Tag Archives: microphones

A GarageBand Track for the Recording Geeks

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It’s been quite a while since I did a recording/music blog. But check this out. I’ve had this track setting on my Maxtor outboard drive for a few months. It’s a pop rock arrangement that was done to test my then-new microphone setup. Here are the techniques I used:

- Recorded two acoustic guitar tracks with XY close condensers. One pointed at the neck, the other at the bridge. One acoustic has a capo so it has that mandolin-ish sound.

- Recorded the drums on stereo track with four mics: XY overhead, inside kick, and close snare (AKG D88).

- Added software-generated keyboard pad.

- Added electric guitar and bass guitar tracks, direct to the mixer.

- Minimal compression on everything except the drums (hence the cymbals sound a little “dark”).

- A little reverb on the master track.

Tell me what you think after you have a listen.

Headset pr0n: how ya like these apples

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After I chided the VoIP Girl a bit about her awesome-but-ample headset, Ken Camp added his fuel to the fire. So, here, I’m posting a picture of my headphones. These are Roland RH-120 stereo headphones, purchased in 1995 for what at the time was probably a week’s pay. I don’t use a boom mic set or anything like that. The built-in mic on my MacBook tends to work well enough. If I need to seriously record a VoIP chat, however, sometimes I’ll plug in my SM57 knock-off microphone into a mixer–one typically only used for music recording. But it’s a sensible low-noise mic that can be used for podcast recording and so forth.  Generally though, no special microphone for casual Skyping or Sightspeeding. By the way, this photo was a self-portrait snapped by the Nokia N73 because my MacBook’s built-in iSight is on the fritz.

Flight 93

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I just saw the movie Flight 93 and I it was the most devestating thing I think I’ve ever watched in a film. I just can’t imagine what the people onboard that flight went through in reality and I hope so much that the man that orchestrated it is found and dealt with, soon.  God Bless the victims and their familes.

Recording an orchestra: 40 mics or just 2?

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(For more of my articles on recording and music, check out my new site StudioRoll.)

Record Producer has a good tutorial on recording a symphony band. The question it seeks to answer is this: can you really record a large band with just two mics, or you need to close-mic every instrument? Here’s a snippet:

The priority with an orchestra is to get a recording that sounds like an orchestra, with no ‘improvements’. And the best way to achieve this is to start by thinking about how people ideally listen to an orchestra, from a high-price ticket in the front few rows of a concert hall with excellent acoustics.

You could put a pair of microphones in this position and record the orchestra as though the mics were an audience member’s ears.

Unfortunately this doesn’t work. The human brain has the ability to process the information supplied by the ears and focus on the sounds it wants to hear, and to ignore other sound that it doesn’t.

Hit Record Producer for the rest of the article.

Recording vocals with an SM57 mic

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For more of my articles about recording and mics, check out my new site, StudioRoll.

The old standy mic–the Shure SM57–is used in the studio and on stage. It’s quite a flexible mic that’s good in almost any live situation, except perhaps cymbals and kick drum. And it can be handy in the studio. It can even be enrolled, in a pinch, to record vocals. Here are some tips from a thread at the Home Recording BBS, where folks familiar with the 57 offer advice for getting a good vocal take:

The frequency response for the SM57 has a huge boost from 2k to about 10k so you will get close to a 10db boost in that range. Not that that is a bad thing, just keep it in mind, and use it to your advantage.

The person, the room, the speakers, even the preamp you use all depends on what kind of coloration happens to your original signal and whether you would benefit from EQ or not. Your best bet….get an SM57, plug it in and record. Then listen to find out what you like and don’t like.

Yes, depending on the voice and your recording chain, you can get a workable decent vocal sound with a 57.

So, the conclusion is that a 57 will work–if you want to make it work.

Drum mics for the home producer

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Julian, the about.com guy who writes about home recording (why don’t these about.com people just start blogs?) has written an excellent summary of available entry-level microphone kits for the aspiring home drum producer. Let’s see what Julian has to say:

If you’re thinking about moving up to recording live drums in your home studio, you’ve probably started looking into microphones. Even if you own a healthy selection of mikes, your best bet is a microphone package that is specifically designed for drums. Here’s why.

Condenser mics vs. dynamic mics

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Home Recording BBS user Troy Hutson asks an excellent question. Do condenser mics require you to use power amps in order to pick up sound? Better yet, how exactly DO condenser mics work? Well, as Troy discovered, condensers need line power or “phantom power” in order to pick up sound. To put a finer point on it, I headed over to Crown’s site to get the deets. Crown is a manufacturer of both types of mics:

In a condenser microphone, the diaphragm is a very thin plastic film, coated on one side with gold or nickel, and mounted very close to a conductive stationary back plate. A polarizing voltage is applied to the diaphragm by an external power supply (battery or phantom power) or by the charge on an electret material in the diaphragm or on the backplate charging it with a fixed static voltage. All Crown mics are the electret condenser type.

The dynamic (moving-coil) microphone is like a miniature loudspeaker working in reverse. The diaphragm is attached to a coil of fine wire. The coil is mounted in the air gap of the magnet and is free to move back and forth within the gap. When the sound wave strikes the diaphragm, the diaphragm vibrates in response. The coil attached to the diaphragm moves back and forth in the field of the magnet. As the coil moves through the lines of magnetic force in the gap, a small electrical current is induced in the wire. The magnitude and direction of that current is directly related to the motion of the coil, and the current then is an electrical representation of the sound wave.

Finally, the key differences between condenser microphones and dynamic microphones, from Crown’s web site:

Condenser microphones typically have a wide-range frequency response and excellent transient response, while dynamic microphones typically do not. There are exceptions.

Condenser microphones’ frequency response tends to be uniform, while dynamic microphones’ typically is not. There are exceptions.

Condenser microphones require an external power source (phantom power or battery) while dynamic microphones do not.

Condenser microphones are easy to miniaturize, while dynamic microphones cannot be miniaturized.

Condenser microphones are typically used on acoustic instruments and studio vocals. Dynamic microphones are typically used on guitar amps and drums, and for vocal sound reinforcement.

The cost of a decent pre-amp: five bucks

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According to David Mellor, it’s possible to build a decent microphone pre-amp for a mere five bucks. Apparently, a manufacturer of pre-amps put the electrical diagram for  theirs on the box, and somebody smart(er than me) analyzed the drawing. They discovered exactly how little it takes to build a decent pre-amp, and managed to put the result up on eBay.