recordinghacks

Nathan Moore is making history.

His “Hippy Fiasco Rides Again” tour of northern California was organized within about 36 hours, via iPhone and old-fashioned hotel-room telephone, hosted by fans and friends in towns from Chico to Santa Cruz. Nathan and his tour manager, Chad Galactic, are on a mission to not only recoup expenses from a festival gig that didn’t turn out as expected, but to establish a new standard for “totally fan-driven” touring.

Here’s the official tour kickoff video. “We’ve got Petaluma.” Indeed. (more…)

Here’s your last chance to name the vocal mic used in Storyhill’s fabulous “Dangerous Weapon” video. As promised, I got the inside story on how the acoustic duo’s new album was recorded, from engineer Brad Bivens and producer Dan Wilson.

By way of introduction, Brad Bivens is a Nashville-based audio engineer whose credits include Norah Jones and the Kings of Leon. He engineered Storyhill’s Shade of the Trees sessions.

Dan Wilson is a musician and producer from Minneapolis. He is probably best known for his songwriting work with the Dixie Chicks, which won awards for both Best Song and Best Album at the 2006 Grammys. He produced the two most recent Storyhill albums for Red House Records.

If you haven’t seen the “Dangerous Weapon” video, check it out! It’s a gorgeous song. You’ll thank me after.

Dan Wilson

We used the performance from this [video] clip on the album, and you can hear filmmaker Tommy Stone’s feet creaking on the floorboards more than once…

Dan and Brad were kind enough to not only answer the question I left you hanging with three weeks ago — what’s the vocal mic used in that video? — but also to describe the decidedly nontraditional recording process that led to the new Storyhill album, Shade of the Trees, released just a few months ago.

The exclusive session photos you see here were provided by filmmaker Tommy Stone, who graciously took time away from an overbooked schedule to send some frame-grabs from his behind-the-scenes footage from the Shade of the Trees sessions.

Read on for my interview with Dan and Brad…
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The Discovery Channel’s “Factory Made” show covered the making of a Royer Labs R-121 ribbon microphone. The video and transcript are below.

It’s gratifying to see the attention to detail that goes into the making of these microphones. Passive ribbon mics generate very small signal levels, so they require tight tolerances for good performance. The video makes clear how Royer achieves this result.

The R-121 has been copied by manufacturers in China, but I can say from firsthand experience that the copies show nowhere near the manufacturing quality as the original. See closeup photos of Chinese ribbon body and transducer parts in this ribbon mic transformer upgrade howto; compare to the transducer built in the video. Night, meet day. (more…)

About a year and a half ago, I announced a fairly delinquent feature for the mic database — the display of frequency-response charts on each mic profile. But it was an ugly implementation, and required users to click a button to see the chart.

Worse, most of the charts were oversized, and slow to load.

I’m happy to announce that both these problems are being resolved. As of today, we’re 22% of the way there: 200 of the mic profiles (of nearly 900) have new, beautiful frequency-response charts right on the page. These are painstakingly hand-traced from the manufacturer’s original graphs, after being scaled to a common size.

A beneficial side-effect is that the mic profiles with the new graphs are 10-25% smaller in size, resulting in faster page loads.

See the Beyerdynamic MC-840, for example, or the Telefunken AK47, AKG’s Perception 820 Tube, or the Blue Baby Bottle, to name a few.

There are more to come… 699 more, to be exact! Stay tuned.

We’ve updated the Microphone Rebates page to show hot summer specials on some really nice (and expensive) microphones — from MXL, Blue, and Bock Audio!

Also, don’t forget about the Microphone Sale listing. Price drops, closeouts, and specials from a dozen pro audio stores are collected in one place, and updated twice a day. If you’re ever shopping for mics, check this page first.

JZ Microphones has announced a new pop filter, said to be based on the Black Hole series filter, although photos suggest a lot more R&D has taken place in the interim.

The Black Hole pop filter used two convex screens mounted back-to-back. JZ claims the design “reduces blasts and blows more than any other pop filter in the market.” Except, presumably, for the new one. (more…)

Reader Mike Prewett got in touch with a great question: What mics are used in the video below?

I answered the question, but I cheated — I asked the guys who engineered and mixed the song! See if you fare better on your own…

But even if you strike out, at least you’ll have heard a really nice song, beautifully recorded and mixed. Kudos to Chris Cunningham and John Hermanson of Storyhill, as well as engineers Dan Wilson and Brad Bivens.

(I’m hoping to get Dan and Brad to contribute a story on the recording of the new Storyhill CD; stay tuned!)

Update: See my interview with Dan Wilson and Brad Bivens about the Storyhill sessions.

If you enjoyed the Tube mic shootout for voiceover we posted a few weeks back, you’ll be happy to know that the powerhouse team of Mark Keller and Mathew Trogner sent a second beautiful HD movie of the same three tube mics being used on Keller’s acoustic guitar.

As before, we have the original audio WAVs too; just scroll down. (more…)

Call me phobic, but yes, I wonder what’s growing on the grille of the SM58 at the brewpub downtown.

I’ve seen a virtual parade of singers eat share that mic over the past few months. Some were good. Some, not so much. But some of them looked like the people in the video below: (more…)

Do you cover your microphones when they’re not in use?

Or do you just blow the dust off before the next session? (If that image doesn’t make you cringe, you probably don’t own any nice microphones! Or at least, you shouldn’t.)

Good mics are precision instruments, built to tight tolerances. They’ll last a long time if they’re taken care of. Yet they’re susceptible to environmental damage — condensation and moisture, dust and smoke, gusts of air. Once they get dirty, they’re hard to clean.

Putting mics away after every session is a hassle. It takes time, and wears out the threads, clips, and connectors. Add to that the risk of dropping the mic in transit, and the idea of leaving mics set up becomes more attractive.

But what’s the best way to protect them? The ubiquitous purple Crown Royal bags? Ziplock sandwich bags? Stocking caps?

I surveyed some engineers to find out. Here’s what they said: (more…)