Trouble in Mind Cover

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A track my lady and I did on the Tascam 244.

We did this for fun last year, but since then I've become more interested in recording technique and mixing, so any tips would be cool. We used two figure 8 mics recorded at the same time. I'm pretty sure I did nothing but a high pass filter on this.

edit: I created a soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/4-tracker-1/trouble-in-mind
 

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Listening now...

This definitely sounds live. I've never used a fig. 8 mic (ribbon?), so I can't help much there. It's nice and simple. I feel like the banjo playing is pretty loose, but without accompaniment, it sounds fairly natural. Part of me wants to hear a little reverb, but for this simple song, I think what you did kind of works.
 
Hehe...it may be a cover but I've never heard this song before so it's new to me. I enjoyed listening. I thought the vocal particularly compelling....intimate.
 
Listening now...

This definitely sounds live. I've never used a fig. 8 mic (ribbon?), so I can't help much there. It's nice and simple. I feel like the banjo playing is pretty loose, but without accompaniment, it sounds fairly natural. Part of me wants to hear a little reverb, but for this simple song, I think what you did kind of works.

Yeah, they are two ribbons. I forget what I did exactly, but somehow tried to arrange them for minimal bleed.
That's actually not a banjo or a ukulele, though it sounds a bit like each, right?. It's loose for sure. That's just how I play. What can you do, you know? I like to play, and that's how I play.

I was curious if anyone could give me ideas for EQ or if any frequencies need boost/cut and how the balance is between the two tracks.
 
Yeah, they are two ribbons. I forget what I did exactly, but somehow tried to arrange them for minimal bleed.
That's actually not a banjo or a ukulele, though it sounds a bit like each, right?. It's loose for sure. That's just how I play. What can you do, you know? I like to play, and that's how I play.

I was curious if anyone could give me ideas for EQ or if any frequencies need boost/cut and how the balance is between the two tracks.

What is it?

I really enjoyed this. She has a lovely voice
If the vocal recording wasn't so clean, it'd have a real 40s wartime feel about it.

I do agree that the instrument is a little loose when it deviates from the straight plucking.
The vocal is also kinda loose on the melismatic descents, but not so much that it really bugged me or anything.

For what it is I don't know that I'd do anything to it.
It's a nice live recording and I'd leave it as such.
The mic setup does give the impression of two people side by side playing/singing. If that's what you want, you've got it!

Thanks for sharing.
 
What is it?

It's called a banjolele. I think they're fairly uncommon (?), but they're a hybrid of banjo and ukulele, with a little from each. There's one steel string that gives it a banjo sound, but the other 3 are nylon. I really like the sound of it...sounds old timey to me, as you noted.

Thanks for the feedback on the tune. We were discussing the track and both felt it sounded like 1930s so it's funny you say that. Next time I'll have her sing into my harp mic so there's some natural distortion.

By the way, the ribbons were the LRM-1s from JP/no hype (I know he hangs out on gearslutz, but not sure if he's on this forum). I love these things and feel they're the buy of our lifetime. I just record in an untreated living room, so I bet they'd be dynamite in a treated studio.
 
I agree it's an enjoyable listen.

Generally it's pretty good. A little loose, but in a way that gives it a nice character.

The only thing I noticed was that it was missing some upper end. Like everything above 4-5K had been rolled off.
 
The only thing I noticed was that it was missing some upper end. Like everything above 4-5K had been rolled off.

That's a good observation. I'm not really sure why. I looked at the mic specs, and it doesn't roll off. Maybe my room had phase issues? I also have carpet on the floor. Would these result in losing upper end?

We're going to record some more material soon, so I'll have to make note of that. Thanks.
 
The only thing I noticed was that it was missing some upper end. Like everything above 4-5K had been rolled off.

Bearing in mind it's recorded on a cassette 4-track, I would possibly have done the same to reduce the tape hiss. :D

This was really nice. I liked the performance and wouldn't change anything about it. My ears were yearning for some kind of room context, though; not swimmy reverb or anything, just something to give the impression of a little width and space. Great stuff.
 
Bearing in mind it's recorded on a cassette 4-track, I would possibly have done the same to reduce the tape hiss. :D

This was really nice. I liked the performance and wouldn't change anything about it. My ears were yearning for some kind of room context, though; not swimmy reverb or anything, just something to give the impression of a little width and space. Great stuff.

That's a great point. I originally was going to place an omni and we just perform around it, but I bought new ribbons and wanted to try them. I should have kept the omni for room and mixed it in very lightly.

Speaking of tape hiss...we're about to record original material, and I can't decide if I want to use the 244 or the DAW. Is the hiss on this track bothering?
I really love the 244 and want to use it, but I'm thinking people are more and more sensitive to hiss since everyone is now recording without any noise.
 
That's a great point. I originally was going to place an omni and we just perform around it, but I bought new ribbons and wanted to try them. I should have kept the omni for room and mixed it in very lightly.

Speaking of tape hiss...we're about to record original material, and I can't decide if I want to use the 244 or the DAW. Is the hiss on this track bothering?
I really love the 244 and want to use it, but I'm thinking people are more and more sensitive to hiss since everyone is now recording without any noise.

You can hear the hiss, but it's not obtrusive. It's more audible in the right hand speaker, for some reason. I don't think it detracted too much from the recording, but using ribbon mics with their low output may have exacerbated the effect a little. Perhaps some nice preamps to boost them, or do you already have them?
 
Banjolele!
This was really interesting. I liked it. I also had never heard this song.
I also vote in favor of liking the looseness of the banjolele playing, it makes it sound homemade in an intimate and curious way. The singing is very good.
I'm not sure about this, but I wonder if using compression or something to get the volume level of both the vocals and the ukelele more even would improve it. It might make it sound a little more polished. Just a thought. I like it very much as is.
 
You can hear the hiss, but it's not obtrusive. It's more audible in the right hand speaker, for some reason. I don't think it detracted too much from the recording, but using ribbon mics with their low output may have exacerbated the effect a little. Perhaps some nice preamps to boost them, or do you already have them?

No, unfortunately I don't have a pre-amp. The 244 has nice built in pre-amps, actually, and I believe to bypass them requires messing with the jumpers? (maybe someone can clarify that, but I think so). I'm just not confident enough to do that. I know there are "in-line" preamps (e.g. the Fethead) that plug right into the mic and boost it. Now would these require changing the jumpers? I'm not sure. Maybe not since they don't have any controls. That could be interesting.

Hopefully someone with a lot of knowledge about this can chime in.
 
No, unfortunately I don't have a pre-amp. The 244 has nice built in pre-amps, actually, and I believe to bypass them requires messing with the jumpers? (maybe someone can clarify that, but I think so). I'm just not confident enough to do that. I know there are "in-line" preamps (e.g. the Fethead) that plug right into the mic and boost it. Now would these require changing the jumpers? I'm not sure. Maybe not since they don't have any controls. That could be interesting.

I've never used ribbon mics, but I'm aware that they have a beautiful sound combined with notoriously low outputs, which is a serious difficulty with cassette-based recording systems. The instruments need to be recorded with the highest S/N ratio you can manage, with the lowest noise. There's no reason why a quality pre-amp in the front end (before the Tascam input) would adversely affect the recording.
 
What TripleM and Bubba said - a bit more upper end, and a bit more room.
 
I was curious if anyone could give me ideas for EQ or if any frequencies need boost/cut and how the balance is between the two tracks.

Tried replying when i listened earlier but the forum's been playing up afternoon. I dont know the original, but I think it's a really nice performance and the balance between the two tracks is good.

In terms of EQ, maybe a small boost at around 3K would give a touch more presence & a little reverb would enhance both as well.

I'd go for whatever cuts the hiss if you're making some changes to your setup too. Enjoyed the listen :)
 
Tried replying when i listened earlier but the forum's been playing up afternoon. I dont know the original, but I think it's a really nice performance and the balance between the two tracks is good.

In terms of EQ, maybe a small boost at around 3K would give a touch more presence & a little reverb would enhance both as well.

I'd go for whatever cuts the hiss if you're making some changes to your setup too. Enjoyed the listen :)

Thanks.

I did a remix with reverb added as some here suggested, and the lady likes it better, but I prefer it dry (the ambient room mic idea is great, but I am not a fan of adding digital reverb ex post facto). This recording was just us messing around. Hopefully we will finish up some originals soon. We have dozens just need to sit down and bang them out. I'll take everything written in the thread into consideration.
 
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