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Recording the NHSPA Choir

March 9, 2021/in academic, art, news, recording mixing mastering, sounds/by chnetwork

This week I had the pleasure of recording the Newtown High School of the Performing Arts Choir.

The recording was for the theme music for a forthcoming animation series by Mat McCosker and colleagues. The animation is currently in the second round of animation funding with Screen Australia has has a uniquely Australian look and story. Good luck Mat and co, I hope to see this animation up their next to the likes of other internationally successful animation series such as Bluey.

Back to the recording, the theme music was written by Elana Stone and the choir’s was conducted by Tanya Sparke. These two women are great Australia vocalists in their own right, please check out their works on Spotify by following the links.

To achieve the desired standard choir sound, I used distant micing as typical of standard choir recordings. In particular I used a ORTF pair of Sennheiser MKH8040 small diaphragm condensers at 4-6 feet from the choir, coupled with a spaced pair of Neumann U87s slightly deeper in the room. To provide a sense of depth, reverb and greater distance, I used a Rodes NTR Active Ribbon microphone to capture the room reflections. This figure 8 microphone was placed at the furthest point from the choir, and was hidden behind a baffle in order to prevent any direct source from the choir. The null of the figure 8 was pointing towards the choir / baffle, the polar pattern of the mic therefore only picking up reflections of the choir. This was compressed to taste and used in the mix to add depth and a natural reverb / room tone.

The transient response for the small diaphragm condensers, ie the MKH8040s was excellent, and for a more detailed overview of the differences between small and large diaphragm condensers, see this below article by Neumann.

All mics were tracked directly into the SSL924 at SAE Sydney. The cleanliness of such pre amps was deemed appropriate for the desired tone colour of the recording.

Below are a few pictures from the session.

Binaural Field Recording

February 8, 2021/in academic, art, news, recording mixing mastering, sounds/by chnetwork

For those that don’t know, I have been a lecturer in the Audio department at SAE Sydney for the last 5 years. At the close of campus 2020, I was fortunate enough to be able to borrow some field recording gear, namely a Zoom F8 (multi-channel recorder) and a 3DIO binaural microphone. A big thanks to Akshay Kalawar and Mel Bertram for enabling me to access Brisbane’s 3DIO microphone, see the microphone type pictured below.

For those unfamiliar with binaural microphones, they replicate the human binaural (two ear) experience. The presence of two ears enables the microphones (placed in each ear) to capture aural cues such as ITD (interaural time differences) and ILD (interaural level differences). Simply put, the two ear microphone captures differences in arrival time of sounds positioned in space around the listener. For example, a sound to the right of the listener or microphone would arrive at the right ear/microphone before it arrives at the left ear/microphone. Such cues we call ITD (interaural time differences). Similarly, the microphone will pick up level differences between the two ears, for example, a sound to the left of the microphone will be louder in the left ear than in the right, hence capturing ILD (interaural level difference) cues.

There are also microphones such as the Neumann KU-100 that also emulates the shadowing effect of the head in the human aural experience, but will a price tag of 12K or thereabouts, I as yet haven’t had the fortune to use such as a mic. See the KU-100 pictured below.

The objective over the summer break was to capture some natural bush and ocean environments with the equipment on loan from SAE. I am grateful to be living these days on the South Coast and the natural soundscapes in my day-to-day life no only have a calming effect on my person, but an inspiration in my creative audio work. Elements of these recordings will inevitably find themselves woven into future electro-acoustic compositions that I will create.

Until then, I have minimally and cleaned up the recordings for public use and access. The recordings have been minimally edited to remove noises such as mic bumps and wind distortion. A touch of RX 7 Spectral De-Noise has also been used with a Reduction curve to focus on any low-frequency rumble from neighbouring highways and urban noise pollution in general.

If you would like to use these recordings, please do so as I have put them up on freesound.org with the Creative Commons license 0, ie you may use them commercially and do not need to credit me.

For those interested further in binaural recording, I have found on my journey both the written work and field recordings of Gordon Hempton to be highly inspirational. You can listen to his work at his website soundtracker.com, and to hear more about his efforts to preserve silent spaces, spaces devoid of any industrial noise, I’d very much advise listening to a great podcast, One Being, where Gordon is interviewed by the wonderful Krista Tippet.

360 Project for Masters

May 7, 2018/in academic, art, recording mixing mastering, Uncategorized/by chnetwork

As part of my masters, in particular a module entitled, AUD456 – Immersive Audio, I have been studying the world of 360 content, with a focus on spatialising audio within a 360 field. Please wear headphones when viewing the above to experience the 360 Audio.

For the major work, a group of musicians and non-musicians alike were invited into SAE Studios for an Sunday afternoon improvisation. The work is titled, Men’s Circle, and features a group of men in a circular format, playing a range of provided instruments.

The instruments included; an acoustic guitar, various bells, a singing bowl, a bamboo flute, a melodic wood box, a pre-prepared Push control surface populated with field recordings, vinyl crackle and percussive one-shots, amplified via a small guitar amp, a contact microphone connected to a mini Orange amp, den-den daiko drums, and a rain stick. The participants were encouraged to choose an instrument that they felt comfortable with and change after each improvisation to another instrument.

The improvisation was captured via an InstaPro 360 Camera. Both visuals and audio were captured on the device, however, the Ambisonics microphone had some issues and glitches were present in the file. Fortunately, coupled with the in-camera Ambisonics microphone, was 4 small diaphragm condensers, Sennheiser 8040 x 2, Rodes NT55 x 2, plus 3 dynamic microphones that were used to capture a vocal performance (Shure SM58) and close mic the two amplifiers (SM57).

These microphone inputs were phase balanced and recorded to Pro Tools. The mono signals from the close micing were then spatialised using the free FB360 Workstation plugins with the DAW Reaper.

As the sounds were close mic’d, Ambi Verb HD from Noise Makers was also used to emulate a sense of the space and at points to embellish instruments such as the flute and voice with a large reverb.

To embellish the work and in order to see how Reaper and the FB 360 workstation handled Ambisonic files, some 2^nd Order Ambisonic files were created using Sound Particles. The files are of an ambient nature and are only very subtly mixed in toward the end of the improvisation. The agenda was to not detract from the improvisation.

Hoped that you enjoy the improvisation and it’s presentation in both 360 Audio and Vision.

Tag Archive for: SAE

Recording the NHSPA Choir

Binaural Field Recording

360 Project for Masters

SAE – Another graduation of savvy Producers

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