Recording - January 2012 - 6

Note to faithful writers: When sending your letters by email, please remember to include your name and where you hail from.
In the vinyl analysis
Hi Scott Dorsey: Nice to meet you – Matt from Gotta Groove Records here. We are the vinyl record pressing plant in Cleveland. I am not sure how new the article is, but I stumbled upon your Vinyl Mastering article on Recording Magazine’s website last week. I have to say, it is by far one of the best written articles on the subject that I have found. I put a link back to the article on our website this morning, and will highly recommend it to all of our customers. Convincing our customers (both large and small) that supplying properly prepared masters for the lathe cut is possibly the most important part in the process, and is always an uphill battle. I hope that as the prominence of the “vinyl comeback” continues to gain traction, more attention will be placed upon the mastering process. While there are a plethora of threads out there about the pressing process, the mastering and plating parts of the process tend to be cast aside by many. I was very happy to find your article! Feel free to drop me a line any time.
Matt E. Earley Gotta Groove Records Cleveland, OH

Scott Dorsey replies:
Hi Chris, the Audix OM6 may actually be better than the OM7 in that regard, and the Sennheiser MD 441 is even better. You really don’t want a headset, the vocal tone is just not good that close up. I suggest doing one of two things: 1. Use figure-8 mics in a dry room... set the mics so that the guitar is in the null of the vocal mic and your mouth is in the null of the guitar mic. The null on a good figure-8 is very very deep. Mike Metlay reminded me that I actually wrote an article, with illustrations, on this very technique some years ago, and it is available for free on Recording’s website in the Resource Library. Mike says you can find it at www.tinyurl.com/ RecMagMikingGuitaristVocalist—don’t forget to click on the image to get a slideshow of large illustrations that show how the method works. 2. Just mike everything with a single mike pair. This eliminates the ability to cut and paste afterwards but it can sure sound good. All of the early Joan Baez stuff was done this way.—SD Guys, thanks VERY much for the info—I really appreciate it. Couldn’t get the figure-8 pattern on my USB mic to isolate for me (maybe I need to try a better figure-8) and a mic pair won’t be a fit, but I am very excited to try the MD 441—thanks again and I’ll certainly keep on reading!—CS

Thanks for the letter, Matt, we’re glad you liked the article! For those of our readers who might want to read the article in question for themselves, it’s available for free on our website’s Resource Library; www.tinyurl.com/RecMagVinylMastering will direct you to the article.—MM

Mics for the quiet singer/guitarist
Hi Scott Dorsey: I enjoy your work in Recording Magazine and just got through reading your Fade Out piece on modifications in the October 2011 issue. After reading it I was wondering if you might be able to help me find or mod a mic that meets my needs. Basically I sing pretty quietly and also unfortunately sing much better when I play guitar at the same time. I am trying to find a mic that will capture my quiet voice and also totally reject a strummed unplugged electric guitar so that I can isolate the vocals for processing later, and am willing to sacrifice detail and quality just to get a clean sound. Also, it would help my process if the mic could be or be modded into a headset. The closest mics I have found are the Audix OM7 and an iPhone headset called theBoom, though I recently heard the Sennheiser ME3 might do this. I guess I was wondering if you knew of a better mic for my needs, headset or otherwise, or knew of someone who could mod the OM7 into a headset for me. I live in NYC and didn’t think it would be difficult to find someone but thus far I haven’t been able to. Any guidance would be much appreciated, and if it’s relevant, please feel free to use any part of my question in the magazine, though I suspect it might be too narrow. Thanks!
Chris Schaefer New York, NY

Strategies for success
Great article on time management by Mike Hornsby [“How To Be Successful In Today’s Music Business”; Part 1 ran in November 2011, Part 2 in December 2011—Ed.]. It made me reevaluate my whole perspective and game plan. Not that I’ve been slacking per se, but trying to climb the rock’n’roll mountain, every once in a while we lose perspective and this article brought me back to the basics—the fact that small steps as opposed to random uncalculated leaps, as long as they are in the right direction, will eventually get you there.
Alex K DescentIntoMadness.com

Mark Hornsby replies:
Surprise? Nope. Nobody talks about this stuff.—MH

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RECORDING JANUARY 2012

http://www.tinyurl.com/RecMagMikingGuitaristVocalist http://www.tinyurl.com/RecMagMikingGuitaristVocalist http://www.tinyurl.com/RecMagVinylMastering http://www.DescentIntoMadness.com

Recording - January 2012

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