Recording music for film

Over the weekend we recorded the music for The Drowned Girl. We recorded using students from the Bard Conservatory at Bard's Chapel of the Innocents in Upstate New York.

A version of the paperwork we used as a guide.

Decca tree

I put an AEA R84 ribbon as the center microphone with a pair of Neumann omnidirectional mics on either side. The upside is that ribbon always sounds amazing. The downside is that the lighting caused a large buzz in the ribbon microphones. We figured out what circuit it was and turned those lights off, but it made it somewhat harder to see when the sun went down. 

As always, most of the sound is from the tree. 

Harp; Tammam Odeh, flute; Rea Ábel, piano; Pei-I Hsu, cello; Chris Van Zyl.

Monitoring

Cello and piano got ME-1 personal mixers (not for any particular reason other than the cable runs were easier that way). Harp and flute got little Donner headphone amps driven by a pair of auxiliaries on the A&H SQ5. 

I wore my Sennheiser headphones (600? 650? I forget actually) and I had a little condenser mic on a boom with a mute switch so I could talk to everyone on headphones without yelling. That, I think, worked out quite well. 

Cables or netting? This is the mess between the conductor and the orchestra. It's actually fairly well organized there's just lots of it. 

Cello

We put the AKG C12A aimed (sort of) at the cello. As always, the music stand is in the way. I'm not quite smart enough to figure out a way around that. But again, the tree was most of the sound. 

Andrew Bellware wonders what exactly the computer is saying to him.

Harp

I was just going to put an Oktava 012 on the harp. But at the last minute I added my kit U47 clone as a second microphone. Together they're kinda nice I think. I spread them out in the stereo field a little, not all the way. Again most of the sound is from the tree but sometimes you just need some closer sound. 

View from the piano to the front of the church with a dorkus at the mixing board.

Flute

For a long time I wasn't going to put a separate mic on the flute because, I figured, it was so close to the center mic of the Decca tree. But I put an Oktava 012 overhead. And then forgot to patch the microphone to the USB output that feeds the computer. Because I am a dope. However I haven't really run into a place where I'm really screaming internally for that mic. 

We had a bit of an adventure where something went massively wrong with the mechanics of the alto flute on the first day, but a new one was borrowed for the second day. 

Decca piano recording method. 

The piano 

The piano is a nice Mason & Hamlin grand piano. 

I will admit I read a book on recording classical music to prepare for this recording. And apparently the Decca method of recording grand piano is to have these two mics almost parallel shooting right along the strings from the far end of the piano. So I figured I'd try that with a pair of Schoeps hypercardioids. 

But I didn't fully trust that that would work because I'd never tried it before. So I put a pair of AKG 460's right over the harp of the piano, with the Blue ribbon mic in the center. 

The piano had its lid removed when we showed up, and I figured we'd keep it that way just to avoid reflections off the lid. Also that makes it easier to put those close mics in there.

Verdict? The Decca pair sound very natural and mix really well with the tree. Sometimes, though, the huge warm sound of the three close microphones sounds great too. So having those options is very helpful in post (unless you're trying to limit your options, which is also a legitimate way to think.) But 5 mics on the piano gives you both the "classical" sound and the big "soundtrack" sound too. 

Distant

At one point I thought I was going to put outriggers on the Decca tree. Ha ha! No. Not with a tiny quartet. So instead we put Rode NT1's in the hinterlands -- one at the back of the church sort of facing up into the ceiling aimed at the back, and the other way in the (what's it called?) the very front part of the church (also aimed up and toward the wall.) 
So far that's pretty fun. But that's only with me having mixed about 1/4 of the material. 

Does a Decca tree work with such a small ensemble? I think so. The weirdest thing about my microphones is that the more expensive they are, the noisier (or rather, the more susceptible to noise they are).

The whole soundtrack should go up on Bandcamp, no? Anyway, that's for later. 

Lobell, Stahel.

 Dig Elliot Lobell. He does some beautiful animating and illustration. 

One of Elliot's sets.

Groove to the awesome Christoph Stahel's blog. 

Andrew Bellware, Laura Schlachtmeyer, in 2007 on the set of Angry Planet.

The German version of Earthkiller is online for free.

Late night thoughts.

Dig it. Chrissy Cunningham has a blog. I got my apartment from her! So read her blog. Do what she says. 

Mrfph?

TC Electronic makes some interesting hardware/software. I liked my M5000 a whole lot. It was really nice. It finally died. It had two engines. I feel like an old guy talking about his car as a teenager. I mean, I was in my 30's when I got it. But you know what I mean. 

Handbuilt tube consoles. With DIY options available. 

HyperNormalisation

I feel like one could make either a box or a plugin that would make an audio source have that 3D "depth" that we tend do like from old, mono, large diaphragm microphones. You know how a single microphone sounds like it's coming from beyond a speaker? That special depth from a modern source is what I'm after. I suspect it has to do with phase weirditude. Perhaps strange adjacent EQ's boosting and cutting. 

Recording prep

I'm setting up, or pre-setting up, for the recording of the score to Drowned Girl. The whole score will be live music. I haven't actually done an entirely-acoustic-instruments score before. I'm thinking it will be rather fun.

My plan for recording harp, alto flute, piano, and cello. There may be too many mics in the air but you know, sometimes that helps come time to mix.

Part of the plan is about recording the ensemble with the microphones, you know, I already have. My thinking is to have a figure-8 ribbon on the cello that's lined up with the piano such that there's a bit more isolation. There's a kind of fake Decca tree overhead but everybody gets solo microphones and I'm kinda going nuts with recording the piano. 

We'll be recording through the Allen&Heath SQ5 directly onto a laptop. I'll have the click fed into my headphones. As of right now we won't be feeding click to the musicians but that plan might get altered. I don't know yet. 

With this setup, we're recording 12 channels plus a stereo mix of 2. I need to do computer and drive tests to ensure the whole system is happy recording that way. 

Why this is different

It bears repeating that an enormous difference between the American response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the American response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that Ukraine...

...is a democracy.

The United States has historically done a pretty bad job at supporting democracies. Since World War II, one can count the democracies the US has supported with military power on one hand.

The Vietnam War is almost a perfect example of Dulles-brother imperial nonsense. I mean, supporting Madame Nhu was some seriously boneheaded and outright evil policy. And again and again, the United States has supported brutal, anti democratic regimes which almost inevitably led to stupendous blowups and self-owns. Supporting Saddam Hussein, then fighting him. Supporting Noriega, and then fighting him. And of course the loathsome crimes of the Khmer Rouge and Pinochet are blood on the hands of the Kissingers of US foreign policy. 

But when US foreign policy was to support actual democracies, it's tended to be vastly better. By definition it's better because they're democracies. 

And Ukraine is a democracy. 

Alfred Sisley, La neige a Louveciennes

*Wikimedia Commons contributors, "File:La neige a Louveciennes.JPG," Wikimedia Commons, the free media repository, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:La_neige_a_Louveciennes.JPG&oldid=618754649 (accessed February 1, 2023).

Little fishlet

I can't actually find this shirt IRL but it amuses me greatwise.

I have a lot of music to record. Cello, harp, piano, alto flute. I went to Staples to get the four parts and two full scores printed out. The full scores are 127 pages. I think the total cost, bound as you see here, was about $115. 

A friend of mine (a classical nerd) made fun of me for how big the time signatures are. But for the conductor's score especially you do NOT want to miss the time signatures. 

Music. It can be written down. 

Terms of endearment in Russian. 

Notice of Presentation (NOP) to be submitted by 26/09/2023

Thesis prior to assessment to be submitted by 26/11/2023

Viva expected to take place by 26/01/2024

End date of study (including your 3 months interruption) is currently 26/04/2024

Working in Dorico

So, I'm composing using Dorico for this movie, The Drowned Girl. I'm using a score-writing program because I have to present an actual score with/for my thesis for my PhD. I'm using Dorico because it will work with video playback somewhat reliably.

Problem one: if you change the video file Dorico will continue to play back the audio from the last video file with the same name. I don't know if Dorico is building a cached audio file for video playback or what, but when you make a new video file (and if you're doing film, you'll be making new video files), it needs to have a new name. 

Mise-en-scène. I don't think I know what it is and I read the Wikipedia. 

Did I post this stuff already?

Meydl with the Electric Princess overdrive. 

 The Nuances Controller is very cool. I think I want one. They won't be available until February. Maybe I don't need one. I'm not doing a lot of the kind of composing that needs one lately. I mean, lately, composing with CC11 hasn't been my thing. I don't know if I ever make any sense. Probably not. 

I got one of these Open Theremins. I dig my Paia theremin kit. But the Open works a bit better. I do wish it had a mute switch. I like the range of tonalities on it. I haven't really been super successful at getting it to output CV to a synth but I'm working on it. Oh wait, the button on the front is a mute switch. Okay, that's helpful.

Wrist exercises for mouse hand. 

Practice As Research. Which is, of course, what I'm doing. Or supposed to be doing. 

Gromneroe Pollywisical

 

Audiomovers makes a piece of software that lets you stream from a VST plugin on your DAW.

Tuning my Theremax is quite tricky.

Arrow's Theorem. Or: more problems with voting.

Vignelli's six fonts.

The fonts:

1. Garamond (serif / classic / smart) 2. Bodoni (serif / „premium“ / elegant) 3. Century Expanded (serif / readable!) 4. Futura (sans-serif / geometric / functional) 5. Times New Roman ... ... no comment :D 6. Helvetica (sans-serif / often used)

Typefaces for dyslexics.

File under sci-fi watches. 

I think I've finished the music for The Drowned Girl. Actually, I just rewatched it and I think I want to put some other things in the last act to underline some other moments. It's been a whole year since we shot that movie. It really should have been finished by now. 

Next up is the actual recording of the music. And writing up my thesis of course. My defense is in March so everything has to be done by February. 

Just some jackets

 Jacket 1.

Jacket 2.

Jacket 3.

Jacket 4.

Microphones, crest factors, composition

 UT twin 87, a Neumann 87 clone. 

Crest factors. Square waves are 0dB with a linear crest factor of 1. Sine waves are 3dB with a crest of 1.41. Noise normally has a crest factor of 4, or 12dB.

Peak voltages and crest voltages.

I'm trying to write music. I'm writing it for my thesis film and it's super hard for be just because it's hard and because I'm writing all in Dorico, and because the writing is all about my thesis (which is using dramatic theory as a framework for spotting film for music) I have to write somewhat less intuitively because of both those reasons. But the more work we do on this film, The Drowned Girl, the better it gets. I'll listen to some music I've written, hate it, and rewrite it. And I've done that three times now. I'd be enormously frustrated except that the movie is better every time I re-write it. My first draft was garbage. I hit all the right marks, but it just wasn't musical. 
Now it's getting more musical and better at illustrating the emotional reality. So I feel better about it. But it's been super hard. End of complaining. 

Thiswise

 An artist named Beetlemuse used one of my Freesound effects in a piece of music.

The recording is of me, as traffic control, in our movie Android Insurrection.

Undor Am Depthks

The Prime Minister is not under a desk.

Law&Order "Trophy". 

Libre Franklin typeface.

A producer's guide to scoring.

Saleem, me, and Ken at the Hoboken Public Library. 

Animals

Le Carnaval des Animaux - Aquarium

Music

Analysis

György Ligeti - Sándor Weöres: Síppal, dobbal, nádihegedűvel (2000)

Sitar tunings.