1 reason why i'm a dumbass engineer

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crosstudio

crosstudio

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we were working on some scratch vocals but i like to do as good a job as possible on the scratch vocals because sometimes they actually pan out.

when i'm monitoring (through headphones) the sound of the vocalist through the microphone i keep hearing something that just wasn't quite right.

i triple checked that the mains were turned off.

i powered down the monitor amp.

i go up to the family room and make my wife turn off the TV (she already had the volume down).

i go up to the thermostat and turn off the heat.

i play with mic' positions.

finally I decide to just record it anyway, because i don't want to waste creativity and time.

after we finish recording the scratch vocals (chorus) for two songs, i finally figure out that i forgot to put my 12-string and classical guitar back into the closet from the night before.
 
you may well have pioneered the first 12 string analog reverb!! :cool:
 
Snare drum springs, acoustic guitars and sympathetic vibrations can make you crazy sometimes.
 
There was a studio that was writen up in one of the major magazines recently that was talking about how they have a large colection of guitars and other stringed instruments hanging on the walls in one of their tracking rooms. Seems that when they track acoustic guitars there (and some other instruments) the sympathetic resonances of the instruments ojn the walls gives an amazing and unique ambience to the recordings that can't be duplicated by any other method.

I sometimes use the strings on my grand piano as a "resonator" for other recorded instruments too.
 
Wow, this means I should buy a bunch of guitars to round out my acoustic sound.

I LIKE IT!!!!!
 
Ive had a similar experience with my drums (when theyre tuned right) in the tracking room when recording acoustic. The cool thing is that they only respond to particular frequencies...generally the toms and especially the floor tom which is all low mid range.
 
Ill put a monitor in a piano and open the damper and mic the strings. with an ecm8000. mostly for midi strings but anything will give you an effect.
 
It might be a neat trick when recording an acoustic guitar to have another acoustic on a stand tuned to an open tuning that compliments the part on the acoustic being played. Mic the main acoustic like normal, then mic the "auxiliary" acoustic and blend the signals together. Sounds like it would be worth a try even though it might produce an unconventional sound.
 
I`m a lazy assed bassist, Id sometimes swing one of the SVT cabs around directly facing the drummer and use his drums for a tuner...
the closer I got the resonances of the drums would be flat line and, less tangled his hair would be.... :p

seriously here though, I have a modest collection of wind chimes outside, and 4 and 6 string wall harps with breeze and resonance driven strikers (wooden balls on fish line) hanging in the den, Tuned in 4ths. I can play a fairly loud piece of music on the den system and there is an ethreal shimmer in the air from the harps that is very nice. The ceiling fan drives them too.
 
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My local music store has an Acoustic room, its no larger than a 15x15 square with 10 foot ceilings, there is about three feet of standing room, a stool and maybe 200 guitars on stands on the floor and hanging all over the walls. The idea is that when you pickup a telecoustic and strum it, you're hearing the entire martin, taylor, and breedlove collection of the store! Its an interesting sales technique.

Make sure to hear an acoustic outside of the acoustic room before you buy it!
 
dc surburbs yo. i'm dc suburbs too... look who cares...
 
I've noticed sometimes that all the beer cans I have lying around tend to have an interesting effect on the room accoustics:

The more we drink, the better we think it sounds!

Funny how that works.
 
I think the physics of the whole situation is that like-tuned strings will vibrate to the same frequencies. So if you have an open 'g' string, and you play a 'g' with another instrument that is loud enough, it will cause the like-tuned string to vibrate in the same frequency. It's a common physics experiment I think. Interesting none the less.

frank
 
i heard something about how when nine inch nails were recording, trent reznor wanted a certain sound out of a guitar and he noticed whenever he played on a keyboard and the guitar was in the room it would resonate. so when he recorded the song he tuned the strings to a certain chord and recorded both the keyboard and the resonation
 
Not quite about resonances, but...

Another cool thing to do is get a crappy electric guitar pickup where the windings have become loose and the pickup is "microphonic". Then you sing into it. It has a weird distorted talk-box type sound. I heard Trent Reznor and Tool used it at one point. Hey it makes good use of a dead pickup.
 
Cross, what did your wife say when you found that out ? After you ruined her TV-night :)
 
chessrock said:
I've noticed sometimes that all the beer cans I have lying around tend to have an interesting effect on the room accoustics:

The more we drink, the better we think it sounds!

Funny how that works.
Click to expand...
This is an interesting question. Is it the cumulative effect of the empties acting as Helmholtz resonators or is it more of a psycoholic-acoustic type of an event? Hmmmmm.............
 
That's it. I'm remodeling my back wall with empty Foster's cans.:D
 
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