notesdontmatter

AArts – Week 3 - Electric Strings 16/03/07:

Now I’m speaking my language. I was especially looking forward to experimenting with the Beta 52 for this exercise, as I have always found the SM-57’s are adequate but tend to leave me wanting. The B-52 didn’t disappoint on a fundamental level, but I found the overall sound of the space to be a little to ‘live’ for my liking. This was especially evident with placement of the room ambience mic (U87), which ended up half buried behind the drum kit in the carpet corner of EMU space. This was the only position I felt (and I think my partner in crime Luke would agree) that the signal achieved anything close to low-end depth.

I think this session has given some early exposure to the extra pressures being placed on EMU’s facilities this year, as other students were occupying the dead room and would have liked to use some of the gear that we had already set up for ourselves. It’s a shame we didn’t get to try a ‘dead recording’ of the Laney to compare the difference. I used the dead room for a similar exercise last year though, and achieved what I then believed to be a satisfactory result.

Trying out the procedures suggested by D. Grice was beneficial in improving on the sound quality from our initial placement of the various mics, but there is plenty of room for improvement. It’s not all down to mic placement though, I had a play on my guitar for Jake while he played around with his set up after Luke and I had finished, and he suggested that I play his guitar, which he had brought for the occasion. To my surprise, the sound he achieved with his placement (once again most notably the B-52) was preferable than my own effort, to my ears anyway. It could be that Jake's combination of heavier strings, different action, timber and pickups was more appropriate for the Laney amp. Whatever the case I often seem to think other people’s gear sounds better than mine – grass is greener perhaps?

Here is a rundown of basic mic placement:

Shure Beta 52: 30 degrees off axis, very close to the floor and right of speaker cone.

Shure SM 57: 30 degrees off axis, very close to left of speaker cone and about 1 3rd up from the bottom of the amp.

Neuman U87: Far away in carpeted corner, diaphragm facing the outside (southern window) and 45 degrees to the floor, omni pattern on.

Amp used: Laney Combo

Guitar used: Ibanez RG – 2120

Audio files are linked below (Luke Digance and I worked as a team on this project so the single mic files at least will be the same on his blog):


Individual mic recording files:


Shure Beta 52: Dive bomb x 3 (0.100Mb Mp3)

Shure SM 57: Dive bomb x 3 (0.100Mb Mp3)

Neuman U87: Dive bomb x 3 (0.100Mb Mp3)

Shure Beta 52: Hendrix Feedback (0.100Mb Mp3)

Shure SM 57: Hendrix Feedback (0.100Mb Mp3)

Neuman U87: Hendrix Feedback (0.100Mb Mp3)

Shure Beta 52: M of pups intro (0.100Mb Mp3)

Shure SM 57: M of pups intro (0.100Mb Mp3)

Neuman U87: M of pups intro (0.100Mb Mp3)


Mix down of total mic combination recording files:


Dive bomb x 3 (0.100Mb Mp3)

Hendrix Feedback (0.100Mb Mp3)

M of pups intro (0.100Mb Mp3)


Reference:

David Grice. ‘Recording Electric Strings’. Lecture presented at Studio 1 and EMU space, Level 5, Schultz building, University of Adelaide. 13th of March 2007.

posted by David J Dowling @ 1:09 PM