How to Record an Acoustic Show for YouTube

Guestblogger and multi-instrumentalist Nigel Hubee explains the setup he uses when he performs as part of the acoustic duo The Tickets on YouTube. To his mind, the trick is to simply use the resources that you already have around you: so your backdrop can be your own living room or another good room; you can use the instruments and microphones that you always use on stage anyway; and you can film everything on just your phone, a tablet or an action camera that’s able to film in HD (1080p) – so that’s most models these days. Next to that, you’ll need your laptop and some kind of recording software, some simple video editing software, some monitor speakers and, last but not least, an audio interface so everything can be coupled up.

The Room

For our YouTube videos, we’ve rearranged the attic room in the same building as the practice space that we use and set it up in exactly the same way as we set up on stage. The room hasn’t been acoustically treated, but we have put some thought into the width of the space in terms of sound projection to limit unwanted natural reverberation bouncing off the walls as much as possible. Anyone who’s played in a bare room will know what I’m talking about. There’s also a little damping provided by the drum rug that we’ve laid under our chairs on (the same one we use for gigs) and also the sofa-bed that we left in the space. The many bookshelves, niches and sloping surfaces of the ceiling in the space really help to prevent unwanted reverberations, and the bookshelf that we sit in front of also breaks up the reflection of the flat wall behind us. So we can hear the solo instruments and vocals clearly while we’re playing, we send a monitor mix through our backline which is sent up in front of us but behind the microphones so that barely any of the amplified sound is actually picked up on the recording. The room where we do all of this really has its own sound as well, but luckily, we quite like it and when we first started, we also took the time to learn to play within the space so that it sounded good.

Recording the Audio

Our stage setup is connected up to 6 of the 8 channels of our bought-for-purpose Behringer UMC1820 audio interface: that’s 2 vocal microphones (Sennheiser e935), 1 acoustic guitar, 1 guitar, bass, dobro, ukulele or mandolin (depending on the song), 1 digital stompbox bass drum (taking a line-out from our PA) and 1 EV CO4 instrument/percussion microphone for the lowboy hi-hat and tambourine pedal we also use. All of the instruments are electro acoustic so they have built-in pickups that can be plugged in using normal jack leads. From the UMC1820 audio interface, the 6 channels are sent to a computer via USB, where we use the DAW software Cockos Reaper to record everything. The laptop we use is just a standard i7 without any external sound cards or video cards. Just be aware that you might need to download and install the compatible ASIO driver so your laptop can receive a signal from your audio interface and feed the audio as separate channels to your recording software.

How to Record an Acoustic Show for YouTube

Recording the Video

To film the video we just use the HD (1080p) cameras of our own everyday phones and tablets, together with two actioncams that can film in 4K. We also light the space using the lamps that were already there and point them in our direction as much as we can. We also use an extra construction light and point it at the wall opposite us so it fills the room with more even reflected light. In total, we film ourselves from five different angles and use stands for each camera. On the left we have a phone set up for a wide angle shot. On the right, we have an actioncam. We have a tablet shooting from the front and a little above, and we use the second actioncam for instrument closeups. After the shoot, I simply copy all of the footage over to my laptop and use the video editing software Kdenlive to edit the video together. As with Cockos Reaper, I chose Kdenlive because it runs really well on a simple laptop.

How to Record an Acoustic Show for YouTube

Monitoring & Mixing

Once we’re finished, we listen back to the recorded audio using whatever we have lying around, so we just hook up an old Sony Hi-Fi to the UMC1820 audio interface using two jack to RCA adapter cables and listen via two Bowers & Wilkins speakers – a combo that sounds surprisingly good. The goal of doing this is to see if everything we played is good enough and if there’s anything we should just leave out. I do all of the final mixing later using a pair of Sennheiser HD 260 Pro headphones. They have a really flat and linear, uncoloured sound which makes it much easier to mix – even if you’re in a bad acoustic space or it’s noisy in the house. After the final mix is done, we also double check it back at the studio.

The End Result

After you’ve mixed everything down and edited your video, you can put them together, making sure that the image is as closely synchronised to the sound as possible. This can be a bit of a challenge when working with five different videos from five different bits of equipment that don’t all record at the same frame rate. I’ve come up with a couple of processes and tricks to help myself out with it. The easiest fix is to use a free program like HandBrake to first convert all of the footage (including the 4K footage) into 30fps HD videos. Then I watch every video next to each other using the split screen function of my software to make sure that the percussion and hands and whatever are all moving in time. After I’ve edited everything together and added the audio, I upload it to YouTube and I’m done! To date, our most popular video is Under My Thumb. To get an idea of what the end result looks like, you can watch it below yourself:

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Guestblogger Nigel Hubée (The Tickets)

Nigel has been active in the music scene since 1968 and, since 2017, has finally been lucky enough to do it full time. As well as music, he’s always been fascinated by technology and has embraced the IT world since the first ever home computers came out in the eighties. Right now, he still plays with his musical partner from way back when, Dave Hardy as part of the acoustic duo The Tickets.