Not much going on here this week but plenty happened on twitter. In case you missed something, here’s what @theaudiogeek has been up to on Twitter this past week.
Last week I was recording a song here at Epic Sounds that was just acoustic guitar and vocals. It felt a bit empty in parts and we had plenty of time to experiment so that’s what we did.
The perfect $1 shaker
First we looked for a shaker sound, not having a real “store bought’ shaker wasn’t an issue because my kitchen has a cupboard full of spices and other things to shake. My favorite shaker turned out to be sesame seeds in a plastic jar. I believe it came from the dollar store. Depending on what the song needs, try peppercorns, rice, sugar in plastic or glass jars.
I recorded the sesame seed shaker with an XY spaced stereo pair of AT 3035s with a pop filter in front (highly recommended). For processing I used BX solo with the width at 300%, a bit of EQ to take off the lows and very top end, then sent into some reverb. It was a great sound, but it didn’t make the final mix.
Cardboard percussion
Another thing we tried was a cardboard box hit with drum sticks. It was cool but needed a lot of processing to make it fit with the acoustic guitars and shaker so again it was scrapped to give us more time to focus on vocals. You should definitely try it, it costs nothing but a bit of your time.
Guitar case kick
And finally a sound that did make the final mix. We wanted a sort of deep drum sort of sound, but without a kick drum around or digging into the sample library we found the perfect thing. The acoustic guitar case! We laid out a thick blanket on the floor, turned the empty case upside down and tapped the top until we found the ideal spot (there is a ton of tonal variations on a guitar case believe it or not) and marked the spot to hit. To fake a soft mallet I wrapped the end of a drumstick with a guitar cleaning cloth and secured it with a twist tie. Recorded it in mono, did the typical kick drum EQ stuff and had a cool sound that worked really well for the final climax of the song.
Just do it
So the point I’m trying to make…try anything! Your favorite shaker of all time might already be in the spice rack, mine was. If not go down to the dollar store and try things out, guaranteed you’ll find something you can use.
Have a listen to what we accomplished in that afternoon.
When the Magic Mouse was first released I thought it was very cool, but held off on buying it until I heard some first hand reviews. The general consensus is it’s a good mouse, but was a little underwhelming.
I got a Future Shop gift card from my boss (Thanks Jason!) for Christmas and I ordered the Magic Mouse. I’m not going to get into a rant about Future Shop, even though I really want to, that’s not the point of the article. I ordered one…stuff happened…and I have it now.
Please everyone take the time to listen and if you enjoy it spread the word to anyone that might be interested as well. Thanks!
This is the 1st Annual Roundtable Discussion of the Audio Recording Podcast Community. This show includes Ryan Canestro, Jon Tidey, and Jesse Zoller, Ronan Chris Murphy, Dave Chick, Slau, and Big Al Wagner. This is a long show, but certainly worth the listen. Where else are you going to hear all of your favorite podcasters together in one place?!
Those jerks started without me but I still had a great time and I can’t wait for next year to do it again. Thanks to Ryan for organizing it, writing the music and putting it all together.
