Recording - December 2016 - 60

By Paul J. Stamler

Part 24: Tremendous Trifles And Fond Farewells
Before winding up the "First Steps" series, I'd like to run down a few of the
small ideas I've picked up over the years-"Tremendous Trifles" that make the
difference between an okay recording and one that sounds professional.
(Thanks to the late Eric Hodgins for coining this wonderful phrase.) A few of
these have been part of recording engineers' "aural tradition" for a long
time; others are "home remedies" that I've developed along the way. Here
they are, in no particular order.
"Pop" Goes the plosive
You probably already know about plosives or P-pops-brief discharges of
air from the lips when someone says the letter "P" (or sometimes "T"). And
you know about the commercial products that help protect against them-
screens and foam filters. But did you know that you can make a very effective pop filter of your own from an embroidery hoop and a toe from a pair
of Sheer Energy® pantyhose? (Thanks to George Vazquez Wolin for telling
me about this.)

their sources through the floor and up into the
mic stand. Bass notes are notable offenders,
as are the thuds of a kick drum. Even a guitar
player's foot tapping can, if the floor is right,
be conducted to the mic via the stand. That's
not so good.
There are two ways to fight this. One, of
course, is to use better stands-I've found that
high-quality tripod stands have somewhat better isolation than the round-bottomed variety.
And the round-bottomed ones vary a lot from
unit to unit; cheap stands have almost no isolation, while the better ones keep the bad vibes
out pretty well-when they're new. In old
stands, the rubberoid feet can stiffen up, eliminating the isolation entirely.

Did you know that you can make a very effective pop filter
from an embroidery hoop and a toe from a pair of pantyhose?
The brand of pantyhose matters-most other varieties have a denser weave
than Sheer Energy, and a pop filter made from one of them would attenuate
high-frequency sounds, making the words harder to understand. If you get the
style of embroidery hoop that incorporates a spring, and also buy a flat
piece of rigid metal about 1/4" across and a foot long, you can slip the piece
of metal under the spring, then gaff-tape the metal piece to a mic boom and
use that to position the pop filter in front of your microphone. Buy black
pantyhose, not "flesh-colored"; that way people who sing into the filter will
be a little less aware that they're singing into pantyhose, an important psychological point.
Another thing about pop filters, whether foam- or screen-type: distance matters. Some combinations of mic and filter pop more when the singer is in
close; others are at their worst when the singer is about a foot away. Since
for many singers this is the ideal distance for other reasons, you should
experiment well in advance. P-pops play hob with the illusion of verisimilitude
in a recording (the "you-are-there" feeling), so you should do your best to
eliminate them.
Shock treatment
Whenever I record anything I put the mic into a shock-mount, often one
designed specifically for that mic. Why am I so compulsive?
When you record in a studio, or live, there may be two paths sound
takes to the microphone. One, of course, is through the air-that's how
mics are intended to work. Certain sounds, though, can also travel from
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RECORDING DECEMBER 2016

Tripod stands have their own weak point: if the
center post slides down and touches the floor,
suddenly vibrations have a direct path into the
mic. I remember doing a live-sound gig where
the vocalist's mic was on a tripod stand; when
we did soundcheck, everything was fine, but
about halfway through her set the center post slid
down and rested on the stage. The result?
Feedback city, mostly at bass frequencies. Feh.
The real answer, though, is a good-quality
shockmount that's designed for the microphone
in question. Sometimes you can mix-and-match
(for example, Electro-Voice's 313A shockmount
works admirably with Shure SM81 and
Neumann KM 84 mics), but it's worth noting
that the resonant frequency of a mic in a
shockmount is a function of both the mic's mass
and the mount's elasticity. Many custom-made
shock-mounts have rather precisely-tuned resonant frequencies when used with their intended
mics, and that's how they work best.
When I bought my pair of Microtech Gefell
M930s, which have become central in my kit
(see earlier articles in this series; if you recall, I

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