New Monday #40
Happy Monday -
While I was writing this, producer Shel Talmy died. You might not know his name, but you surely know 'My Generation', 'Friday on My Mind', and this little ditty from The Kinks.
This was a groundbreaking recording. There’s fuzz guitar on it!
Now, the story is, to get that guitar sound, Dave Davies slashed his speaker with a razor blade. At the very beginning, before the band kicks in, you can clearly hear a buzzing that might or might not be the two edges of a paper speaker cone against each other, but also, by 1964 people knew that if you turned up an amp a lot you’d get distortion. Heck, people knew this since... forever? So, I think it’s a combination of a turned-up amp and a damaged speaker, but I wasn’t there. I was only a year old and still wetting myself.
Another thing to hear: the bassist not muting his bass. Listen for an out-of-tune resonance that can be heard in the gap in the iconic riff. Even as a kid this used to drive me nuts. What does it take to wrap a sock around the neck at the nut?
By the way, Jimmy Page is on this session, because The Kinks’ lead singer, Ray Davies, wasn’t playing his usual rhythm guitar. Producer Shel Talmy wanted him to concentrate on vocals and brought in Jimmy Page to do Ray’s parts. Because it was live in the studio with no overdubs. Now, both Jimmy Page and Dave Davies claim to be playing the rhythm part, which is unusual because usually guitarists claim playing the solo.
Talmy also produced a few very early David Bowie records, when Bowie was still Davy Jones. You’ve Got a Habit of Leaving is not one of Bowie’s best compositions, but even on this one we can hear hints of his latent songwriting ability. Check out the “rave up” sections that are verging on pure noise.
Talmy wasn’t all noise and rock, though. He recorded some gorgeous acoustic folk stuff. Let No Man Steal Your Thyme by Pentangle is a lovely recording. Check out the cello glide from left to right at the start, and the precision and clarity of the various parts.
Shel Talmy, off to that analog tape studio in the sky at 87.
Pumpkin Spice Latte
Shameless plug-in plug: go buy a Pumpkin Spice Latte. $14.99 - that’s less than what an actual Venti Pumpkin Spice Latte would cost you at a Starbucks in New York, and our plug-in, with its combination of saturation, ambiance, and echo is far more useful and less fattening, unless we’re talking about your tracks, because then it’s more fattening.
Microphone Stuff
I love microphones. I love having a lot of them to choose from, I love moving them around, I love buying them, I love trying different microphones and going, “meh... that sucks, try the XXXXXXX (insert your go-to mic here)”.
In no particular order: mic stuff.
What the 3:1 Rule really is
“When recording with multiple microphones, the 3:1 rule states that the second microphone should be placed three times as far away from the sound source as the first microphone.” Definition courtesy of the internet.
How to explain this... It’s not about phase. Phase doesn’t magically fix itself if things get three times farther away from each other. It’s about the LOUDNESS of LEAKAGE. What causes phase issues is the unintended stuff that gets into the second mic, and if it’s loud enough, plays phase havoc with the intended stuff in the first mic.
We have this:
Seems nice and uniform, doesn’t it?
Nope. The response changes depending on the frequency. In fact, the only place a mic is reliably flat, or somewhat like its frequency response diagram, is dead on from the front. From any other angle, the response is different.
The basic rules: the lower the frequency, the more the polar pattern tends to be omni; the tighter the polar pattern, the stranger the frequency response. The most consistent patterns are on bi-directional mics, the wonkiest are on supercardioids and shotgun mics. Here’s a more realistic response graph for a supercardioid mic.
A total mess above 1kHz. Or... think of it as a bunch of little EQ curves to play with.
Point the mic straight at something, get one frequency response. Position the mic off-axis to the sound source and the high-frequency response changes. It’s like a built-in low-pass filter.
There’s a lot of control here. Put a mic slightly above a singer’s mouth, point it down towards their chest and you can smooth out a spittie high end. Still sibilant? Move the mic right or left a bit. Come in from the side of their head, pointing towards their opposite shoulder. Adjust bass by coming in closer or further away. Adjust sibilance and highs by changing the mic’s axis.
A quick tip: if you’re going to be doing really weird mic angles on a singer, be aware that there’s a “turn towards the mic gravity” going on. Put a dummy mic in front of them so they sing towards it, and then let the weirdly placed mic do its job unnoticed.
This also works for any acoustic instruments, from cabinets to pianos to drums to horns—whatever.
Mics as Limiters
Mics are mechanical, mechanical stuff has inertia, the diaphragm of a mic has inertia. “Slow” heavy mics, like most moving coils, round off transients. I’ve written about this before. Here’s a diagram I stole.
This can make a huge difference between something sitting nicely in the mix and something that sounds like a little click unless you turn it up a lot, and then it’s way too loud.
Use Pop Filters Always
If you’re sticking a mic in front of a person, put a pop filter on it. Doesn’t matter if they’re popping the mic or not. They’re spitting crap and bits of chapped lip and dead taste buds and chia seeds and whatever else is in that mouth into the mic and all over the diaphragm. Kissing is fun, but cleaning chunks of spaghetti carbonara off your eardrum isn’t. Ever pay to get a diaphragm cleaned by some mic tech? Do you want to? Put a pop filter on it. It won’t affect your high-end.
Setting Up and Breaking Down
Most of you no longer deal with this, but it’s a good lesson.
When you’re doing a big session with lots of mics, set up the stands first, the cables second and put the mics on last. Route cables so there is always a footpath for people to walk that doesn’t have microphone cables on it. Route your drum mics all around one side of the kit so there’s a clear way for the drummer to get in and out without stepping over cables.
If you drop a cheap mic, it bounces. If an expensive mic hits the floor, chances are it’s toast.
Breaking down: before you let a single musician into the studio to put away their gear, unplug EVERY SINGLE MIC and put them AWAY in the MIC CABINET and LOCK IT perhaps. Every time a mic was ever stolen or broken, in all the years I was in studios, it was during the breakdown. Get them out of there first and fast.
This was shorter until I heard about the passing of Shel Talmy. Y’all have a great week.
Warm regards,
Luke