Recording chimes & metal bars

  • Thread starter Thread starter LyrechJoJo
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LyrechJoJo

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I'm going to be recording some preschool songs, using wind chimes and some large single metal bars. I have a Rode NT1-A condenser mic to use, am using ProTools LE, and a room with fairly good acoustics. I want to get the nice ring of the chimes, but not the upper harmonics that seem to hurt some children's ears, especially when played back over the cheapo boom boxes we have at school. Would I just play around with the EQ to eliminate this? Thanks for any help you can give!:)
 
And for goodness sake, track at normal levels. The transients on chimes, glocks, pipes, etc. are absolutely huge - and so disturbingly fast, some meters won't even pick up on them.

You want a certain amount of distance and a HUGE amount of headroom.

Then you won't have to worry about those nasty upper harmonics so much...
 
Recording chimes

Thanks for the input! Since reading a lot on this forum, I've discovered that it's not necessary to record as hot as possible (just under clipping). I've recorded around -12 to -6 dB before on my vocals, because I read in all the recording books to record mostly in the "yellow". I'm going to record the chimes flat (EQ later), and try different angles and distances from the mic, and different gains. I always document everything (can't remember all the variables), then make several recordings and try each one in different players.
I'm excited about recording at lower levels, but isn't there a chance of getting some extraneous noise when bringing up the volume later? And, on another note, maybe recording too hot is why I've been getting too many plosives that even a double pop filter doesn't handle? (I don't sing loud at all, and record about 6 inches away from the mic.) :)
 
The reasoning behind the former accepted wisdom of recording as hot as possible in the digital realm was exactly what you mentioned - bringing up the volume afterwards meant bringing up the noise floor to unacceptable levels.
However, if you're recording at 24-bits your dynamic range is huge, and will leave you plenty of room to bring up the volume later without having the digital noise floor ever become an issue.
The existence of the pops isn't gonna have anything to do with the recording levels. It's all about mic technique there.
If you're using a DAW, it is a pretty easy workflow (once you've done it a little bit) to just go in and automate volume attenuations for any and all plosive pops.
Of course, you can skip this step by trying out some different mic placements and/or practicing reducing the plosives as they come out of your mouth.
 
Just a stupid thought here but try to wrapping small pieces of cloth on each chime to deaden the upper harmonics.
It may be worth a try.





:cool:
 
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