Studio Chronicles 2

Written by Zongxu, 15th of Feb 2014

This week in recording class, we continued our exploration on different stereo miking, this time we tried it on percussions and strings. During Wednesday, we did recording for percussion, applying the XY stereo miking positions, both coincidental pair and near coincidental pair. I played for the rest of the class to record, doing some rhythms on the congas and tambourine. We quickly learned that stereo miking generally does not work well with moving instruments, such as the tambourine. After several takes, we tried to do overdubs to see if it works for percussions. The end result is a track that simulated a percussion group, an interesting effect that I feel has a potential to be applied in my future projects.

As for Friday, we had a chance to try and record a string duet consisting of violin and cello, played by our fellow course mates Eugene Yeo and Darshan respectively. This time we tried the AB miking technique. After several takes of "Canon in D" trying out with different distance between the players and the mics. The end result of the overdub simulated that of a medium sized string ensemble. The interesting part was when we tried doing close-miking on the players individually going through the Neve mic pre-amp. As told by our lecturer, the resulting track had a different tonal quality, that of a more prominent brightness compared to the Safire pre-amp while retaining the warm mids and lows of the violin and cello. This made me realise the role of a pre-amp beyond just amplification.