proving ground
Today I get to do something new: mic a violin.
A lot of people out there have posted techniques on micing violins in the studio, and you can read a lot of ideas a lot of different places, but most of them come down to variations on the several shown at this Michigan Tech page. I don’t have a $2000 microphone shown in the photos to do this with, but I have some decent mics. That’s not the scary part.
The scary part is that most of these mic placements are quite a bit more distant from instrument than I’m used to using. Only one of them is really what I think of as close-micing; there’s a little to a lot of distance in every other one, which means there’s a little bit more of the room in every one. The space is going to be involved, as part of the instrument recording.
Now, as regular readers of this blog know, I’ve spent a lot of time working on this studio. You might remember this 360° turnaround video I posted, showing sound baffles I’ve made and placed; but click on the DIY category to see lots more. The goal has been to make the room better in every respect - evening its reflectiveness out, quietening it, blocking more outside noise, all that - but it’s also been about making it at least theoretically possible to do medium-distance micing.
Not this distant. But I may have a new project.
You see, for Dick Tracy Must Die, I couldn’t distance mic anything. I tried; a little of the distance-miced bamboo percussion stayed in (mostly in “When You Leave“), but almost all of that album was either close-micing or direct input. For Cracksman Betty, I had a little more breathing space - but not much. Only recently have I been able to put more distance between instrument and microphone.
Today’s the day I find out whether that all that work actually pays off. Can I really distance mic in here?
I sure hope so, because I need to. Let’s find out. ps: I’ve been thinking of renaming this Supervillain Studios, instead of Criminal. I think it sounds cooler. Also, hey, I don’t just have a heat ray anymore, I have the Rainmaker, and multimonitor setups with mecha arms are pretty awesome - it may finally be worthy of the name Supervillain. Whaddya think, Minions?
Mirrored from Crime and the Blog of Evil. Come listen to our music!
Echoed via dw:ソ-ラ-バ-ド-のおん.
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