EQ Magazine - March 2008 - (Page 38)

KEY ISSUES IN SEARCH OF THE LOST (HARPSI) CHORD Har-Bal’s filtering engine has been tweaked a lot in recent versions, so it had no negative effects on the sound. In a way, this process was like cutting out subsonics from other sources; it’s just that the harpsichord’s resonance was a little higher than I would have liked, which made the choice of cut frequencies crucial—the cutoffs were extremely steep. EDITING The DAW editing process was a bit unusual, as the main focus wasn’t fixing mistakes—Kathleen has prodigious, unerring technique, so she’d only do three or so takes. However, the project was based around pieces by Antonio Soler, an 18th century Spanish priest/musician whose pieces recall Domenico Scarlatti but are devilishly difficult and in many places, whimsical. Kathleen loves the pieces, and plays them with a lot of dynamics and feeling; as a result, although different takes could be technically identical, they would often have slightly different “feels” in some sections. I found it almost impossible to choose which individual take was the “best,” so I asked Kathleen if she’d be willing to give up creative control of the editing, and let me just pick which parts I liked best from the various takes and put them together. She agreed, which resulted in the unusual situation of my often replacing a perfectly-played part with another perfectly-played part just because I liked some little millisecond timing difference, or some other element of the “feel.” Generally, these were broad strokes (e.g., replacing the first half of one take with the first half of a different take) in order to maintain a good “flow” to the pieces. I also encouraged Kathleen to “annotate” her performances by speaking into the mic between takes (e.g., “I really liked the second half on that one”). It was better than taking notes, because her comments were right there on the track. However, I didn’t always agree with her assessments of her playing, so although I trust my artistic judgment I didn’t know if Kathleen would agree. Therefore after editing, I would send her “performance checks” in MP3 format to make sure she was okay with my decisions. Aside from a few small tweaks, she was fine with the edits—which also emphasizes just how helpful it can be for an artist to work with someone who offers a fresh perspective. I then sent a CD with all the tweaked performances to Pete, who signed off on them as well. Another interesting element was that Kathleen wondered about the possibility of using DAW editing techniques to reduce the level on a few of the release sounds. I suppose that would be heresy in some classical recordings, but she identified spots where the music was very soft, and thought the release sounds had a negative effect on the mood. With traditional room miking this probably wouldn’t have been an issue, but the close- miking brought up the sounds of the release to a louder level than they appeared to be if you were just sitting in the room and listening. So I isolated the release sounds in a few strategic places and brought them down around 4–6dB, which paradoxically, made the harpsichord sound more like “the real thing” that you’d hear in the room. ALL MIXED UP Using the four mics gave a lot of mixing options. Panning the “bass” mic to the 10 o’clock position and the “treble” mic to the 2 o’clock position gave a nice psycho-acoustic sense of placement; you could almost “see” the harpsichord in front of you. The room mics were panned far left and far right—something I almost never do (I usually pull back a bit from the extremes). But in this case, I could bring up the room mic levels to just where there was a bit of a soft, “pillowy” component to the sound that contrasted well with the ultra-present main mics. Kathleen wanted an intimate sound rather than a big concert hall effect; I suggested an ambience as if you were in a small chapel, with about 30 people in the room, and that struck her as the best approach. To get some of the hardness of stone walls into the sound, I used a Waves convolution reverb to add just a bit of ambience, but only to the room mics—not the main mics—and panned it to center. This created an ideal soundstage: Harpsichord front and center sitting in a cushiony room sound, and reflecting off the “virtual walls,” a bit of a harder sound to fill in the center “hole” and give more depth. Basically, I was doing rock miking techniques in a classical context, so I was a bit concerned that it might not sit well with Kathleen and Pete. So, I did two test mixes: One with a full-on, in-your-face, performer 818-847-0222 “The MA-200 instantly became an integral part of my drum sounds. From the moment I first put a pair up, they have continued to impress me with a wide open and balanced sound. I've tracked great sounding vocals, drums, guitars and bass through these mics, and my clients are consistently blown away by the results.” Ryan Hewitt (Engineer/Mixer: Red Hot Chili Peppers, blink-182, Alkaline Trio) 38 EQ MARCH 2008 www.eqmag.com http://www.mojaveaudio.com http://www.mojaveaudio.com http://www.eqmag.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of EQ Magazine - March 2008

EQ Magazine - March 2008 Contents Talk Box Sounding Board Punch In Tool Box Dream Theater Nick Drake LO-FI Recording Tricks Guitar Trax Bass Managment Key Issues Drum Heads Vocal Cords Mix Bus Cheat Sheet Tascam Gigastudio 4 Cakewalk Sonar 7 Crane Song Avocet Cad Signature Series Mic Packs Waves GTR3 Kjaerhus MPL-1 Pro SE Ableton Live 7 Centrance Micport Pro, Tapco LINK.midi 4x4, Multi-Gigabyte USB 2.0 Memory Sticks Digital Redux Electrotech, Nine Volt Audio Action Drums, Big Fish Audio Hadeeth 2 Room with a VU

EQ Magazine - March 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.