On Monday 16th August 2010, resident sound engineer Chris Nicol, will be heading down to South Wales with his recording equipment and mixing his digital world with the brass world of Tredegar Town Band. He will be showing them how you can have a decent recording system without spending too much of your budget that should be spent on quality instruments!
There are many different levels to which you can record and depending on what you would like to do with the recordings, there is different equipment you could use. For simple recordings such as hearing yourself back while rehearsing or recording your trombone solo in the concert you’ve performed in, a Hand held Recorder would be ideal. For more in-depth recording, a Multi-Track Recorder will enable you to mic up each section of your band for example. This allows you to alter the levels and processors on each channel separately, giving you the power of “post production”.
Over the next 4 – 5 weeks I shall be posting up blogs about recording particularly brass band recording.
I will also keep you all informed about how the recording on Monday goes of Tredegar Town Band.
Chris’ Top Recording Tips
- Acoustics – When recording you need to think about a good room in which to record. There’s no point in recording in a school hall or in a kitchen with the potential for feedback from a fridge or generator to interrupt your recording with humming noises. Your choice of room should make sure that its big enough for the band to fit into but avoid having any excess space that enhances the potential for feedback to occur. Closing doors and hanging thick curtains will also help you in creating a warmer sound.
- Microphone Placement – This is very important with any type of recording. Placing a mic too close to the source may give you some distortion, while having the mic too far away may make the signal weak and therefore boosting retrospectively may give you some hiss. Always test your levels to make sure that you are getting a good signal through without clipping and be sure to leave a little headroom. You don’t want to have just recorded the best take of the day but have to scrap it because the signal is distorted.
