Folge #13 mit Julien Garros und Max 'Frodo': What´s the perfect Microphone (for Frodo)?

Game Faces powered by Blue

Game Faces powered by Blue

Many questions for Julien Garros from 'Frodo':

• What does music mean to you?
• Why California in the first place?
• What is it like to be working with all kinds of different creatives in the music industry?
• What was your way into the music industry?
• You co-founded your own label. What does that mean to you?
• In what way does music influence your everyday life?
• When it comes to sound, do you listen to music in a specific way? Like Filmmakers often state, that they watch films differently?
• What are the biggest differences when it comes to quality microphones?
• How do you find out what microphone fits whom? Are there specific criteria's? If so, what are they?
• What else has to be taken into account when deciding on what microphones to purchase?
• What makes the “bottle” microphone (3.999€) so special and how does it differ to the baby bottle (399€) for example? ->I need my Microphones for X
• What would be the best match for me and why?
• Give us a small introduction about the main differences between dynamic and condenser microphones
• What kind of additional accessories are needed for either?
• If using the Yeti X, in what way would you actually position it correctly?
• In brief: what Microphone do you recommend for what usage in general? For example: Podcasts, Recording Vocals, Recording instruments, Stage-Performance, Livestreams on twitch, Business Calls etc.

What is it like to be working with all kinds of different creatives in the music industry?

I have some experience in the music industry, actually. Spend a lot of time in Los Angeles working in a recording studio called TaylorMade Studio in Woodland Hills next to Los Angeles. And I had the pleasure to work with some incredible musicians, incredible music composers and producers and engineers. 

And I learned a lot about microphones and microphone placement and how to record stuff. And we were doing a lot of video in the studio.

Why California in the first place?

It´s the place to be when you want to be in the entertainment business and especially in the music industry, I mean, everything is based over there.

Did this help you to understand all the different kinds of microphones, all the different kinds of sounds people need? Are you an expert in the field?

The music business changed a lot. Everything around it. You know, obviously how we distribute music, but also how we create music. And nowadays we are in the life of creators and people creating in their room and we saw a big change for the past 10 years. Before you needed for recording a big recording studio and now you can record at home and all you know, the industry is changing the distribution, the cutting, how you cut an album, how to edit an album out, to make an album, how to master an album. Everything is changing. And I think, you know, nowadays musicians are actually becoming also an entertainer. They have blogs. They need to upload video on YouTube for them to show their work. And, you know, the industry is changing. I mean, it's great because you open a lot of doors for an independent artist and you don't really need a big recording, you know, record contract and music label behind you to support you because you can actually cut and record and distribute the album by yourself. So it's becoming very easy and it's very, very exciting for the new creators. 

And so at a time everybody wants to go in a recording studio because it's incredible. But nowadays, everybody can actually cut an album in their room.

And we hear a lot about these young producers and young musician on YouTube, cutting album and creating video with a two hundred dollar interface and a baby bottle.

You can start your journey with a yeti.

The Kiwis is one of our flagship. It's an incredible microphone. And it's like I said, it's really my favourite. It's absolutely incredible.

You need a microphone that works great, like you need a camera that works great. But I think audio is actually the most important thing.

What most people might not know is that the the hustle you have with those XLR and those old school microphones is you can't just take them and put them into your PC, mostly because I think 99 percent of PC´s do not have an XLR Port, which is the big hole with the three tiny holes in it. With the USB plug and play mics, you just actually take them, you put them in your PC and you're mostly set. You don't need any interfaces, which is like a magic box you would put in between your XLR microphone and your PC. You just put it in your PC. Sometimes you get a software, for example, with the Logitech mics, with all with the blue mics, you get a thing called the Logitech G Hub, which lets you wiggle and tweak some settings like a noise scale, which will stop noise from coming in. So if I'm here, there's a construction site outside. Let's say that there's a lot of people outside my window making a lot of noise. I just crank up the noise gate and I tell the noise gate, you know what? You only open up the mic, not physically, but digitally when I'm talking, when I pass a certain threshold of noise. So all the background noise is basically just gone. This is what you can set in the Logitech G-Hub. You can tweak the ECU. You can make yourself sound more Bassi. You can tweak the heights of your voice. Maybe you're a whale, which would be too high, but it's a different thing. Yeah, you can do that.

You don't need any fancy extra stuff. You don't need a real life compressor which you put in a rack and it stands right next to you and it takes up a lot of space. You just have a microphone, you have a USB cable, you have a PC and you're done.

We actually give tools to people to record songs. And, you know, that's the difference between one microphone to another.

The Kiwi You want to record a vocalist, you're going to use a Kiwi, right.

For the for the Blue microphones, you just get the power through USB. Even USB microphones can have a condenser. So it's still revolutionary.

The perfect Mic for Frodo:

• He is a broadcaster
• He is a content creator on YouTube
• He does voiceovers
• He is trying to get into voice acting
• He is a singer in a metal band

The budget is the biggest factor when someone chooses a microphone, because if a content creator or an artist comes and says, like, hey, I have only two hundred euro, what should I get?

The very important question is:

• Where do you live?
• How is your room?

The perfect Mic for Frodo is the bluebird or the baby bottle. It's kind of classic and and grateful for the type of music Frodo could record. It looks super cool and it's really good for podcast.

Tipps for a better sound:

• put a pillow or a blanket on the desk
• Use a „spider“
• If possible have a wooden floor
• Have curtains in your room
• Use bookshelf’s
• Modern windows and really thick doors
• Put some carpet on the floor

You can use a ten thousand dollar microphone. But in a very bad room, it's going to pick up everything and it's going to sound terrible.

Thanks to Frodo and Julien Garros for the great sound and have fun enjoy the other episodes of Game Faces powered by Blue.

If you have a wish for a Podcast guest, send us or Frodo a message on Twitter. We will try our best.