asking the most impossible thing and you have to work with and find solutions. For me, every recording goes like this. Love it. This makes recording such a great job.
DannyOwl •Tuesday, December 29, 2020
Wow...I absolutely love how the group works, disagrees, fixes, destroys, fixes, and ends up wearing no headphones, full headphones, and half headphones. Truly helpful for me as a new guy who deals with these problems all the time. Thank you.
beschornermusic •Saturday, April 13, 2019
WHat great result for this situation and this mics sounds sooo great! Nice!
MarcoPolo •Saturday, October 27, 2018
Really enjoyed watching you work in this situation, Fab. What an accommodating studio demeanor! Thanks for this installment.
genais.simon@gmail.com •Wednesday, September 12, 2018
French subtitle soon?
Juan J. Bermúdez •Tuesday, August 7, 2018
I loved the job fab. What I liked the most was that you found a real situation that often happens with the bands and their different opinions. I would have liked to know a little more about the double bass and the position of 47. For the next please! Thank you
jjdeloza •Wednesday, August 1, 2018
Really liked the real time issues you dealt with and how you handled them. I have to say, from a business perspective, I thought you handled everything freaking great. You were trying to please your customer just as much as you possibly could before you would actually break your back. All the while keeping the feel of the their song in order to ensure you capture a great performance. Very nice Fab.
telepathy •Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Gotta respectfully disagree with the previous comment ... the use of headphones and the placement of the musicians should be up to the musicians themselves. The engineer facilitates - it's his or her job to take those kind of game-time decisions in stride and to work around it. Not the other way around.
Fab, great job. Would love to see a video of the mix session for these tracks.
RMaletick •Saturday, June 16, 2018
So I have mixed feelings about how this session went down......
1. Refusing to wear headphones in the studio is a really weird. And making the engineer move the piano closer to the drums is disrespecting of the engineer's job, experience, and skill set.
2. I don't understand why the pianist is so adamant about not wearing headphones and doesn't seem to notice the piano is out of tune. This is mind blowing to me. The tuner should have been asked to come back and touch it up a bit. The tinny tone you hear in between some of the intervals reveals this.
3. Their performance is fantastic.
Stefan Wessel •Saturday, April 21, 2018
Hi Fab! Beautiful example of how artist and engineer work out the needs and compromise so a good record can be achieved. I would have loved to have seen a bit more about how you captured the bass. I'd definitely love to see more of those genres covered (Jazz, Latin, Afro Cuban, World Music, Folk) and Producing/Tracking in General. Especially when we then can have the files to listen in and practice the mixing of what we have seen. I'd also love to have "outtakes" like tracks before you had the gobos on the back of the drums just as an example of what you didn't like ; )
sixtyanman •Sunday, April 8, 2018
That was a beautiful song done by very talented musicians and recorded superbly! a job well done by all. Thank you Fab for sharing.
pete.j •Tuesday, March 20, 2018
just started watching, but at some point it's kind of satisfying that even on this high level on musician and - of course - engineering you have to deal with same problems as we do! I record a lot jazz and my - in my opinion - really good piano sound gets often ruined by to much bleed from drums or so. Yes, bleed can help to ole a mix, but it also makes (mostly because of phase issues) my piano sound "smaller" as if we mute all other microphones ;-)
Great work Fab! And thank you for the honesty to show, that even top-notch guys like you have somewhat similar problems!
ollieneedham •Monday, March 19, 2018
One of the biggest take aways from this video was dealing with the musicians' independent requests and weighing up the benefits/sacrifices of implementing them. Really useful to see. Thanks Fab & team.
jamesbrownmusic •Friday, March 16, 2018
So great to see a "real world" situation, with all the inherent problems of recording jazz - juggling the artists wishes and expectations with setup positions, mic choice, placement, headphones etc. A wide range of skills are needed to pull this off! Fine work. More jazz please! Would love to see a modern/NY style jazz tracking session...
