This got the most critical listening of all when I first got the set, only
because it was the first song.

I don't think this piece benefits from the isolated, multitracked sound.
The violin particularly loses when miked that close and dry. The violinist
is fine, but does not fare well under a microscope that strong.

STILL want some vibrato, tremolo, something in that very straight bando
sound. Is that the instrument I hear breathing between phrases?

Efforts to bring out the upright bass were mostly unsucessful.

(Keith W Blackwell) wrote in
om:

Carey Carlan wrote in message
.201...
This got the most critical listening of all when I first got the set,
only because it was the first song.

Thanks for the comments.
I don't think this piece benefits from the isolated, multitracked
sound.

I think I agree. I preferred to try a pyramidal arrangement of 3
orthogonal central (and high) near-coincident figure-8's on a more
recent session with the same group (demos for film soundtrack), but
instaed we ended up going for even greater isolation using several
gobo's. I haven't had a chance to mix those tracks, however.

The violin particularly loses when miked that close and dry. The
violinist is fine, but does not fare well under a microscope that
strong.

Ah. So what can be done about that? Add more artificial
early-reflections or reverb? Just use stereo pair for the whole group
no matter what the room sounds like? Or do the close-miking but with
a less sensitive and less accurate mic (sm57 :-) ?

More distance. I can hear the bow stop on the string as he fades. I can
almost hear the fingering and position shifts. It's a damn good close
recording of a violin, but, unlike guitar, finger/bow sounds don't
complement a violin. Moving back a few feet would help. A livlier room
would help. Both would mess up your isolation. Adding reverb after the
fact will NOT help unless you just wash it. The trick is to not record
those sounds you don't want.

Efforts to bring out the upright bass were mostly unsucessful.

Ouch. Maybe due to inadequate monitoring situation on my (or your)
part. By the way, the bass player listened to this track and said
only that the piano was a bit too loud in one section. :-)

It's loud enough but has no definition. There's no bass fiddle there, just
low notes. I feel a synth would do just as good a job, a low insult coming
from me. There should be a little snap to the pizzicato, a little buzz in
the bow stroke, just enough to let you know this isn't a Fender or a
Roland.

Keith wrote:

Anybody else, feel free to add your comments, please.


OK, here's what I wrote back in March, but never finished:

____________

Hi Keith


You recorded some beautiful music there. I found your extensive notes
very interesting. The problems you encountered remind me of what I ran
into in 1997, with a similar acoustic group, only with vocals. One
track from those sessions can be found on the RAP CD in Blue, disk 2
track 13. We too tried to fix the alignment of some microphones by
shifting them in time, and then masking some unflattering crosstalk
delays/early reflections with EQ and reverb. The time shifting was very
easy to do with a Yamaha 02R mixer. Each channel has a delay adjustable
in single sample increments, and using the delay's bypass switch and
several Scene memories, we could A/B various options with great ease.
But a setting that worked best for the voice would be less than optimal
for bass, or the piano would sound funny when it was best aligned with
the drums. So in the end, I only delayed the drums, so that those hits
coincided better with the spill of the drums on the vocal track. This
also cleaned up the effect of the reverb I used on the vocals.

I can imagine, that on your HR824 speakers, you got enough oomph from
the bass. On regular (non-studio) speakers though, you need the woody
low and upper mids, which are lacking on your track.
_____________

And now, in August, I add: I can see that Carey doesn't care for the
unusual recording method (for this style), but it's precisely why I find
your submission so interesting. It's too bad you haven't been able to
convince the group to have a little more faith in their group sound.


Chris