More mandolin...

[keith.rogers]

Some father-son (easy) duets recorded at home when our son popped in for a visit last week. Neither of us has been playing very long (about 6 mos. for me, and while he's had his a bit longer, he's put in only a few hours when he visits - he's a pretty good amateur violinist, though).

The interesting, obvious thing I notice is that, not unlike guitars, the recording probably depends on the player, and having a "good enough" space to capture what's happening, for better or worse. A lower end pair of SDCs, and basic instruments - both Chinese imports - his a new-ish $300 model, and mine a fairly beat up 10yr old one that sold for $1200 when new - can't really tell much difference between them!

Recorded with a pair of Studio Projects C4 (older model) SDCs in my [pretty dry] 11'x11' room. Each mandolin had a mic on it about 20" away (50cm), plus or minus, with lots of bleed as we were only a couple feet apart, next to each other, i.e., mics were essentially parallel, but 4-5' apart (guessing - no longer in place). Steinberg UR44C interface. Mixed in Logic Pro.

 

[grn]

Sounds great. Studio Projects really makes some solid mics - what sort of processing did you do after tracking?

 

[keith.rogers]

Sounds great. Studio Projects really makes some solid mics - what sort of processing did you do after tracking?

Thanks. Yes, I like those mics. I got them some years back, but never used them much as I had a couple A-T SDCs I got used (ATM450 and AT4051a - still have the latter) that I thought were probably better mics. I sold the one and then went looking around for a "good" pair of SDCs but kind of got stalled and found other things to do with the money, so pulled these out and started using them. I don't think "better" mics are going to make a difference for me at this point!

The two tracks are not wide panned. I'd have to walk upstairs to check, but I'd say it's like +/- 25 on the pan control, which might be ~40 degrees L & R off-center.

I have light compression - the Logic Pro "Platinum Digital" (uber-clean) on each track, just to hit mostly my runaway over-loud picking every so often. Both are sent to the Logic Pro "Space Designer" (reverb/IR) plugin with something I've tweaked from a "Nice Room" IR slightly - probably just the wet/dry mix and some high and low rolloff. Then on the stereo/mix buss I have the Logic Pro "Studio VCA" (F'rite "Red" sim) with soft distortion and probably a 1.5:1 ratio - just some "glue" that I always slap on.

I take that mix through iZotope Ozone 9 with a HPF and a little wide cut in the lowest mandolin range plus bit of lift in the high mids (my recollection), and also, where for the first time, I tinkered with some of their Vintage EQ (actually no EQ) and Vintage Compressor (again, light - just for some texture). I basically played with the compressor until I could get a good dynamic range and see that it would take very little actual limiting to get to the -16 to -17dB LUFS range, which I did in iZotope RX 8 (standalone). It's just my process these days to try and do the final loudness adjustment in RX, because listening there helps me focus on anything that will pop out and annoy me on subsequent listens, like some heavy breathing or whatever. I did remove a couple of breaths and physical noises on the fades, but only in one of the pieces I think. (I don't keep notes or RX "projects".)

 

[TalismanRich]

That sounds very good. It's especially impressive for a 6 month student of the mandolin. Kudos!

 

[Manslick]

the vibe is good.

the mandolins are well captured.

there is a low frequency that stops at about the 2:47 point of the first track, a blower fan is my guess.

some odd dissonance near the end of the first track too.

 

[Papanate]

Some father-son (easy) duets recorded at home when our son popped in for a visit last week. Neither of us has been playing very long (about 6 mos. for me, and while he's had his a bit longer, he's put in only a few hours when he visits - he's a pretty good amateur violinist, though).

The interesting, obvious thing I notice is that, not unlike guitars, the recording probably depends on the player, and having a "good enough" space to capture what's happening, for better or worse. A lower end pair of SDCs, and basic instruments - both Chinese imports - his a new-ish $300 model, and mine a fairly beat up 10yr old one that sold for $1200 when new - can't really tell much difference between them!

Recorded with a pair of Studio Projects C4 (older model) SDCs in my [pretty dry] 11'x11' room. Each mandolin had a mic on it about 20" away (50cm), plus or minus, with lots of bleed as we were only a couple feet apart, next to each other, i.e., mics were essentially parallel, but 4-5' apart (guessing - no longer in place). Steinberg UR44C interface. Mixed in Logic Pro.

You can hear you and dad move around - interesting intimacy - pretty good track - one mandolin sounds more solid that the other.

 

[keith.rogers]

the vibe is good.

the mandolins are well captured.

there is a low frequency that stops at about the 2:47 point of the first track, a blower fan is my guess.

some odd dissonance near the end of the first track too.

I will have to try and listen later. There's no doubt the A/C cycled on at some point, and the intake is right outside my little room's door. We had warmed up on the 1st pice a couple days earlier (when the latter 2 were recorded) and said we'd go back and try to do it right, but didn't get around to it that day, so we dashed this off the afternoon before he left, and I didn't get a 2nd take. I can probably attenuate the noises some in RX - honestly, my hearing isn't what it used to be...

p.s. (edit) - I went back and listened closely on headphones and I heard it. Unfortunately my mix/bounce didn't have any real lead-in for me to capture a good sample of the noise in RX, so I mostly just slapped a sharp HPF on below 90Hz (about one undertone below mando's low G). Maybe it's better, or maybe I introduced some other distortion, but that's all I could do with the time I have for this now - heading out to an outdoor music thing - first time in about 2 years. (No recording - just hoping to do some pickin' and grinnin'.)