Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Falling Angels


Which brings me to last night's Tyrannosaurus Mouse rehearsal. Again we went to Looming Productions as a 3-piece. My rack, which is hardly portable, has 4 Neve 1272 preamps and the M-Audio 2626 A/D converter and preamp.
Here's a mix of Fiery the Angels Fell. (You can only see it in the web version of this post.)

I put the bass into the 1st Neve preamp. Ethan decided that some beat-up Samson microphone from the PA was the best choice. That is, it was a better choice than the even more beat-up no-name "58-esque" mic they had there. That actually sounded pretty good. It's a very aggressive bass sound but more than appropriate with Ethan's 5-string fretless. (UPDATE: Ethan says that he actually swapped out a Sampson for an actual 58, albeit more beat up.)
The drums had a center microphone of an AKG C12A and a "Y" configuration of a pair of Oktava 012 mics. I wanted the 012's because of their off-axis smoothness (over the AKG 460's). I set them relatively low rather than above the kit. The three drum mics (left, right, and center) all went through Neve preamps.
My big problem is that hi-hats are too loud. I mean, that's a big problem in my life.
I thought that by putting the mics "low" and facing the front of the kit I'd get a somewhat more kick and tom sort of sound.
Basically I think that worked. Still need to find a way to quiet the hi-hats. They're kind of like sopranos in a chorus in that way you want to shush them. Right?
Should there be more spread in the stereo-ness of the drums? I dunno. I feel a bit of longing of isolating the drums a bit more. The AKG center, being a tube mic, is a bit "fuzzy" sounding. I'm not entirely sure of how much I dig it but it certainly gives heft and center to the kick drum.
At some point I'm going to go on at length about the "three microphone" setup for a drum kit where one of those mics is not the kick drum. Because I'm not that sure I'm into a kick drum mic so much as just a "front of the kit" mic.
The guitar, which is my SG going into a VOX amp, was barely paid attention to by me. It's recorded with a '57 draped over the cabinet and the preamp is the 2626 (input number 5).
We recorded at 96kHz. I seriously don't know if that realistically makes much difference to us. Is it really better than 48K? Who knows. I'll be doing some experiments at some point.

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