A few weeks ago I happened to see Leafcutter John’s post on the “laser microphone“. Almost immediately, I was amazed at how simple the idea was and decided to try making a laser microphone of my own. The laser mic works like any other microphone, guitar pick up etc – a voltage generated across its terminals is fed into a pre- amp, processor or anything else you’d like to plug it into which in turn allows you to listen to what is being played / said.
In order to construct the laser microphone I purchased a solar cell, which cost me about $3, and some acrylic sheets. I used the acrylic sheets to construct the housing you see in the photographs above (please ignore the botched paint job!!!). I found a couple of ancient metal zip tie like objects which I connected to the existing, flimsy, paper – thin leads of the solar cell. I did this so that I would be able to clip the crocodile clips I’d bought to the leads. The crocodile clips as you can see in the photograph below have been soldered to one end of the cable with the other end connected to a mono jack (TS) plug.
The video below is a demonstration of the LASER Microphone. I’ve connected the solar cell to a POD X3 Live guitar processor.
I’d like to thank Leafcutter John for putting up the DIY Laser Microphone post on his website. For those of you who haven’t seen it, I strongly suggest you visit the website and have a look at the laser microphone video along with some of the other posts that have been put up under the projects section.
I’ve finally got around to making a Yamaha Subkick inspired microphone of my own, and its cost me less than $6!! I went out and bought a cheap 8″ driver unit with an impedance of 4 ohms and hooked it up to an XLR cable.
I placed the driver in front of the drum head close to the mic hole and placed a Samson Q Kick inside the kick drum. The home made subkick does a great job of capturing a much fuller sound than the Samson Q Kick. I was able to get a well rounded kick drum sound that had a smooth attack and full bodied quality to it using both microphones.
I decided to experiment a bit and hooked the driver to a POD X3 Live guitar processor. I’ve managed to get some nice sounds and I hope I’ll be able to use it at a gig sometime soon.
I’ve used some spacey patches and some traditional “heavy patches” with a combination of wah and delay.
Sports has been a very important part of my life for as long as I can remember. As a teenager I represented my school in athletics, cricket and basket ball and also had the opportunity to represent the state in athletics. Over the last few years my levels of sporting activity have declined drastically and I decided to join a few friends who regularly play squash and badminton to try and get in some much needed exercise (an endeavor that’s been moderately successful)
The squash and badminton courts we use are enormous reverberant halls with the ceilings that stretch to about 35 – 40 feet. This results in a HUGEEEE sound whenever the squash ball or the badminton shuttle is hit. I haven’t fully been able to capture the vastness of the space, but here are a few sounds I did manage to record. Unfortunately, I only managed to get 3 usable sounds from the badminton court due to uncooperative badminton players / friends!
The sounds that I was able to record at the squash courts turned out nicely (partly because I put my head and other body parts at a considerable risk of injury by placing myself as close as possible to the point of impact or path of the squash ball!!)
All the sounds were recorded over 3 months ago. I’ve finally found the time to put them together and finish this post! Needless to say, my efforts to try and squeeze in some exercise atleast thrice a week have now gone from moderately successful to completely unsuccessful!!!
Its been raining festivals over the last month or so in India. Yesterday was Dussera, and we had a poojari (a Hindu Priest) come into the studio to perform a pooja (a ritual / ceremony). Here’s a part of the mantras (hymns) he recited as part of the pooja over 20 minutes. I’ve also recorded a very nice sounding bell that is used as part of the Hindu ceremonies.
A few months ago a friend pulled <— this out from under the bed and said I should record it since it made a few interesting sounds. At first when I looked at it, it seemed very much like a type writer. A closer inspection revealed that the device did not have any space for paper to be inserted into it. It also did not have the “carriage return lever” that is such a prominent part of a typewriter. This device, I was told, was a calculator!!! Here are some of the “operational sounds” I’ve recorded.
The sound the calculator generated during the addition operation (Low Number Rotation – Addition), I thought, was quite similar to that of an old second world war dynamo based radio set (If you’ve watched some of Ben Burtt’s videos on how sounds for Wall-E were created, you’ll recollect that the dynamo based radio set was used to create the sound of Wall-E’s tracks).
Overall, I thought the calculator generated an interesting set of sounds – from sharp, heavy sounding “typewriter keys” to the ubiquitous “ka – ching!” of a cash register. If you want to add a few or all of the calculator sounds I’ve recorded to your library, let me know and I’ll send them to you.
Here’s a small video of the calculator being used.
The dictionary lists the following explanations for the word Documentation.
the use of documentary evidence.
a furnishing with documents, as to substantiate a claim or the data in a book or article.
Computers . manuals, listings, diagrams, and other hard- or soft-copy written and graphic materials that describe the use, operation, maintenance, or design of software or hardware: The documentation for the driver program is displayed on the screen.
I’ve always been a big fan of documentation and make every attempt to take down detailed notes, screen shots, photographs etc when I’m recording or mixing. While my pre-occupation with documenting might border on obsession, I strongly feel that documentaion forms an important part of lives.
The primary reason for starting this blog was to be able to document and catalogue eveything I do. The blog helps me reduce the amount of paper that has been accumulating in my drawers! But having said that, one must not underestimate the traditional method of documentation – a piece of paper and a pen. This is especially useful in scenarios where you can’t cart your laptop along. As a sound designer I believe documentation is important since it provides a template and a point of reference for similar projects that may come up in the future. Personally, having pages and pages of documentation has helped me time and again to come up with quick solutions and provided me with recording, mixing and editing techniques to fall back on in times of a sound designer’s version of writer’s block (Which is about 90% of the time!).
Here’s a track I had recorded as a student and the “log book” I typed out as part of documenting the process of recording and mixing.
While the above document is an example of one way to approach your studio session – both recording and mixing, field recording needs a different approach. The ability to quickly take down details of a take and identify which one you will possibly use once all the material is back in the studio is important. To be able to do this I’ve created a template based on the H4n’s file labelling protcol to help me quickly take notes during a field recording session. Here’s an example of how I use the template during recording sessions.
Entries made in the templates I had printed out
Finally, like I said in the beginning of the post; I am a big fan of documentation and it has helped me immensely in terms of serving as reference material. While it is at times hard to document what you do while you’re working, it’s always good practice to try and take notes during the process of recording, mixing, sound design etc simply because these will most likely prove useful in the future. As far as students are concerned; those of you pursuing courses in audio engineering, audio production etc etc should make it a point to take down in as much detail as possible what you do during a recording or mixing session. Whether the course requires you submit a log book or not, you must make it a habit to take down things you can go back to once you’re out in the “real world”. Make sure that you use your time in college well and experiment and document. You might just stumble on a technique (which you have duly documented and then used during your professional life) that will lend your audio content a very special sonic signature that people will recognise and attribute to you!!
A few weeks ago Varun Nair and I decided that we wanted to record a vehicle. After wasting a lot of time and money on attempting to record an auto rickshaw, we decided that recording Raghuram Kannan‘s Suzuki Swift would be the better option.
Suzuki Swift
The decision to record the Swift was made since the car has been considerably modified since its purchase in December 2007. In its current form the car sports a K & N Free Flow filter along with an induction kit, 14” – 195/65 tyres, shortened 1st and 2nd gears and a stiffened suspension. I have always wanted to record the car, since the K & N free flow filter gives it a very distinct sound that sets it apart from the stock Swift. At the rear end of the car, the exhaust produces a deep and dirty sound while under the hood the filter has the most amazing sound of air being sucked into the engine. The track below is a compilation of recordings I had made with my Nokia 5233 about a year and a half ago. I had recorded the sounds on an extremely cold and windy day while on holiday with Raghuram Kannan and a few other friends.
Our previous attempts at recording an auto rickshaw and a stock Suzuki Swift were scuttled by number of factors. The chief culprits during both the attempts were the incessant Bangalore traffic and the time it took us to setup the microphones. No matter how early we began setting up (anywhere between 4:45 a.m. to 5:30 a.m.); we would invariably run into a lot of traffic.
For the purpose of this recording we decided to change our strategy, and headed out about 30 kilometers (about 19 miles) from the city to a relatively isolated stretch of road Varun happened to find on the way to pick up his shining new Sound Devices USBPre 2. You can read the review posted by Varun here.
SETUP AND ROUTING
Micing the car this time around proved to be a lot easier, given that we already had a fair idea about where the mics would sound good; since we had attempted to record a stock Suzuki Swift the previous day. The diagram below indicates where the mics were mounted for this session.
The two Shure PG81s, as you can see in the diagram above, were placed under the hood. One was pointed directly at the engine block while the other was placed at an angle just above the intake. The contact mic was placed on the frame just under the hood. The PG52 and Sennheiser MKH 416 were mounted on the rear in order to capture the sound of the exhaust. The PG52 proved to be very useful in this respect as it was able to capture the bottom end of the exhaust very nicely. You can listen to the sound captured by PG52 while the car was idling below.
While mounting the two mics at the rear of the car – PG52 and Sennheiser 416 – proved to be relatively easy, we did encounter some trouble mounting the PG81 in the engine bay. The problem was eventually overcome with some ingenuity on our part!
The other PG81 and the contact mic were mounted in the following manner.
The PG52 was screwed onto the end of a boom and stuck under the Swift’s bumper. A hook under the bumper used for towing provided the perfect support for the PG52′s “self supporting” mount. The Fat Gecko camera mount I use along with my H4N was used to mount the Sennheiser MKH 416.
The 416 mounted using the Fat Gecko suction mount
PG52 + Roycote mini wind jammer
Routing
The 416 (exhaust) and PG81 on the filter were routed to the Sound Devices USBPre 2 while the contact mic and the PG81 on the engine were plugged into Varun’s H4N. I used my H4N to record the interior perspective during runs and also had the PG52 on the exhaust plugged into one of the inputs.
RECORDING THE CAR
During the first two – three runs we noticed that the PG52 and 416 strapped to the back of the car were picking up excessive wind noise. A generous amount of foam wrapped around the mics managed to reduce the amount of wind noise being picked up by the microphones.
The PG52 and Sennheiser MKH 416 wrapped in foam
We had no problems with the microphones placed under the hood. A few rounds around the block were enough for us to set levels. In order to ensure that the PG81s wouldn’t be damaged by heat generated by the engine, the hood was left open for 5 – 10 mins every two – three runs. While I wasn’t expecting the PG81s to hold up for too long under the intense heat, they proved to be quite sturdy and performed admirably despite being subjected to harsh conditions. The only real problems we did encounter during the course of the recording and could do nothing about were a few vehicles and some extremely irritating and loud birds!! (I had never imagined that birds could be such a hinderence while attempting to record a car!). Thankfully none of the birds showed up on any of our takes and the odd one that did was “shot” by Varun during editing.
RESULTS
We managed to get some good sounds and as Varun mentioned in his post – no microphones were damaged! Here are a few of the takes. Processing has been kept to a minimal – I’ve used the ToneBooster HumRemover to roll off of some of wind noise captured by the PG52 and Sennheiser 416.
For the following track I’ve used the 0 – 100 kmph > Bad shifts run. While I haven’t adjusted the volumes of any of the elements on the track, I have panned the sounds captured by the different microphones to represent where they were placed. The track also contains the interior perspetive of the run captured by the H4N (not part of any of the other tracks uploaded here).
Documentation is an oft overlooked part of our job. I strongly believe that it plays an important role in the whole process – from production to delivery. While documenting how and what you do in detail may not always be possible, I believe that making an effort to list what you’ve done always helps. I’ve started this blog primarily as a means to document what I do in the field and/or studio and hope it serves as a point of reference for future recording sessions; not just for myself but anyone else looking for different methods to approach a task.
For this recording session, Varun and I used diametrically opposite approaches for the purpose of taking down notes during and after takes. While Varun was able to enter an immense amount of detail on his Boom Recorder software, I chose the paper and pen to do all my documentation! I drafted a few templates to reflect the file labelling protocol followed by the H4N and then entered data into the relevant fields as we went through the different runs we had planned out for the day.
Entries made in the templates I had printed out
THE VERDICT
Despite the number of problems we faced in terms of availability of equipment, location and troublesome birds; we did manage to get some pretty clean and crisp takes. This can be attributed to the fact that we did our best to make sure that everything around us was as silent as it could be before a run. Having a good driver at the wheel proved to be useful too, as Raghu drove exactly the way he was asked to. Our ability approach problems differently and a willingness to try new things (without damaging equipment!) also proved to be a winning combination in this scenario.
