Help/ideas for experimental recording technique

jaco1900

New member
Hi all,

First time poster here. I recently finished a batch of small experiments showcasing the phenomenon of sympathetic vibrations. The challenges posed like how to separate the source from the resonators, how to separate the loader resonators from quieter, how to mix/compress/automate to get the effect, how to deal with bringing the levels up for the resonation and where the noise floor is relative to what I need ect.... were all really tough to work with. It would be hugely helpful to see the setup I'm working with but I can't post any pictures or anything as a first time poster. If you have any ideas and would like to look at the rig you can type in FakeMusic Jake L'Armand to youtube, my channel will come up and the two most recent vids display what I'm working with here as far as a setup. Since this isn't a typical problem or setup I can't find much (if any) in the way of information about recording techniques for it. I'm hoping to come back at this idea in the next year. Aside from the obvious problems a bigger budget would solve does anyone have any ideas on how to improve/alter/experiment with this setup or just a totally different setup completely. Really any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
 
In that kind of a situation, if you want perfect separation (and it would be easier if you had), you really need to get rid of the microphones. I would tend to go for magnetic pickups where possible - like those pop-in soundhole pickups for the guitars. At least one of those guitars seems to be a piezo equipped electric-acoustic, though. Why not use that? Piezo contact mics could be added to the other instruments too.

Almost the opposite would be to record the violin (I only watched the most recent vid) on its own, and then play it back through surface transducers attached to the resonant instruments. You might still end up hearing the violin more in this case though because those surface shakers will try to make the instruments into a speaker.
 
Thank you! The sound is a bit different with pickups but I hadn't really thought of the pop-ins. That's something I can try easy.

Also the transducers are worth a shot!

Thanks again.
 
Ya know, you'd think it would sound different, but really you'll just be losing the "air" around the sound and maybe some of the body resonances. There won't be a whole lot of high harmonics coming off the strings to begin with, so the lowpass of the magnetic pickup shouldn't be terribly noticeable, and the resonant peak of like a single coil might turn out to be a good thing. An undersaddle piezo will of course give you all the treble possible, but again I'm not sure there will be much there to begin with.

But you end up with the best possible isolation for each of the resonant instruments which gives you the chance to process each exactly as necessary without having to worry about what it's doing to other instruments.

Then you'll have to add "air" some other way of course. Probably best is to capture the mics at the same time, but you could also reamp into the room, or make yourself an impulse of your room. If you want to get weird, you could reamp the resonant tracks "through" the same instrument. Like several times maybe. One would expect it would just get louder and clearer, but only up to a point.
 
Back
Top