sound-editing
Jun. 30th, 2010 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cellioThe latest batch of music to be digitized came with challenges. This was a pile of tapes, most of which were copies of tapes that in turn were recorded from various albums and tapes, not always in pristine condition. I'm pretty pleased with the job I've done in cleaning them up, which I have mostly done with judicious use of Amadeus Pro's wave-cancelling function. (Sample pure noise, then use that to cancel that noise from the track.) On one hand it's basic acoustic physics; on the other hand, it can be pretty impressive. (Not all noise is kind enough to be cleanly samplable, though.)
This reminded me of the first time I saw that trick in action:
On the Mark was privileged to work with several excellent sound engineers over the years. Mike, who recorded our later CDs, had built his studio in his home. We learned through trial and error that, especially for instrumental tracks, we made our best music by all playing (and listening) concurrently, rather than laying the tracks down one at a time with headphones. (We found it especially difficult to do the one-track-and-headphones trick for wind instruments, including voice -- being able to hear the sound you are making in the room, and not just back through the system, was critical for some of us.)
So we were recording some instrumental pieces, I no longer remember which, with everyone miked individually but not completely in isolation. Yes it limits what you can do in post-processing, but we'd done this before and it had worked out well. We knew not to mix or post-process on the day we record; for me at least, the ears are tired by then and the brain is still full of what you just heard live. Mix-down was always on a separate day and without most of the band there.
So, we had this great recording session, and some days or weeks later Mike and I sat down to refine it. And on one song, so faintly we didn't notice it at first, there was a strange sound. One by one we isolated the tracks until we found it on a recorder track recorded by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
alaricmacconnal.
What was that? It didn't sound like it was coming from the recorder or its player. It was not, in fact, coming from inside the room. The studio had pretty good sound insulation, but some things you just can't plan for: the sound was a helicopter that had been passing overhead and had managed to bounce sound into the house just so.
The recording was otherwise very good, so I wanted to try to save it. My first thought was to replace the recorder track (the helicopter was not audible on any of the other tracks), but Mike pointed out that this would alter the sound of the whole because of the way we'd recorded it. But he had a related solution.
So we broughtalaricmacconnal back in to record that track again as precisely as he could (listening in headphones). He nailed it. And then Mike did the following: he used that recording to remove the recorder from the original track, used the rest of the mix to remove all other music from the original track, and used the result -- which was now helicopter and nothing else -- to then remove the helicopter from the original track. Ha!
This reminded me of the first time I saw that trick in action:
On the Mark was privileged to work with several excellent sound engineers over the years. Mike, who recorded our later CDs, had built his studio in his home. We learned through trial and error that, especially for instrumental tracks, we made our best music by all playing (and listening) concurrently, rather than laying the tracks down one at a time with headphones. (We found it especially difficult to do the one-track-and-headphones trick for wind instruments, including voice -- being able to hear the sound you are making in the room, and not just back through the system, was critical for some of us.)
So we were recording some instrumental pieces, I no longer remember which, with everyone miked individually but not completely in isolation. Yes it limits what you can do in post-processing, but we'd done this before and it had worked out well. We knew not to mix or post-process on the day we record; for me at least, the ears are tired by then and the brain is still full of what you just heard live. Mix-down was always on a separate day and without most of the band there.
So, we had this great recording session, and some days or weeks later Mike and I sat down to refine it. And on one song, so faintly we didn't notice it at first, there was a strange sound. One by one we isolated the tracks until we found it on a recorder track recorded by
alaricmacconnal.What was that? It didn't sound like it was coming from the recorder or its player. It was not, in fact, coming from inside the room. The studio had pretty good sound insulation, but some things you just can't plan for: the sound was a helicopter that had been passing overhead and had managed to bounce sound into the house just so.
The recording was otherwise very good, so I wanted to try to save it. My first thought was to replace the recorder track (the helicopter was not audible on any of the other tracks), but Mike pointed out that this would alter the sound of the whole because of the way we'd recorded it. But he had a related solution.
So we brought
alaricmacconnal back in to record that track again as precisely as he could (listening in headphones). He nailed it. And then Mike did the following: he used that recording to remove the recorder from the original track, used the rest of the mix to remove all other music from the original track, and used the result -- which was now helicopter and nothing else -- to then remove the helicopter from the original track. Ha!
Think you might like this
Date: 2010-07-01 01:29 am (UTC)Re: Think you might like this
Date: 2010-07-02 01:36 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-01 01:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 01:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-01 05:24 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 01:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-01 01:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-07-02 01:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-16 12:24 pm (UTC)The trick is, you have to interpret the quantifer (the English article "a") with narrow scope. You can't remove a random helicopter with another random helicopter (that would be giving wide scope to "a".) You have to remove a certain helicopter with the same damn helicopter.
I think about Mike fairly often now that I'm a more active musician once again. It's hard to get my head around knowing that he's gone. I learned a tremendous amount from him. He was a true professional and a very generous guy.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-17 02:20 am (UTC)What are you doing musically these days?
What I'm doing musically
Date: 2010-11-19 09:36 am (UTC)In general, most of the music performance in my life out here has been in the UU context. Seattle is a good town for live music, but Redmond isn't, unless you're under 20 or over 60--there's a Teen Center and a Senior Center where they harbor bands; all others seek elsewhere!
I joined a small (50-60 members) urban UU congregation in Seattle when I moved out here, and it attracted acoustic musicians generally. Over the years I got to put jazz and polka music, both of which I'd played in high school, back into my repertoire on the bass, in addition to folk, African vocal music, and various other ethnically-diverse offerings. However, after losing two leases in a row, our little congregation voted in June to merge with a larger (150 members) congregation that was in the process of acquiring its own building, in West Seattle. We brought with us a very active music program, including a quarterly bardic-circle event for all performing arts that we call "Chalice Palace."
Within that congregation, although I was playing bass once or twice a month, and singing regularly, I was rarely being challenged musically. Probably that was just as well, since I was on the Finance Committee, spent four years on the Board (two as President) and generally wore several hats at any given time, just like most of the other members. We were too small to afford a minister so we all pitched in, all the time. It was tiring, and in this congregation full of musicians there was so much work just to keep things going that music was suffering as a result, even with so much of it going on.
The congregation we merged with has both a new-to-them building and an excellent minister. They contributed a small and somewhat-dispirited, yet dedicated, choir (a little smaller than ours), lots of space to rehearse and store instruments (we brought our marimba and polka bands...) and the combined budget yielded money to hire a professional director for the choir. That was all getting worked out this summer, while the new building was being worked on, so both congregations moved into it together.
The choir director started in early September and he's turned the place absolutely upside-down. He's good, he knows how to arrange and I think he rarely meets a musical genre he doesn't like. As the congregation's new location attracts a lot of visitors, new singers are joining the choir and the director is having a great time working with the instrumental depth we brought with us in the merger. The sanctuary has great acoustics, to boot.
All this means I'm playing bass about half the time, more than I have since OTM was recording; and singing the other half. There's new material in any given week, which I love. I can feel my brain making new connections. I'm getting to sing newer Hanukkah music for the first time since I was in the Pitt Women's Chorale (1987-89), catching up on some decent stuff that came out of the sacred-music scene on the Christian side since I last sang with a Christian choir, and learning some newer UU choral pieces that have come out since I left Pittsburgh.
Last Sunday we even did about 8 verses of "Old-Time Religion," the director's first venture into learning about filk--and I had nothing to do with suggesting it; it was the Sunday speaker (a recovering Southern Baptist) who did so. The congregation was somewhat startled but the choir was really into it.
I'm having a blast--I just wish there were a program like this closer to where I live (22 miles each way.) But I'm storing the bass in a locked office at the building, so provided that I'm willing to get over there and practice at least once during the week, the only thing I have to schlep in the car is my sheet music. So far, Fred (who is "unchurched") is so happy to see me so happy, that he's been very supportive about lending me and the car to the musical cause two or three times a week. And that's where I'm at with things right now.