Today will mark the end of a rather sudden, and quick project. Troy and I got a call from a friend on Thursday about a recording job someone needed in a hurry; he wasn't kidding. This client wanted a full album done over the weekend to have duplicated and ready to sell by the very next weekend for his tour across the U.S.
I know what you're probably thinking: that's a tall order, all the instruments, all the time needed to get sound dialed in... Except, this client is not your normal modern musician. Once we cleared up the client's request and our prices, we discovered he's a fiddler and his album is a solo project of his that he wants to be able to have a short run duplication on hand to sell at his events.
Troy and I discussed what we would want to do for the weekend about the project and opted to use my place instead to record proper acoustics. Saturday morning we got up super early and headed to the studio to pack everything up and haul it over here.
After getting EVERYTHING set back up, we strolled right into mic placement and auditioning mics. We started with 3 we really wanted to hear for the close mic. However, Troy had arlready pre-determined (as had I) that the NT-K was probably going to outshine all the others, and we got started on a few other choices for capturing the natural sound.
I was lucky enough to get the room as quiet as we got it. Aside from some minor inconveniences like an attic fan adding to the hum in the background raising the ambient noise floor to audible levels, the session started out in the middle of a terrible hour for traffic down my street it seems. A couple of passing automobiles made its way into the tracks. However, we made it through most without much a due about some sonic interruption.
The client wanted to record as many as 25 songs. Most of the arrangements were on the Fiddle, while one or two would be on the Hardanger Fiddle, and about 5 or so more on the Nyckelharpa. All the compositions originate from Sweden, and more are classical folk in nature than anything else. Luckily, the client was well rehearsed with all that material so that in just a few hours we had completed all the songs. Normally a major time constraint as such would be an impossible request to fill!
After yesterday's session Troy and I took a break and did some running around, playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl on Wii, and then he left while I returned to editing and mixing the tracks. I started with just roughly mixing the mics to see if I could get a good blend going on. I found two distinctly different sounds with the options we captured.
- The classical sound: very ambient classical, retaind all the dynamics in good clarity and the sound was very soft and somewhat distant with the room mics bring the only two sources, panned hard left and hard right.
- A more modern, intimate sound: The modern day studio sonics we achieved with the mic we chose up front and center, pairing it with just the right choice of mic pre, and a discreet amount of compression in the mic pre during recording for needed sustain and color.
I resumed the project today and since this morning i've been editing beginning and ends, tails, fades, playing with denoise plugins and final master bus effects to dial in just the right sound.
As of now I'm getting two album sequences stemmed out for the client: one with all the tracks for his private copy and one sequenced in his specific order for duplication. Next, I will be headed into Sound Forge to do the final denoise stage to get rid of some particular unwanted background elements that had crept in on a couple of tracks.
Dealing with denoise plugins can be risky business, because you affect everything. I found it surprisingly easy with the de-noise processor I'm using on the master bus to deal with the attic fan in the background. I actually used this knowledge to my advantage and thanks to the sonic content of the fiddle and Nyckelharpa, the "air" in the mix was sufficient enough that when I applied the noise reduction processing it took it out just enough to soften the harsh hissing established by the close mic capturing the natural phenomena of a bow dragging across strings, thus allowing the melodic content to come through with warmth, and not be too bright.
It still didn't deal with the random artifacts I had found after hours of scouring through the material for them. A few car rumbles and even a Harley Davidson had crept into the mix ever so slightly. I would need to use a spectral repair tool to try and deal with removing these particular nasty artifacts, and this is where careful attention to detail is needed most because any changes made to the material can make it suffer just by trying to extract the unwanted material.
My first attempt at spectral repair was actually pretty easy and I pulled some clips for before and after comparisons.
1 - before by cameron-bashaw
After some quick tweaking, and I mean quick; I was able to get fantastic results. Just a little know-how and understanding of spectral repair can go a long way. It's like Photoshop for audio!
1 - after by cameron-bashaw
Another one I had a bit more trouble with as the fundamental in the bass frequencies was easy to find, but I couldn't find and isolate the upper octaves from the musical content without damaging it.
2 - before by cameron-bashaw
This one took a bit of work, I found most of the low-frequency offending content and was able to eliminate it from the material, but the upper range in the offending noise I just couldn't find. I know the tools are pretty in depth and with more time I could probably hone in on it and completely eliminate it without sacrificing any audible quality to the musical content. I just ran out of time for this project.
2 - after by cameron-bashaw
Having just finished the final master to hand to the client tomorrow, we got an awful lot done in two days! Recording 23 tracks, editing, mixing and mastering, sequencing, album artwork design; the whole thing was a blast and we both enjoyed it! We're hoping another uncommon act comes our way!
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