Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Good couple of days. Started recording with the old Akai 12 track due to the PC debacle (still waiting toget it returned via InSecuricor). Set up the two 4041s as a crossed XY pair inside the vocal booth, and set up the 4050 for vocals. When I say 'vocal booth' I mean the 5'x5' walk-in wardrobe which I deadened with some ancient green curtains, ripe with the accumulated stench of forty years in a Bedminster working men's club. Obviously it's quite a tight squeeze in there, with three mic stands, a headphone amp, a stool and a guitar. In fact it's downright oppressive; a bit like recording in solitary confinement, which may or may not enhance the ambience of the recordings.

There isn't too much crossover as the 4041s sound best right at the tail-end of the guitar over the soundboard, fairly far from the vocal mic. The vocal mic unavoidably picks up the guitar, but there is no phase problems. I got a guitar and vocal down simultaneously for a song, then added some organ, and got a guitar take down for another.

Kind of nullified the point of having a polyphonic organ; the top notes were much louder than the lower ones, so I ended up multitracking chords as separate notes to get the right balance.

The 4050 works pretty well on my voice. It's perhaps a little too sensitive, brittle even, on the top end, accentuating the 'airy' sound of the vocal, but on the whole it's pretty damn good.

There's a limit to what I an do now though; need the PC as the Delta A/D converters should whip the Akai's ass.

Watched lots of League of Gentelmen as not-so-light relief. It seems i'm about five years behind on popular culture.

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