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Author Topic: Record First Row, mic under chair  (Read 12604 times)

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Offline MakersMarc

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #30 on: July 10, 2019, 11:31:19 AM »
I think it's  fine to use cheap gear, not everyone can swing great gear. I do hate lack of effort though. No reason a ca-14 taper can't be as ballsy as the taper with high quality gear, and location can go a long ways to make economy gear sound good. Not under the seat. Just no reason for that.
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Offline opsopcopolis

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #31 on: July 10, 2019, 11:49:49 AM »
singing and recording are not compatible

disagree.. I have a few tapes I love & others have enjoyed where I let loose a few times on 3-4 songs out of 20. make me cringe? yeah. better than not having a tape? absolutely.

I stealthed a show a few weeks ago that I sang along to pretty loudly the entire time. Can't hear it at all. I was actually pretty surprised at the result.

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #32 on: July 10, 2019, 11:56:40 AM »
I think it's  fine to use cheap gear, not everyone can swing great gear. I do hate lack of effort though. No reason a ca-14 taper can't be as ballsy as the taper with high quality gear, and location can go a long ways to make economy gear sound good.

+T
Effort, determination, and technique are the most important assets in our pursuit of the heat.
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Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline opsopcopolis

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #33 on: July 10, 2019, 12:06:54 PM »
I think it's  fine to use cheap gear, not everyone can swing great gear. I do hate lack of effort though. No reason a ca-14 taper can't be as ballsy as the taper with high quality gear, and location can go a long ways to make economy gear sound good.

+T
Effort, determination, and technique are the most important assets in our pursuit of the heat.

I agree with the general sentiment, BUT taping (at least for me) is a pursuit based almost entirely on personal enjoyment. I tape the shows I want to see, in the seats I want to be in. That just so happens to usually correspond with the best sounding seats in the house. I can totally identify with wanting to put the gear down (or at least physically separate it from yourself) so you can have a good time, and I've been in a situation where I wish I had done that instead of making the effort to make a better tape... At the end of the day, if you ruin your enjoyment of a show by forcing yourself to be a stoic mic stand, then what's the point?

Offline heathen

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #34 on: July 10, 2019, 02:54:19 PM »
At the end of the day, if you ruin your enjoyment of a show by forcing yourself to be a stoic mic stand, then what's the point?

I was thinking about this the other day and it occurred to me that the hassles of stealthing (or even open taping) could for some people, and in some circumstances, be a higher grade of fun like Steve Rinella describes it.  Basically, he says that something like a roller coaster is low grade fun because you enjoy it in the moment and then the feeling immediately disappears and you basically forget it.  Something that sucks in the moment, though, can be a higher grade of fun because you can look back on it for years and enjoy reflecting on how much it sucked.  If you were with friends enduring the suck it can be a moment you all talk about with fondness, in a way, later on.

Of course everyone has to make their own decision about what grade of fun they want, what sort of balances they want to strike, etc.  But that concept of high and low grade fun is something I think about in a variety of contexts, including this bizarre hobby.
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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #35 on: July 10, 2019, 04:08:04 PM »
+T & +T

Certainly a grain or more of truth in that.  My primary motivation is my own personal enjoyment and deeper, richer appreciation of the music.  It's also a fun challenge making the recording in the moment and everything that goes along with that, as is figuring out how best to go about doing it and revising the approach over time.  And although it is likely apparent given the nature of my participation in this forum, gaining a deeper understanding of acoustics and solving the engineering challenges of creating the recordings we make in challenging situations is an undeniably attractive aspect.

For many the primary satisfaction is sharing the music with fellow music fans. Although I rarely post my recordings, sharing personal insights into the pursuit of this art with other tapers is a big motivation as well.

We sure ain't doing this for the money, as that all flows the opposite direction. Make great tapes folks, whatever the motivation!
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline bonghitwillie

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #36 on: August 10, 2019, 03:32:38 PM »
I have done this before. I was in the 2nd row center. The seat in front of me (front row) had a horizontal bar and and lots of open space under the cushion. The band was 10 feet in front of the front row and on the ground, no elevated stage. It was a stealth job. I brought two rigs. One rig had mics clipped to shirt the other one was under the seat. I used gaff tape to hold the mics in place and nobody knew what I did. Not sure if one recording is better than the other. but they both sound good.

Offline sdc

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #37 on: August 22, 2019, 11:56:39 PM »
In fairness to the OP, this does sound like it was a particularly special show, hence the dilemma.  Generally, I'm fine being stoic. But, that said, there was one show, a year or two ago, where I decided that no one would be better or worse off if I didn't make a recording, and around the third song I put down the recorder and just danced for the rest the show instead of recording it.  People captured other sets on the tour, and I selfishly chose my own pleasure over posterity. 

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #38 on: August 26, 2019, 10:48:21 AM »
I made a very nice open rig recording for a top local instrumental musician with a great band Friday night, and the most optimal recording position in the entire room was directly underneath the first row of seating.

It was under one of two picnic tables immediately in front of the band, and I'm not joking in the slightest when I say this was the most optimal recording position.  The recording would not have worked out as well if the rig was placed on top of the same the table, nor anywhere else IME.  The room is a brewery, operating in an open-air sheet steel walled warehouse type building - a very reverberant space.  There is also a rather high noise floor from brewery refrigeration equipment in the back of the room and noise and gusty breeze from two gigantic ceiling fans.  Last year a modified shipping container was added to form a partly enclosed stage, converted with the front wall cut out of it and sound-damping material with woven wooden lath over it added to the interior back wall and ceiling.  This generally improved the sound by directing the primary sound output from a non PA amplified band out forward towards the audience rather than directly illuminating the ceiling and sidewalls.  Yet even with that improvement the critical radius of reverberation in the room remains small.  The reverberant quality is not bad, but is quite high in level any considerable distance from the stage. 

By placing my mic array directly into a folding tripod foot without any vertical stand or bar, the microphones were only about 3" or 4" above the concrete floor.  This provided a direct line of sight forward to the band beneath the bench seat, yet also a clear line of sight out horizontally in all other directions to the interior dimensional limits of the space.  The picnic table and bench seat surfaces above the array acted as horizontal baffles, attenuating reverberant sound arriving from above the horizontal floor-plane, shielding the microphones from fan gusts, and significantly reducing the pickup of chatter from nearby audience.  This worked especially well with the OMT8 recording array I was using, which has microphones pointing in all horizontal directions, including two wide-spaced omnis and a pair of supercardioids facing rearward.  The positioning placed the front facing microphones in a sort of left of center stage-lip position in front of the 5-piece band, with the rear and side facing microphones picking up good ambient and reverberant room sound without wind, much close chatter, or too much pickup of the vertical arriving reverberant room sound component, which in any horizontal-arrayed microphone arrangement tends to be reproduced more monophonically than the horizontally arriving reverberant component.

I post this as a reminder to approach each recording situation creatively, considering the core goals of the recording with an open mind, rather than falling into rigid ideas of what always works and what doesn't.
Its a mindset particularly well suited to amatuear live music recording, even more than it is to other types of recording, and its one of the reasons I love doing it.

musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

Offline guitard

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #39 on: August 26, 2019, 05:28:21 PM »
At the end of the day, if you ruin your enjoyment of a show by forcing yourself to be a stoic mic stand, then what's the point?

Just speaking for myself ... on those rare occasions when I can't tape, I feel absolutely miserable and just can't enjoy the show.  And the better the show, the more miserable I feel -- because I can't stop thinking about the great tape I should be walking out with and enjoying for years to come.
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Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #40 on: August 26, 2019, 05:58:35 PM »
I've gotten better at not having to record without suffering psychologically.  Yet if/when the music magic coalesses strongly I too suffer strong misery.

In addition to not needing to wear the mics and sit still up front the entire time (which I had considered), another advantage of the under-picnic-table-seating recording arrangement last Friday was that very few audience members realized a recording was being made, including my GF who showed up partway through the second set to find me sitting outside watching the performance through the open end-door of the shipping container-stage.  Assuming I'd be inside acting as a human recording machine, she smiled and said "I thought you were recording tonight", to which I replied "I am.. let's go get a drink at the bar where we can talk", upon which we reconnected again after a few weeks apart.

It feels good when everything just sort of clicks into place, in more ways than one.
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

ThePiedPiper

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #41 on: August 26, 2019, 08:40:49 PM »
Gutbucket,
I wish you would write a book or have a webcast or SOMETHING. I learn so much from reading your posts. You and a handful of others on here has made a world of difference in the way I approach and enjoy this hobby. I can't thank you enough for all the stuff I have learned from you ...

Offline nassau73

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #42 on: August 26, 2019, 10:08:10 PM »
At the end of the day, if you ruin your enjoyment of a show by forcing yourself to be a stoic mic stand, then what's the point?

Just speaking for myself ... on those rare occasions when I can't tape, I feel absolutely miserable and just can't enjoy the show.  And the better the show, the more miserable I feel -- because I can't stop thinking about the great tape I should be walking out with and enjoying for years to come.

Just one other comment about being a "stoic mic stand"...

I have tinnitus and wear earplugs at all shows. There are so many times during the show, I can hear the people to the side, in front and behind talking, coughing, laughing, latecomers trying to find their seats or whatever louder than the show itself.

After I get home and edit out the whistles and attenuate the clapping on the recording, I get to hear the show in an entirely different light. Many of the conversations were not picked up by the mics as much as they were by my ears.

So, while my enjoyment of the show is not diminished by being a mic stand (it's kinda weird to just bob your head up and down to not get the side to side sweeping sound), it's really nice to be able to hear the show a bit more "unencumbered" by the noise once you have the recording (especially if it was an above average show, or as here on Maui, we have some special guests or performances that normally would not be performed on the mainland.

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #43 on: August 27, 2019, 12:57:42 AM »
Quote

Just one other comment about being a "stoic mic stand"...

I have tinnitus and wear earplugs at all shows. There are so many times during the show, I can hear the people to the side, in front and behind talking, coughing, laughing, latecomers trying to find their seats or whatever louder than the show itself.

After I get home and edit out the whistles and attenuate the clapping on the recording, I get to hear the show in an entirely different light. Many of the conversations were not picked up by the mics as much as they were by my ears.

So, while my enjoyment of the show is not diminished by being a mic stand (it's kinda weird to just bob your head up and down to not get the side to side sweeping sound), it's really nice to be able to hear the show a bit more "unencumbered" by the noise once you have the recording (especially if it was an above average show, or as here on Maui, we have some special guests or performances that normally would not be performed on the mainland.

I experience that as well. With ear plugs I hear noise and talking a lot more pronounced than what it captured by the mics. Always a pleasant surprise!

Offline Gutbucket

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Re: Record First Row, mic under chair
« Reply #44 on: August 27, 2019, 08:57:41 AM »
Thanks Pied!

Always encouraging when the recording one makes sounds better than it did live.
musical volition > vibrations > voltages > numeric values > voltages > vibrations> virtual teleportation time-machine experience
Better recording made easy - >>Improved PAS table<< | Made excellent- >>click here to download the Oddball Microphone Technique illustrated PDF booklet<< (note: This is a 1st draft, now several years old and in need of revision!  Stay tuned)

 

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