LinuxMusicians

This was a quick experiment, recording and mixing acoustic instruments:

https://instaud.io/3aql

I'm still really new to recording, any feedback is welcome.

It sounds nice as an intro but if we go beyond 'nice' I'd say that the wind takes a tad too much place. The strings should be a bit more full-bodied perhaps. The bell could have more depth and maybe be somewhat panned. Nothing dramatic, but just a bit more each with their own standing place in a balance. For the wind it could be just to bring it a bit more at the back while making more of its character shine through. I find that now it's too much at the front to be able to uncover some character traits.

Cheers.

Hi Michael,

sweet and short track which shows your recording and mixing/mastering skills.

A quick download and opening of the file in Audacious shows proper levels, further analysis within an Ardour (after conversion to a .wav. file, oh and I like and use 48k myself) track shows that you're even perfectly within the LUFS specification for streaming (which is -16dB average, -1dB true peak). So technically it's about perfect I'd say.

Everything else is a matter of taste of course. I like that you hear "room", be it artificial or natural, but it fits the mood and the general scene - reminds me a bit of the first Wikiloops members meeting I went to in 2018, and which happens to take place within a cloister (so depending on where you play you get very much room if you wish).

As was said/written already, the Ukulele-type instrument (is it one?) could have brought a bit more to the foreground, maybe with a little compression, but that is all subjective and your choice of course.

So if these are your beginnings in recording, then hats off - you did a very good job my friend! Care to tell us how you did it, and what was used for recording, processing, and mixing?

Hope that helps,
and cheers,
Wolfgang

Nice clean recording. Seems well balanced here on phones.

Wow, thanks everybody. This was just a quick experiment, I wasn't expecting much response!

wjl wrote:So if these are your beginnings in recording, then hats off - you did a very good job my friend! Care to tell us how you did it, and what was used for recording, processing, and mixing?

I'm inspired by musicians such as Martin Molin and Shugo Tokumaru who try recording and mixing pretty much anything that can make noise. I have this dream of making a small album of music entirely recorded from stuff that I can find around the house... for example I recently discovered that our slow cooker's removable ceramic pot will make a pleasant THWOOMP sound when struck with wooden spoon.

For this experimental session, I started with things that are actually intended to make music: ukulele, clarinet, and chimes that my parents made by cutting lengths of steel pipe. I recorded the Ukulele part first, it is a series of arpeggios that I have been playing with for a few weeks. Then I recorded a few improvised takes on the clarinet and spliced together the parts that I liked. The chimes were kind of an after thought, I wanted something to make it shine a little bit, to contrast with the airy melancholy clarinet.

I recorded all three as mono tracks, using a single Behringer C-2 narrow-diaphram condenser mic (even though the C-2 comes as a paired set, I decided to try mono this time). For both the ukulele and the clarinet, I sat with the instrument approx 1 meter away from the mic. I held the chimes approx 20 or 30 cm away from the mic. I only used two chimes from my set, so I had them draped from two fingers of one hand while striking them with a steel stake held in the other hand.

My room is really noisy with the drone of the computer, and the fact that I'm raising a houseful of children who were being really wild in another room, so I used Luciano Dato's Noise Repellent plugin. Noise Repellent is pretty amazing, I barely had to do anything at all other than train it on a few seconds of noise. I actually only trained it once on a few seconds of the ukulele track before I started playing the instrument, and then copied the plugin to the other tracks. Dragonfly Reverb glues everything together with the "small vocal hall" preset.

I really need to stop being afraid of recording. I have made midi tracks for many years, but they never quite compare to live recording. I think I need to grow beyond these quick experiments, arrange some full-length pieces of music, and record them over several sessions. Even if I use some virtual instruments on midi tracks for some of the parts, the live tracks have a soul that just isn't present in my midi work.

Michael Willis wrote:Dragonfly Reverb glues everything together with the "small vocal hall" preset.

If I would have had to guess, then my guess would have been that one. A beautiful reverb which I love.

Michael Willis wrote:I really need to stop being afraid of recording. I have made midi tracks for many years, but they never quite compare to live recording. I think I need to grow beyond these quick experiments, arrange some full-length pieces of music, and record them over several sessions. Even if I use some virtual instruments on midi tracks for some of the parts, the live tracks have a soul that just isn't present in my midi work.

Yes, you shouldn't be afraid of recording - it teaches you a lot in no time at all. Plus sometimes you even get nice feedback if you're willing to throw things out in the wild - like I just did in https://www.wikiloops.com/backingtrack-jam-155346.php (Bass is real, "piano" is XLN Audio's Addictive Keys Studio Grand played on an old 49-key MIDI keyboard, no pedal or anything. I received 8 or 9 thumb-ups until now, including some nice remarks about having a "Pink Panther" vibe there...

Your recording is beautiful, and that Behringer mike - wow, pretty good actually!

Cheers,
Wolfgang

Good! Very good! But so little Good for some reason is always a little Wonderful miniature!

I downloaded this a couple of weeks ago and have been enjoying it. I somehow forgot to comment in the thread, though, until now. I agree with psyocean, wjl, and folderol. Very nice sound, good balance, pleasing composition.

Short can be good. Many years ago I did a short little sketch recording which was really just an experiment with midi-programmed drums. But this became one of my favorite recordings of all time. You don't have to apologize for your sketches, or your learning pieces, especially not when they sound as good as this one does!

Thanks Wolfgang, Psyocean, and Milo! These comments are really encouraging. Like I said, eventually I want to do some more full-length arrangements; I see these small experiements as stepping stones to that goal, and the feedback from other people is an important part of the process. However, like Milo suggests, I may find that the small sketches stand on their own merit.

Hi Michael,beautiful experimental acoustic instruments move forward in the future project

gennaro