neat gate trick

  • Thread starter Thread starter Tom Hicks
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Tom Hicks

Tom Hicks

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I was watching the pbs series rock and roll the other day and this particular segment on David Bowie featured an interview with the recording engineer working with Bowie on his Diamond Dogs era music.
They put Bowie in a really huge room.Mic #1 standard 8" from his face.Another mic was back 50' and a third mike was 100' distant.Mic#1 was ungated.#2 was gated so that it didn't open up on quiet passeges but did kick in on mid level passages.#3 was gated to only open up when he was really blasting.
What you hear is Bowie singing in an intimate tone and as the volume swells,the ambient reverb increases and when he hits his loudest notes it sounds like a cathedral!
The effect was really musical and (I thought) clever as hell.Similar to gated-distant mike techniques Genesis used on some drum tracks,but this was 10-15 years earlier in the mid or late 70s.

Tom
 
Well at 50 or 100 feet the mikes where probably out the door and down the road and at that point the gates Im sure came in pretty handy. You know with cars and people walking around out there.


:D
 
Bowie was on a major label (Columbia, Capitol?) and they used a large soundstage of the type for recording symphony orchestras.
A related effect can be heard on Peter Gabriel's first solo album and Phil Collins also used gated-distant mics on drums on his first solo album.In Collins case,I read he used a swiss chalet type place with the distant mic up in the eaves or rafters of the house about 40-50' away from the drum kit.

Tom
 
wow that IS interesting. I thought you had just used feet for inches by mistake.. hmmm ::cool:
 
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