For my initial sound recording sessions around Elephant & Castle I've been using the Sennheiser K6/ME66 super-cardiod microphone unit to capture monaural recordings.
I wanted to use this microphone with the conscious knowledge that this "short gun" style of microphone was quite adept at reducing off axis sound. With this microphone I intended to try and focus in on my subject and try and erase any unwanted background sound.
This method, I hoped, would help alleviate the problems that I would tend to face when just using the built in omni-directional XY stereo pairing on my Zoom H4 Handy portable recorder.
Firstly, the Zoom H4, whilst a fairly competitively priced little machine that has served me quite well over the last two years on numerous Uni projects, is compact, discrete and portable, using the built in XY stereo microphones outdoors, in even the slightest breeze is a fucking disaster! What on earth were the designers of this poor little alopecia sufferer thinking of when they made the useless afro-cum-"Red Nose Day" foam wig to reduce wind buffering? It's absolutely useless, and renders the device's built in mics redundant for recording sound out in the field.
I've resorted to various methods to try and reduce this, including putting two pairs of socks over the end and also my beanie. The beanie was actually pretty successful at reducing wind buffering, however, by doing this, the depth of the recording is constricted and the resultant sound does indeed sound like it is recorded through material. I have yet been able to find a suitable, professionally made alternative.
Also, recording in an urban environment, with a heavy stream of traffic passing through, the omni-directionality of the built in microphones means that its pretty cosmopolitan in the sounds that it'll accept, i.e. its a right slag.
Hence the flirtation with the beautifully engineered and snobby German ME66. (along with a shock cradle and Rycote Softie. Now, I'd taken on board, when researching and subsequently filming on location with the film Sidney the fact that mono mics are used within the industry for recording dialogue and sound effects, so that they can be positioned within the audio mix. Therefore, when out investigating sounds for Broken Bottles with a view of recording only interesting sounds, I was treating this practice in the same way, mono recording, in nice and close, and trying my best to cancel out any unwanted sound. The truth is, for Broken Bottles this idea was not very effective. The sounds I was recording were not giving me the characteristics of depth and space that I had been accustomed to when recording in stereo, I persevered in the hope that I could isolate interesting sounds, and then through the editing process, position these sounds within the audio mix to give the soundtrack to Broken Bottles a sense of space. What I found, however, was that it was not individual sounds, isolated from the rest of the sounds in the environment around Elephant & Castle that were producing interesting results, but rather the interplay different, fleeting sounds that would suddenly emerge from all around me. Capturing these sounds in mono produced results that lost the excitement of the original event; all sounds recorded being mixed into one channel, with a lot of the identity of the sounds lost in the process due to the subsequent lack of depth to the recording, where all similar frequencies would be bunched together, therefore "muddying" the recording.
Mono, for out door (or on location) recording, unless recording something as specific as dialogue, or a specific sound effect that is required to be flexible to be positioned within an audio mix, is an ineffective choice. I was still pleased with the off axis cancellation and so enquired as to the possibility of a "short gun" microphone with stereo capabilities. They don't exist, I am naive.
I decided, therefore, to get a pair of binaural microphones out from the Sound stores office. I'd used them before and was extremely impressed with the reproduction of three dimensional space when listened back to on headphones. I went for a sound walk around Elephant & Castle with them and Oh my! I'd honestly forgotten just how fantastic these bad boys are. Oh yes, as much as I have been harping on about how Elephant & Castle doesn't have any interesting sounds, and what not, suddenly, I was absolutely in aural bliss, and this was even before I listened back to the recordings. There's something psychological about putting microphones in to your ears. I swear, I was listening so much more intently to the sonic environment than I was when I was holding the ME66 in my hand. Perhaps, it was the physical connection of the microphones to my ears, I was fully conscious of their presence, and so I was constantly reminded that this was my purpose whilst walking around; TO RECORD SOUND. Wearing the binaural microphones, I also felt a greater urge to investigate different spacial differences with sound, so I found myself going inside and outside buildings, just because I knew that spatially, this would get great results, as the acoustics and reverberations dampened and expanded.
Wunderbar!
I'll upload examples of what I'm rambling about, soon.
I wanted to use this microphone with the conscious knowledge that this "short gun" style of microphone was quite adept at reducing off axis sound. With this microphone I intended to try and focus in on my subject and try and erase any unwanted background sound.
This method, I hoped, would help alleviate the problems that I would tend to face when just using the built in omni-directional XY stereo pairing on my Zoom H4 Handy portable recorder.
Firstly, the Zoom H4, whilst a fairly competitively priced little machine that has served me quite well over the last two years on numerous Uni projects, is compact, discrete and portable, using the built in XY stereo microphones outdoors, in even the slightest breeze is a fucking disaster! What on earth were the designers of this poor little alopecia sufferer thinking of when they made the useless afro-cum-"Red Nose Day" foam wig to reduce wind buffering? It's absolutely useless, and renders the device's built in mics redundant for recording sound out in the field.
I've resorted to various methods to try and reduce this, including putting two pairs of socks over the end and also my beanie. The beanie was actually pretty successful at reducing wind buffering, however, by doing this, the depth of the recording is constricted and the resultant sound does indeed sound like it is recorded through material. I have yet been able to find a suitable, professionally made alternative.
Also, recording in an urban environment, with a heavy stream of traffic passing through, the omni-directionality of the built in microphones means that its pretty cosmopolitan in the sounds that it'll accept, i.e. its a right slag.
Hence the flirtation with the beautifully engineered and snobby German ME66. (along with a shock cradle and Rycote Softie. Now, I'd taken on board, when researching and subsequently filming on location with the film Sidney the fact that mono mics are used within the industry for recording dialogue and sound effects, so that they can be positioned within the audio mix. Therefore, when out investigating sounds for Broken Bottles with a view of recording only interesting sounds, I was treating this practice in the same way, mono recording, in nice and close, and trying my best to cancel out any unwanted sound. The truth is, for Broken Bottles this idea was not very effective. The sounds I was recording were not giving me the characteristics of depth and space that I had been accustomed to when recording in stereo, I persevered in the hope that I could isolate interesting sounds, and then through the editing process, position these sounds within the audio mix to give the soundtrack to Broken Bottles a sense of space. What I found, however, was that it was not individual sounds, isolated from the rest of the sounds in the environment around Elephant & Castle that were producing interesting results, but rather the interplay different, fleeting sounds that would suddenly emerge from all around me. Capturing these sounds in mono produced results that lost the excitement of the original event; all sounds recorded being mixed into one channel, with a lot of the identity of the sounds lost in the process due to the subsequent lack of depth to the recording, where all similar frequencies would be bunched together, therefore "muddying" the recording.
Mono, for out door (or on location) recording, unless recording something as specific as dialogue, or a specific sound effect that is required to be flexible to be positioned within an audio mix, is an ineffective choice. I was still pleased with the off axis cancellation and so enquired as to the possibility of a "short gun" microphone with stereo capabilities. They don't exist, I am naive.
I decided, therefore, to get a pair of binaural microphones out from the Sound stores office. I'd used them before and was extremely impressed with the reproduction of three dimensional space when listened back to on headphones. I went for a sound walk around Elephant & Castle with them and Oh my! I'd honestly forgotten just how fantastic these bad boys are. Oh yes, as much as I have been harping on about how Elephant & Castle doesn't have any interesting sounds, and what not, suddenly, I was absolutely in aural bliss, and this was even before I listened back to the recordings. There's something psychological about putting microphones in to your ears. I swear, I was listening so much more intently to the sonic environment than I was when I was holding the ME66 in my hand. Perhaps, it was the physical connection of the microphones to my ears, I was fully conscious of their presence, and so I was constantly reminded that this was my purpose whilst walking around; TO RECORD SOUND. Wearing the binaural microphones, I also felt a greater urge to investigate different spacial differences with sound, so I found myself going inside and outside buildings, just because I knew that spatially, this would get great results, as the acoustics and reverberations dampened and expanded.
Wunderbar!
I'll upload examples of what I'm rambling about, soon.
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