recordinghacks

I mentioned in January that I’d seen a video of DW’s John Good demonstrating the concept of “Timbre Matching,” in which complementary drum shells are selected for a particular kit based on the fundamental note of the wood shell. In the video, Good shows a 12'' and a 14'' shell that sound exactly the same. You can imagine that trying to tune those two shells to an appropriate interval would be unsatisfying.

I dug out the video and made a clip of the relevant section. The video was called The American Dream II; it was a promo piece for DW from 1997. This clip has cameos by Neil Peart, Mick Fleetwood, and a couple other drummers.
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The Shure SM57 is probably the most commonly used snare-drum and guitar-cab mic in history. It’s the go-to dynamic mic for all kinds of engineers, from name-brand guys in expensive studios to the high-school thrashers in the garage down the street. Hell, even Steve Albini has a couple (although judging from his comments there he doesn’t reach for them very often).

But the mic is cursed by its size. It measures over 6'' long, and it needs to be pointed directly at whatever it’s supposed to hear. For a snare drum application this means the butt end is sticking up 6'' in the air — plus a couple more inches for the XLR jack of the mic cable — and it can be difficult to sandwich that into a tight drum kit setup.

I recently saw two solutions to this problem. (more…)

Jon at Audio Geek Zine asked a question about the microphone database that I’ve been wondering about for a long time myself: “Where the hell is the search function?”

The most correct, if not particularly useful answer was “buried somewhere on my to-do list.” I mean, there’s been a search feature in the mic database forever, but there was no way to search by name. (more…)

When I first heard Jonathan Coulton’s new song, the verse melody was stuck in my head for three days. I ended up listening to it a lot, too, in between the mental playbacks, because beyond the clever lyrics and the melody lines you can’t pry from my brain with a fork, the song sounds great.

I had the sense that Coulton is recording all his own stuff, but I wanted to know how deep his DIY ethic goes. Ironically, to get an answer I first had to ask his publicist.
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I learned in January that MXL had designed the flashy new Gold 35 microphone for a producer named Benjamin Wright. His was not a familiar name.

But a look at his arrangement and production credits told me I knew his music — Aretha Franklin, Earth Wind & Fire, Michael Jackson, The Temptations? A pretty serious chunk of American music history is listed in Wright’s discography.

Still, I needed to know what would inspire MXL to create a one-off vocal mic for a guy. Because, you know, maybe they’d make one for me, too. It wouldn’t even need to be gold.
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We’re collecting news of microphone rebates and coupons. Click through to see kickbacks on Shure, Blue, and MXL mics, with more to come as the economy continues to bite.

(Vendors, if your sale/rebate/promotion isn’t listed, get in touch.)

It was a Saturday. I had time to kill, having finished an intense 3-week remodel a day early — one day before my family returned from abroad.

Theoretically, the remodel left me with a dedicated home studio space. But in fact this studio-to-be is currently a small untreated room that sounds bad. For now.

So, I set up the large living room (with its 16' cathedral ceiling) for a quick overhead-mic shootout.

What, how else would I spend my Saturday? (more…)

[Editor's note: I am psyched to introduce RecordingHacks' new guest author, CJ Sorg! As our new Nashville correspondent, CJ brings us music and studio news from one of the top music cities in the US. Welcome, CJ!]

Nashville’s historic Music Row has been home to hundreds of recording studios, publishing companies, and record labels for many decades. As the business of music continually changes, many business have come and gone. The current economy has placed a greater strain on these businesses as recording budgets are canceled or slashed in half; this recent drastic downturn in the overall economy is a real stomach-churner for businesses in an industry that’s already seen a decade-long decline. (more…)

My new monitors arrived today. I could tell because when the UPS guy threw them down on the front porch, the entire house rang. I thought a bookshelf had collapsed. But no, it was 72 lbs of monitors being delivered by railgun.

The driver was gone by the time I got upstairs. He’d left behind a big squashed box on the front porch. Inside were the remains of a pair of Mackie HR824s.
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Two fellow mic fanatics in the past week have asked how they might help out with the Microphone Database project. One of them inspired me to come up with a quick solution, so here it is — a spreadsheet template. (Yes, this is your father’s content-management system.) I can import data from this sheet into the database pretty easily.

Every mic submitted this way will get priority treatment. So, if you’re wishing your favorite mic was included in the RecordingHacks Mic Database, grab this form, fill it out, and send it to me (see the Contact page).

Depending how this goes, some special prizes might await folks who help out…