Topic: 3 foot split omnis stage lip Hunter and Amendola?

[Gutbucket]

Yeah, incredible technique when really paying attention to what he's doing on the instrument.  I have no idea how he can be of multiple minds simultaneously like that, on top of the shear dexterity of it, and have huge respect for anyone who can work more than one limb at a time independently, simply because it is such a foreign and difficult thing for me.  I have a hard enough time trying to make my thumb and fingers work independently on a normal guitar working out stuff like Doc Watson's Deep River Blues.  Very simple and repetitive in comparison to what he's doing.

The analogy with two-hand /split-mind piano technique is apt, organ more specifically.  He's been highly influenced by the classic soul-groove organist techniques and sound.  I like that he's gravitated to more of a straight guitar sound with the 7-string over the past decade or so, but for years when he was playing the 8-string his sound was even more directly organ like, with lots of leslie-like chorus effects.  Notice the way in which he comps on the high strings (what would be the organ/piano left hand) when concentrating on complex bass lines.  Always sounds very organ-like to me in the way he does that, even though the timbre is more typical of straight effects-less jazz guitar sound these days.

Looking forward to giving your recording a listen MIQ, yours too D.

[MakersMarc]

Nice report.  Sounds like you still know how to ride that bike. 
Here's my last CH outing w/Previte and Meyers... and a sample of The Face.  Those Shweps DFC in the photo are Snowman's.  We rolled from row three.

Sounds great Dave!

[MIQ]

The analogy with two-hand /split-mind piano technique is apt, organ more specifically.  He's been highly influenced by the classic soul-groove organist techniques and sound.  I like that he's gravitated to more of a straight guitar sound with the 7-string over the past decade or so, but for years when he was playing the 8-string his sound was even more directly organ like, with lots of leslie-like chorus effects.  Notice the way in which he comps on the high strings (what would be the organ/piano left hand) when concentrating on complex bass lines.  Always sounds very organ-like to me in the way he does that, even though the timbre is more typical of straight effects-less jazz guitar sound these days.

Yea the "Ready, Set, Shango" and "Natty Dred" days had a lot more of an organ feel with more rotory effects and organ sound.  I like the pure tube gtr sounds Charlie is using these days.  Really expressive, clean to dirty, with changes of the volume knob and right hand attack.  No doubt he's got tone and continues to evolve.

-Miq

[MIQ]

I was looking at your pic and the first thing I saw was that your 4060's seemed to be flying quite a ways away from the face of the disc.  I was always under the impression that the caps needed to be within a couple inches of the disc face to come close to harvesting a pronounced stereo image. (The strings hanging from the J-disk... 2" distance guides? Nice.)  Perhaps that was what was was in play as you remarked about the bass being centered or at least not where you saw it.  Then again, the low notes will tend to flow through the disc with impunity so perhaps the spacing of the caps is not really affecting the bass pick up. 

I'm happy w/the sound field as it is.  Probably very close to what you'd hear sitting in that spot.  I've got a slight preference to cans over NFM listening but not overwhelmingly so. 

* Oh, yeah. Fat bass centered to just right of center.  Not sure I'm bothered by what I hear compared to what i "know".  With the drums set  up opposite CH, I'd expect the bass player to stand in the middle anyway! 

Hi Ben,

Thanks for taking a listen and writing back.

The pic I posted is a little deceiving.  The caps that are easy to spot are a pair of MG actives that audBall was running clamped to the top of the stand I was running the J-disk on.  The DPAs are really small and are wound around thin enamal coated copper (aka magnet) wire coming out of the base of the disk.  The 4060s are so small that you would need to zoom way into that pic to see them.  Attached is a closer pic of the rig.  Zoom in to see the magnet wire ad mics.  The R09HR and battery box are in the small black bag hanging at  the bottom of the stand.  As you noted, the mics are spaced off the center of the disc at the distance of the string guides (~6.5" total).  They are just so small it's hard to see. 

I think the 6.5" spacing makes for a good headphone listen since that's about how far your ears are spaced.  I've read that Jecklin later preferred a much bigger mic spacing (like 14") and a slightly bigger baffle.  That kind of spacing will give you enough time difference to image about 70 degrees of the performance angle within the center 75% of the speaker playback width.  See first atached pic of the RA_75% plot from Mic Tools for a pair of omnis spaced at 36cm (14").  The full recording angle is just over 180 degrees but the majority of the stereo image (central 75%) is occupied by the the central 70 degree's worth of performers. 

Shrinking the spacing to the 6.5" = 16cm I used for this recording gives the final attached pic from Mic Tools.  Now the recording angle and RA_75% have both blown up to over 180 degees and the imaging that is relying on arrival time differences has collapsed to the center (mono).  I'm pretty convinced this is why the bass is centered and the gtr and drums image accurately.  Our brains rely on arrival time diffs to determine directionality for low frequencies since the levels are almost always the same.  It's really hard to block/baffle low freq and our little heads aren't going to so our brains use arrival time differences to try to localize the sound.  Since the omni spacing I've used is small compared to that necessary to create the arrival time differences (when played back over stereo speakers) that our brain is looking for at low frequencies, the low frequencies collaps to the middle. 

At mid and high frequencies our brain starts to rely on the sum of the level and arrival time differences between ears to determine directionality.  Here the small baffle starts working and shades the mic on the far side of the sound source.  This combined with the arival time differences allows for better imaging. 

Makes more sense after thinking more about it and looking at the Recording Angle and RA_75% for spaced omnis (arrival time only).  It may be why Jecklin started to use a wider spacing.  The low freq info starts to image better.  At the same time he needed to increase the baffle diameter to keep a similar angle of shading at mid and high freqs for this wider mic spacing.  The baffle is never going to "baffle" at low frequencies so you'd better space the omnis to get the arrival time differences you need at low freqs.

Again all this points back to the discussions on using a ceter mic pair in collaboration with a widely spaced pair of omni's.  I bet a wide spaced pair of omnis crossed over at 500Hz or so to the Jecklin disk would be interesting to listen to...

I like your thoughts about resolving the center bass imaging in our brains as "well that's where the bass player was".  I thought that same thought when I started listening and still do to some extent when I'm not thinking about what it "should be". 
 
Miq

[MIQ]

Thanks Ben.  The 6' disc sounds like an interesting beast that, like you wrote, may not be appropriate for the club.  . Charlie was already hesitating on the 1' disc since it could disrupt the audiences' view.  I'm glad he was flexible.  We asked the people sitting behind the disc if it was distracting and they were totally cool and supportive of capturing the performance.

Glad you like the sound too.

[audBall]

Here's a link to an album with more pictures from the 6/18 show Miq and I caught. They might give a little better idea of the mic placement. I'm currently working on pulling a few unaffected samples from my recording for comparison to Miq's 4060 jecklin setup. I ran M20 cards DIN about 1' behind his mics, roughly 6" higher.

http://imgur.com/a/Oxy0i

[MIQ]

Thanks audBall.

Nice pics of the show.  The heart shaped cymbal is nuts. 

Looking forward to hearing your M20 DIN samples.

[2manyrocks]

After looking at the pictures and listening to the show, I'm a bit stunned at the recording with the disk being so close to the floor monitor.  I would have thought the recording would have been mostly a capture of the monitor, but find myself surprised at the balance between the guitar and the drums with that disk position.  But I guess if the disk had been on the other side of the monitor, then it really would have been mostly drums in the recording. 

Did you arrive at this mic position by listening on headphones first, prior experience....?

[MIQ]

Hi rocks

I didn't think the monitors were being used, at least not the one next to the mics in front of Charlie.  Most of the reflections from the amps or drums off the monitor's face and sides were not directed toward the mics.  Charlie is basically sitting in front of his amps and just a few feet from Scott.  What would he want in the monitor?  Also, from listening to great Charlie Hunter recordings from Ted G and others, I've noticed that the stage lip recordings are really nice and the mic Charlie uses to make band introductions and announcements is always pulled out of the FOH mix and obviously out of the monitors on stage.  At the end of the first set in this recording (the first 10 seconds of track 10) you can hear the FOH guy trying to get the announcement mic turned on and pulled up in the FOH speakers.  It's crackly and odd sounding at first so Charlie tries to smooth the transition by saying "Well fantastic, I like that style..."   

You are right about not wanting to put it on the other side of the monitor since it would have been much closer to the drums.  When we placed the stand I tried to point the center of the recording angle directly between the gtr/bass amps and the drums while also trying to match the distance from the drums to the mics and the amps to the mics.  This forced the stand against the monitor.  I originally had it a little further onto the stage.  Charlie asked if we could move it slightly back so there'd be no chance of him stepping on them.     This pulled them even closer to the monitor but it was the best we could negotiate.   

I set the line input recording level to be unity gain (Input~40 on the R09HR) hit record a few minutes before the show and faced the mesh bag holding the recorder/battery box so I could see if the R09HR overload light engaged.  I never saw it overload but at intermission I lowered the gain to 35 (slightly below unity).  When I normalized the files I think it added about 4 dB or so.  I was happy I was conservative with the gain. 

[audBall]

Here's a link to an album with more pictures from the 6/18 show Miq and I caught. They might give a little better idea of the mic placement. I'm currently working on pulling a few unaffected samples from my recording for comparison to Miq's 4060 jecklin setup. I ran M20 cards DIN about 1' behind his mics, roughly 6" higher.

http://imgur.com/a/Oxy0i

I finally got around to extracting a few (mostly) unaffected samples from the first three tracks of the first set. The zipped FLACs are 24bit/48kHz, the ZIP file is 50MB. The only editing done to the files was to increase the gain a few db overall, not individually, and of course the fades. I can pull out more samples if there is interest.

The only digi-noise audible is on "...track2c.flac" @ 0:26.

Source: Gefell M20 (cards) > NBob couplings | PFA > DR-70D (24/48)
Setup: clamped to Miq's stand, DIN (see linked pics above) 

Download Link: http://we.tl/Ia50h3L58O

[Gutbucket]

Whenever I've seen Charlie the band usually hasn't used stage monitors.  I have considered re-purposing an unused monitor, near the position of the one pictured in audBall's photos, as a wide Jecklin-disk with omnis positioned on either side of it.  I suspect that would work quite well, and visually it would be very low profile too.

[2manyrocks]

Thanks MIQ.

Hmm...recording on stage with fake monitors.  That is so stealth.

[MIQ]

Finally got around to Marc's Charlie Hunter project.

http://taperssection.com/index.php?topic=174086.new#new

Ben and Marc,

I'm listening to it right now.  Sounds great!  Thank you for posting.

MIQ