singer-songwriter – Dr Badphil

Something (not so) nasty in the woodshed: fun with figure of eights

January 7, 2021

It has been a drawn-out project, what with Covid-19 lockdowns and restrictions, but currently I’m midway through recording an acoustic album for Norfolk singer-songwriter Luke Chapman. It’s a long way from some of Luke’s other musical pursuits, such as the stoner grunge rock Rolodex of Gods. After an initial session at Oulton Chapel (lovely acoustics), we have since been using the woodstore part of his workshop on the edge of the Barningham Hall estate: by day Luke is a woodcarver.

With a sitting position and songs with a huge dynamic range, Luke’s voice and guitar playing need the mics to give as much separation as possible between the tracks. Early tests included using a ribbon mic on his vocals (a NoHype Audio LRM-V), but I have since been using three Rode NT2a mics, all in figure-of-eight pattern so that the nulls are used to great effect to cut out spill as much as possible: the guitar mics – a stereo pair – are parallel at 300mm spacing, one aimed around the 12th fret and one towards the bridge. The results are sounding good (to our ears): the Rode NT2a is often underrated, but the HF1 capsule (also used in the Rode K2 tube mic) is quite different from the harsher capsule of the Rode NT1a and is a pretty neutral beast. And so quiet (7dBA) that you can hear the rats running around in the roof as we record. The three mics are fed through to the ‘control room’ (the main workshop) to a Sound Devices MixPre-3: simple, but effective.

I’ll post more – with some audio – as the project continues.

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Audio Projects

Recording a singer-pianist: Ginny Dix

January 7, 2021

Recording a singer-pianist seems so simple, but it is nothing of the sort. Recording a piano itself is hard enough: do you go for one of the wide range of classical approaches to mic positioning (and if so which one?), placing the piano in its (hopefully) good room acoustic, or do you adopt a closer mic technique used more for jazz, rock and pop? And then how do you avoid spill from the piano in the vocal mic and vice versa? Avoiding, or reducing, such spill, of course, cuts the chances of phase issues and lets you edit or process the tracks differently: perhaps a bit more added reverb or compression on the vocal. Overdubbing would make life easier, but, naturally enough, not many singer-songwriters wish to do that: it is unfamiliar and risks the greater problem of a sterile recording. Norwich-based singer-songwriter Ginny Dix certainly wanted to play and sing at the same time and, just to make life fun, required her performance to be filmed at the same time during the recording of her new song, ‘Woman’, in 2017 (recorded in the Barbirolli Room in the Ethelbert Gate at Norwich Cathedral).

I’d previously recorded and filmed Ginny’s song ‘Run Away‘ at the Wharf Academy in 2016, with help from three others. This time, however, I was on my own, so cut out the crane shots and kept it simple: one locked-off shot along the piano, a second tripod shot mostly locked off for close-ups, and one handheld camera moving around, all the time while monitoring the sound and watching those meters. A couple more arms would be helpful. Kit was small and simple as usual: a Lumix GX80, a Lumix LX100, a Nikon D810, a Rode NT55 omni pair for the piano, and an AKG CK93 hypercardioid for vocals. Far from perfect, I know, but it worked out OK: it was interesting to use an SDC on vocals instead of just grabbing the usual LDC. And, yes, Ginny prefers quite a bit of reverb on her voice so that was enhanced with a convolution reverb while editing in Reaper.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy Ginny’s performance.

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