It's been a little while since I've posted anything even remotely musical, but a few years back I wrote some Mass parts for Lent. This was back in school, when I actually knew what terms like "Dorian Mode" meant, so they're, of course, a bit funky and I think I did a good job of capturing where I was at that particular Lent. Well, they've also been my go-to Mass parts during Lent for the last few years, so now that I'm leading more places than ever (and have had some other people ask to do them all over the place), I went ahead and YouTubed (which is totally a word, Firefox spell-checker!) some sketches of them so people could at least hear what they sound like.
So check them out! I'll probably start posting a lot of stuff up there just because it was way easier than I ever thought. And it's pretty surprisingly good quality, considering it's just my iPhone4's video app. Just think, even ten years ago, shooting a video and putting it on the internet took thousands of dollars of equipment and hours of editing and uploading, and now you can do it with a $200 iPhone and a few touch-screen touches. Technology is a b.
Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recording. Show all posts
Friday, March 11
Sunday, June 27
Some light recording
I've been in Toronto for a whole week, but I thought I'd throw this up real quick.
The pastor of the parish where I've been LifeTeen Director for the last few months has been reassigned, and tonight we celebrated his last Mass. It was a really emotional night, and we had a lot of bittersweet worship time, and said goodbye. Literally the day that my flight left last week, I did a quick recording of a Catholic classic, Here I Am, Lord to be used in a video for him, since it's been a really powerful and important song in his life. And, because the teens are awesome, the video is up on YouTube. It's Redman's You Never Let Go, then my recording, complete with a few pictures of me rocking it mid-Mass, along with a whole lot of pictures of Fr. Tom being awesome. Enjoy!
...I need to buy/make a pop filter.
The pastor of the parish where I've been LifeTeen Director for the last few months has been reassigned, and tonight we celebrated his last Mass. It was a really emotional night, and we had a lot of bittersweet worship time, and said goodbye. Literally the day that my flight left last week, I did a quick recording of a Catholic classic, Here I Am, Lord to be used in a video for him, since it's been a really powerful and important song in his life. And, because the teens are awesome, the video is up on YouTube. It's Redman's You Never Let Go, then my recording, complete with a few pictures of me rocking it mid-Mass, along with a whole lot of pictures of Fr. Tom being awesome. Enjoy!
...I need to buy/make a pop filter.
Tuesday, December 15
New Gear: Studio Projects B1
Having already found an interesting little mic that colors acoustic guitar in a really flattering way (MXL 991), I was searching for a nice, even microphone for vocals so that I could use ProTools to scratch out some demos and eventually get myself out into the world, just like the hundreds of other artists on the internets. Admittedly, this is a bit like using a flamethrower to clear the snow off of your driveway, but I wanted scalability, and dagnabit, I got it! After some good advice, I started looking really seriously at the Studio Projects B1.
In my mind, the first thing I needed to decide was whether I wanted a good dynamic microphone, which could easily come with me on gigs or fill other live-sound needs (and would subsequently maintain some kind of constant between recordings and live sound), or a good condenser or ribbon (or tube, or any other variant) mic that was more fragile but better suited to controlled, studio use. To this day, I'm not sure that the choice I made is the same one I would make again, because for someone who is going to be playing out a lot more, that consistency would be really nice. But either way, I settled upon the B1, which is a Large Diaphram Condenser.
The differences in technology between condensers and dynamics is a topic in and of itself, but in an extremely simplified explanation, dynamic microphones are less sensitive, can take higher sound levels without distorting (where distortion, unlike in a tube amp, is a bad thing) and can also generally handle a lot more physical abuse; getting dropped, stepped on, not explode under Phantom power, etc. A condenser mic is more sensitive, which leads to more accurate sound (but can also lead to more background noise in a noisy environment) and is what Phantom power was designed for. Hence, while a good studio will have every kind of microphone you could imagine, you tend to see really nice condensers in a studio setting, whereas you would almost never use one live, or at least, not in a vocal application. But as with anything else in music, rules were made to be broken! (which can sometimes lead to broken microphones!)
As with everything I've bought while still being in making-some-money-but-primarily-paying-down-student-loans mode, I got a pretty good deal on this one, though even at the standard street price of about $100, this mic (supposedly) holds it's own against other similar microphones priced 10 times higher. I can't really comment on that myself, having only this and two other microphones in my microphone closet, but I will say that I got way more than I thought in terms of accessories. I think that this must be one of the newest versions. Some features include two different pads (-10 and -20 dB), two high-pass filters (75 hz and 150 hz), a shock-mount, a sweet wooden box to house the microphone, and a windscreen for when I'm recording, umm, bird-calls in the wild. I think virtually all of these were absent in v1, so I definitely profited from waiting a bit.
As for the sound? I need to play with it a lot more, but it seems pretty even, frequency wise. I did do a bit of recording on a tune I wrote a while ago called "Fair Warning", which I put up on my very own MySpace. Yay! The acoustic is done with the MXL 991 (12th fret, 45 degrees towards the soundhole), the vocals with the B1. And I don't have a pop filter, so I was being a bit...cautious, vocally. But I threw it into ProTools, jammed the obligatory reverb and eq on there (and a bit of compression on the vocals), and there you have it. And ignore the lyrics. They're quasi-temporary. Unless you love them. Then they're super-permanent!
My overall rating? Definitely worth the price, if you need something that can jam on vocals and acoustic (though I haven't tried it yet, but a lot of people have claimed to like it). And honestly, for $100, you'd be hard-pressed to find something better.
In my mind, the first thing I needed to decide was whether I wanted a good dynamic microphone, which could easily come with me on gigs or fill other live-sound needs (and would subsequently maintain some kind of constant between recordings and live sound), or a good condenser or ribbon (or tube, or any other variant) mic that was more fragile but better suited to controlled, studio use. To this day, I'm not sure that the choice I made is the same one I would make again, because for someone who is going to be playing out a lot more, that consistency would be really nice. But either way, I settled upon the B1, which is a Large Diaphram Condenser.
The differences in technology between condensers and dynamics is a topic in and of itself, but in an extremely simplified explanation, dynamic microphones are less sensitive, can take higher sound levels without distorting (where distortion, unlike in a tube amp, is a bad thing) and can also generally handle a lot more physical abuse; getting dropped, stepped on, not explode under Phantom power, etc. A condenser mic is more sensitive, which leads to more accurate sound (but can also lead to more background noise in a noisy environment) and is what Phantom power was designed for. Hence, while a good studio will have every kind of microphone you could imagine, you tend to see really nice condensers in a studio setting, whereas you would almost never use one live, or at least, not in a vocal application. But as with anything else in music, rules were made to be broken! (which can sometimes lead to broken microphones!)
As with everything I've bought while still being in making-some-money-but-primarily-paying-down-student-loans mode, I got a pretty good deal on this one, though even at the standard street price of about $100, this mic (supposedly) holds it's own against other similar microphones priced 10 times higher. I can't really comment on that myself, having only this and two other microphones in my microphone closet, but I will say that I got way more than I thought in terms of accessories. I think that this must be one of the newest versions. Some features include two different pads (-10 and -20 dB), two high-pass filters (75 hz and 150 hz), a shock-mount, a sweet wooden box to house the microphone, and a windscreen for when I'm recording, umm, bird-calls in the wild. I think virtually all of these were absent in v1, so I definitely profited from waiting a bit.
As for the sound? I need to play with it a lot more, but it seems pretty even, frequency wise. I did do a bit of recording on a tune I wrote a while ago called "Fair Warning", which I put up on my very own MySpace. Yay! The acoustic is done with the MXL 991 (12th fret, 45 degrees towards the soundhole), the vocals with the B1. And I don't have a pop filter, so I was being a bit...cautious, vocally. But I threw it into ProTools, jammed the obligatory reverb and eq on there (and a bit of compression on the vocals), and there you have it. And ignore the lyrics. They're quasi-temporary. Unless you love them. Then they're super-permanent!
My overall rating? Definitely worth the price, if you need something that can jam on vocals and acoustic (though I haven't tried it yet, but a lot of people have claimed to like it). And honestly, for $100, you'd be hard-pressed to find something better.
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