Crazy techniques. LET ME HAVE 'EM!!!

[Chris Shaeffer]

ah OK, but i think then its dangerous not to make mistakes,

if you take the speaker cable and plug it in the mixer you'll get a signal,
but if you take the AMP output cable and plug it in the mixer you might blow your mixer and amp?

and am i correct that if you turn a guitar amp on and disconnect the cable between amp and speaker you can "blow" or at least harm the amp?
so this would mean that if i wanna use a guitaramp as a kick mic i'll have to leave the amp off at all time?

Yup. I wouldn't even have it's power plugged in.

-C

 

[tourettes5139]

and am i correct that if you turn a guitar amp on and disconnect the cable between amp and speaker you can "blow" or at least harm the amp?

Yes that is true with tube amps, but I don't think you will have a problem with solid-state amps.

 

[tourettes5139]

On one of my band's songs, we used bowed vibes, just long, sustained, resonating notes for a kind of creepy interlude section. On another song we used a concert bass drum (one of the huge ones!) and used it for some extra accents. Not so much recording tricks, but it is the best I could come up with. I think I still have the tracks with these tricks, if anyone wants to hear them.

 

[Dani Pace]

I actually recorded a sober band once, now that was weird.

 

[7string]

I actually recorded sober once... that was weirder...

 

[kranky]

Recording sober..... yup, that would be weird.

 

[giraffe]

I don't think everything sucked. I did like the "recording in the nude" bit. But I do agree about the whole trombone thing... that's inventive.

mic'd the cab whit a b52

it's different, not something you'd want everyday.... but you gotta stretch if you want to put a bone in a metal song.

 

[Tim Brown]

Take a piece of Sheet metal and glue a piezo disc/trigger to it.
Then wire that to a 1/4" jack and plug it into the mixer.

Hang the sheet metal in the room with the drums, and you've just created a poor man's plate reverb. The Drum strikes will vibrate the sheet metal, and the piezo will pick up the signal so you can record the reverb.


Tim

 

[giraffe]

neat!

 

[gtrman_66]

#9

how you connect the guitar amp to your mixer?
you just put the amp in front of the kick, and then what, use the HP output of the guitar amp to go to your mixer?

No, I'm just using the speaker in the cab for a mic. I just plug a 1/4' cable into the cab and run it into a direct box which goes to the input on the mixer via xlr balanced cable. The 1/4 in. cable is reversed polarity.

 

[Canobliss]

a
and am i correct that if you turn a guitar amp on and disconnect the cable between amp and speaker you can "blow" or at least harm the amp?
so this would mean that if i wanna use a guitaramp as a kick mic i'll have to leave the amp off at all time?

You use the cabinet without the amp i believe. Ive hear this before but no one was ever able to give a good answer. You might have to do a polarity change or something.

 

[gtrman_66]

You use the cabinet without the amp i believe. Ive hear this before but no one was ever able to give a good answer. You might have to do a polarity change or something.

Yes, just the speaker cab, no amp involved. The speaker essentially becomes a big dynmic mic.

 

[treymonfauntre]

yep, speakers are basically backwards mics. you could plug a pair of headphones into a mic input and get audio. you could plug a dynamic mic into a speaker output and it just might make noise for about half a second before blowing out!

 

[TuoKaerf]

A few projects ago, the band I was working with liked the sound of a fist pounding on an oak table over the sound of their kick, and it turned out suprisingly well.

I read someone that Ministry's lead singer used a shotgun mic for most of his vocals on one of their albums...

 

[MrNemo]

I used to sing into headphones.

 

[corban]

Mount a Wireless microphone to a ceiling fan and turn the fan on.


Tim

If you want really crazy, make that a wired mic.

 

[corban]

OK, so one time I was looking for a spacy airy vocal background thingy, but couldn't find anything proper in my sound libraries, so I proceeded to make my own. Basically just recorded myself singing aaaahs in six different parts, and tracked it about five times for each part. So we're talking 30 tracks here. I ran it through some delay and verb for ambience, and ended up with a nice little sound, though it actually ended up sounding a little too much like I had just played a keyboard vocal pad. For the amount of time and processor that it took up just to get a similar sound to a keyboard, I definitely wouldn't do it often.

 

[noisewreck]

I've built this contraption in Reaktor that has an envelope follower controlling Ring-Mod oscillator pitch, going into a distortion module that only distorts the peaks, then goes into a granular delay, who's pitch is also controlled by an envelope follower. Originally I had built it for destroying drum sounds, but I've put vocals through it, and I think I'm gonna make it my signature vocal sound.

If you feel like it, you can hear the effect towards the end of this song

 

[dogwomble]

One of the weirder things I had to do...

I had an aboriginal guy that wanted me to help him put together a demo CD of some of his stuff. He wanted to get some digeridoo(SP?) stuff happening, so I asked him to bring in a couple so that I could make a few samples.

The next session, we'd just finished some recording of some vocal stuff and I said ... "OK, now onto the digeridoos..." He had the scocked look of "oops, I forgot" and turned round and said "wait here, I'll be back in 5 minutes..."

He came back with two cardboard tubes (you know ... the type that you find in the middle of christmas wrapping paper), a short stick, and a block of wood.

"Here we go, it's going to be fun getting these to sound right" I thought. I miked it up with two Peavey mic's ... one at the bottom of the tube and one further up to get the sound of the wood hitting cardboard to get good sound from both. Hit the record button.

The scary thing was ... it worked just as well as the real thing that I sampled a few days later. Even I couldn't tell the difference, and I knew which sample was which...

 

[dgatwood]

yep, speakers are basically backwards mics. you could plug a pair of headphones into a mic input and get audio. you could plug a dynamic mic into a speaker output and it just might make noise for about half a second before blowing out!

You can plug a dynamic mic into a headphone output and it works just fine. Even the cheap, crappy, $5 variety can handle it as long as you don't turn it up so loud that it distorts for a long period of time (in which case, you'd probably warp the voice coil or whatever the equivalent microphone term is).

I used to do it all the time when I was a kid, using a super-cheap dynamic mic and a portable cassette recorder.