AA2 Week 3 – Guitar

Apparently we are to record some guitar parts this week. First up I set up an SM57 and NT3 in front of the amp about 30cm away slightly off axis. These mics were blended together. I double tracked the part and panned them accordingly. Excuse the rusty playing. A little roll off of the bottom end was done, but without any bass it is hard to determine how much is necessary. There is probably too much still but it was a little thin without the bass.

-

guitars1

-
The second was a “salvage approach” technique from Stav’s book Mixing With Your Mind. I had never done it before so I thought I would give it a try. By swinging a mic along its axis on the stand a slew of different sounds can be found. It sounds like phasing but it is because the mic is being moved against the other out of phase. Obviously when one is happy with a sound they would stop swinging the mic and lock it down. I just had an assistant swing the mic for me for this demonstration. I was very impressed with this technique and will no doubt use it again in the future. All the parts had compression applied.

-

guitars2

-
Lastly I figured I might as well put up last years assignment to showcase some more guitar mixing. Although this is still not at the standard I want to be at, the mix that I handed up for this was crap in my opinion so I redid it for something to do. Those with a blow dried matt of nonsense on their head will no doubt still hate it, but I think it is an improvement on what I did last year.

-
guitars3
-
Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Recording Guitar.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide.

Digidesign. 1996-2007 Avid Technology, Inc All Rights Reserved.

Stavrou, Michael. “Chapter 5. Electric Guitar Magic.” In Mixing with your mind. Christopher Holder ed. Flux Research. 2003.

CC2 Week 2 - Intro to Max

This patch works by applying the ratio 3:2 on a fundamental frequency to create the true descending Pythagorean order, which for this exercise is the descending cycle of fifths. I couldn’t find a box where a user could manually type in a frequency and hit the bang button for the results so I had to go with a scrolling number which unfortunately scrolls through the results immediately.

-
patch
-
Haines, Christian. 2008. “CC2 – Introduction to Max.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 13th March.

1990-2005 Cycling 74/IRCAM

Forum Week 2 - Blogging

Blogging. Todays forum was about blogs. What can I say. Blog, as everyone knows is short for ‘web log.’ Why have a blog? I guess it is so people with mundane, meaningless lives can keep a diary of their mundane meaningless lives and tell the world how boring their mundane meanlingless lives really are. Then people with equally mundane and meaningless lives can spend their time reading them. To blog or not to blog. Blogging is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one so go ahead, make my blog. This is one small blog for man and may the blog be with you. I have a blog!

-

Whittington, Steven. 2008. “Forum – Blogging.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 13th March.

AA2 Week 2 Recording Voice

So here we are again. Doing the same things we did last year. So we recorded a few voices, some at a constant drone and others of a more dynamic execution. The first and second one is Edward speaking into a U87. The first I treated as if it was a voice over. Compression is constant with 6dB of reduction. The second I treated as a hip hop act. It pumps and breathes with a reduction of 12dB. The release is also set very quick to allow the room reverb to enter the sound. The last recording is me. I went with a more dynamic delivery and will treat this as straight up rock and roll. The lower sections don’t compress at all, while the louder sections compress with a 6db reduction. The release is backed off until there is no pumping.

All in all, ok I guess. Without knowing the context of the track or hearing it in any mix we really have no idea if the compression is ‘suitable’ or not. I have a feeling I will be opening my blogs for AA2 with that exact same sentence each time this semester. I am a little confused as to why we are going over the same things as last year. If we expanded on what we learned last year and went further into advanced recording techniques with voice, guitar, etc instead of starting with ‘this is a compressor’ I would be happier and more enthused.

-

V1

V2

V3

-

Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Recording Voice.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide.

Forum week 1

The thing I noticed is that these presentations are a hell of a lot better than our presentations last year in forum, but we would not really expect anything less from PHD guys. Collaboration. Again. Their creations were great but I could not get past the fact there was a theme here. Why even have a theme for discussion much less on collaboration. We could have the same presenters presenting the same things again next week but under the heading of programming or apple dunking. I thought the presentations kept uneccessarily reffering back to the theme and I suspect presentations would have been much more informative in my opinion without this confinement. For example, the graffiti lights being thrown on the walls seemed very interesting but instead of talking about the technology or ideas and problems leading up to the finished product, how they were solved or how the art was to be implemented or performed (granted the light and battery was talked about but summed up in about five seconds) we heard all about the ‘collaboration’ with the crowd that threw them on the wall. What?! All I got from this, again, was collaboration fixes all our problems and needs. Just get someone else to do it for us.

CC2 week1

This seems to be fairly straightforward. I had problems with understanding the question this week, and made things more complicated than was necessary. After stepping back and looking at it more simply, I went with a basic pseudocode consisting of individual IF THEN conditions inside a CASE. I nearly put REPEAT at the start and UNTIL “10 seconds of silence has passed” at the end, but wasn’t sure if it would be right. My thinking is that if that was put there it would create a loop and monitor the kit for drum hits until a silence of ten seconds had passed signalling the end of a performance. If this was there then I assume I could also have an IF THEN condition like “IF snare THEN play note D and F# and A” to create chords. The loop could also be monitoring for length of notes by adding REPEAT – UNTIL level drops 60dB. This could then have a volume modifier to create a fading delay, maybe even a dodgy reverb effect if the repeats are close together. Wow. This could go on and on and on and on…

CASE note played

IF snare THEN
Play D note

IF kick THEN
Play E note

IF high tom THEN
Play F# note

IF mid tom THEN
Play G note

IF floor tom THEN
Play A note

IF hihat THEN
Play B note

IF ride THEN
Play C# note

END CASE

-

Haines, Christian. 2008. “CC2 – Programming and Pseudocoding.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide, 5th March.

AA2 Week 1

Ok, we have a four piece band calling themselves the Beatles. Since it came up I think I’ll do my hypothetical recording using one microphone. I've never done it before and it sounds challenging. Since balancing the sounds into one mic will be in order, I’ll put my George Martin hat on and create magic with an omnidirectional mic. The band will be situated around the mic in a sort of cross pattern. The levels of each instrument will be judged through speakers and anyone too loud will either have their amp turned down, or if the amps tone changes too much with volume will be moved further away from the mic. Drums, bass and two guitars will be balanced accordingly and tastefully. The mic may need to be raised or lowered depending on how much kick drum is present and how much of a clean sounding snare there is. The vocalists will be placed in between each instrument of the ‘instrument cross’ and placed closer or further away depending if they have lead singing or backing singing roles. This will work well as the backing vocals will obviously need to be placed further away allowing more room sound in and creating a more spacious separate sound than the closer direct lead vocal.

-

Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Session planning.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide.