mics
Cheap Chinese mics 'r' us
11/06/08 19:46 Filed in: recording
sessions | gear
14th May 2008 - the second 'audit' session for the
new album, and time for a few overdubs. One track
only needed a little extra guitar (it must've only
had, like, 10 guitar parts at that point).
Mike had a new cheapo Chinese ribbon mic he wanted to try out - the T.BONE RM700. It's an odd looking thing - like a big metal lollipop. We stuck it in front of Mike's awesome Rivera amp and cranked it up.
The sound is - interesting. Makes things sound a bit old and knackered. Also it turns out there was a nasty resonant buzz on something - maybe the mic, maybe the cab - but fortunately we recorded a DI signal too. You should still be able to hear some of the buzz on the album, where we felt it was tasteful rather than annoying.
os, June 2008
Mike had a new cheapo Chinese ribbon mic he wanted to try out - the T.BONE RM700. It's an odd looking thing - like a big metal lollipop. We stuck it in front of Mike's awesome Rivera amp and cranked it up.
The sound is - interesting. Makes things sound a bit old and knackered. Also it turns out there was a nasty resonant buzz on something - maybe the mic, maybe the cab - but fortunately we recorded a DI signal too. You should still be able to hear some of the buzz on the album, where we felt it was tasteful rather than annoying.
os, June 2008
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Drums!
09/05/08 18:12 Filed in: recording
sessions
16th April 2008 saw an unusual (though not unique)
event in the Darkroom calendar - a drum recording
session. I'd identified a need for some proper,
acoustic drums (you know, real things that a real
person is beating hell out of, rather than something
programmed) on the new album, so we enlisted the fine
drummer that is Andrew Booker to help us out. (We've
performed with Andy many times recently, both at the
Improvizone gigs and the
Darkroom one-off at the Green Dragon
recently.)
Andy did us proud, recording some excellent
grooves for about half a dozen tracks.
For the gear-heads reading: we used four mics in total. Andy's Blue Ball was in the kick drum. The snare was covered by a dynamic mic of some sort, which I think was the rehearsal room's. Probably an SM-57. We had one half of a matched pair of Rode NT5s as a close-ish overhead, somewhere over the hi-hat. For some reason we didn't use the other one of the pair. Finally we had my trusty Rode NT2-A as an other-side-of-the-room overhead-cum-everything mic. We've been able to get a very nice sound in the mix from this, somewhat random and thrown-together, selection.
os, May 2008
For the gear-heads reading: we used four mics in total. Andy's Blue Ball was in the kick drum. The snare was covered by a dynamic mic of some sort, which I think was the rehearsal room's. Probably an SM-57. We had one half of a matched pair of Rode NT5s as a close-ish overhead, somewhere over the hi-hat. For some reason we didn't use the other one of the pair. Finally we had my trusty Rode NT2-A as an other-side-of-the-room overhead-cum-everything mic. We've been able to get a very nice sound in the mix from this, somewhat random and thrown-together, selection.
os, May 2008