Week 2 Reflection

This week we learnt how to set up for filming and audio-recording "talents" (as the professionals call the artists, we are told). Thrown somewhat into the deep end James left us to our devices with the equipment and told us to set up. Happily, we were able to work it out without causing damage to anything - this "physical" tech is fairly self-explanatory so it is kind of just like fancy 3D puzzles... if it doesn't fit, don't try again because it probably fits elsewhere.

During class there was a bit of a question mark about the validity of learning to play with hugely expensive things that most schools would never have. We discussed some cheaper options, such as the zoom and the thing that improved iPhone front-facing-camera audio, and I think in the future, video in particular is getting fairly good for fairly cheap. I also think if there were enough schools in the area that felt they could chip in, perhaps whichever schools we were posted at could loan the equipment and our expertise out to surrounding schools? In this case I don't think this skillset is a matter of "we need role models in every school" like singing, but it does mean we can significantly professionalise the work of our students - acoustic performance is no longer the mark of professionalism that it once was.

One thing we didn't really get around to today was mixing, but looking through Chapter 1 of Senior (2011)'s Mixing Secrets for the Small Studio on "Using Nearfield Monitors", one thing that stood out as very applicable to schools was the advice to use something for playback that most reflects the way in which the music will be used - for example, don't use giant party speakers if most of your listeners will be using headphones. For school purposes I would probably lean closer to a headphone style mix if you're hoping your students will listen to it on their own, but if it were to be presented at a big night then having the option of playing with sound through bigger speakers would be helpful.

Notes on audio things:

• Condensor/pencil mics pick up the overall sound of the room plus all the detail. Beware the air conditioner sound!

• They require "phantom power" to work (on mixers this can be labelled +48).

• dynamic mics have a much closer range and are therefore great if you want one person's sound (e.g. just one singer sitting next to other instruments and you only want the singer)

• dynamic mics don't require phantom power and are generally quite sturdy.

• Zooms are super handy because they can work as both a redundancy and take input from other mics (but don't plug instruments straight in).

• You can change the angle of a zoom's range by twisting the top mics left and right (the ones we used had a "90" and "120" marked on them).

• Putting mics too far apart means that sounds reach them at slightly different times and creates a metallic/tinny sound called "phasing". Not a great idea.

• When using an XY configuration have the mic heads directly on top of each other. The mics should point to the edges of the shot.

• When doing stereo: Input 1 = left, input 2 = right.

Setting up a dynamic mic for Emma to use. It survived James dropping it on the floor!

The Zoom and the device that improves audio quality on a selfie-facing recording (for iPhone). Two possible ways of recording that are probably within the means of an average school.

Here are some hot tips we learnt about filming:

Have at least two cameras, one that stays still and captures the whole shot (even if it looks ugly), called the "redundancy", and the other(s) getting more interesting shots. This means that if something goes wrong with the interesting shots there is still something to use!

Angus helped me fix the lights to an appropriate level by looking at the image on the screen (not the lens) and telling me if the light made it better or not.

We turned off the room lights so as to avoid the overhead-light-eyebag effect. We ended up chucking James' orange jumper over one of our lights to warm it up a bit.

References

Senior, M. (2011). Mixing secrets for the small studio. Oxford: Focal.