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KarmanHardon
Joined: Jan 14, 2007
Posts: 142
Location: Montreal
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 Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 8:09 am Post subject:
Your thoughts on a crazy approach to mixing... |
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Hey everyone.
Me and a friend I occasionally mix songs for were drunk and thought of something kind of completely nuts and impractical but interesting nonetheless...
Imagine mixing the tracks of a song by feeding each track to its own speaker in the room. Yeah. 24 tracks? 24 speakers. And the "master bus" is a stereo mic...one of these binaural type things.
Panning instruments and toying around their "presence" in the mix would imply moving the speaker that is assigned to that instrument left and right, back and forth... up and down...on a tilt?
The reason why we find this interesting to attempt even with whatever non-reference, hi-fi speakers I have at my disposal, is to see how a certain cohesion provided by the natural reverb of the room, minimal as it is, could be captured this way.
Feel free to laugh this off as plain stupid. heh! But I'm curious to hear your thoughts if any. |
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JovianPyx
Joined: Nov 20, 2007
Posts: 1988
Location: West Red Spot, Jupiter
Audio files: 224
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| Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 10:47 am Post subject:
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Not so crazy when you consider how a live concert is mic'd. Each instrument has at least one mic and they may also mic the room or concert hall in several places. So while you're not using a board to do the mixing and instead are using a natural acoustic mix, you're getting each instrument in a stereo field and the room acoustics. So I think it's a clever idea if you can afford 24 speakers or have them already. You can also do things like open drapes or closed drapes, moving furniture around, moving speakers around, and controlling the level of each instrument from it's own volume control. And of course, mic placement allows more tuning of the mix. For my money, it's definitely something worth trying. It could be advantageous to have a separate room where a person can monitor the mix with headphones.
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Last edited by JovianPyx on Thu Mar 14, 2019 6:06 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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1roomstudio
Joined: Nov 25, 2018
Posts: 68
Location: California
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| Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 4:45 pm Post subject:
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Not crazy at all... in fact shows a clear understanding of what “mixing” means. Another approach... moving the microphones would imitate the effect of a listener moving amongst the musicians.
A performance art piece from the 60’s (maybe 70’s?) involved a mic swinging from the ceiling within a ring of speakers causing various feedback effects.
You and your friend should pursue your idea... you will have fun... you will learn a lot and you will be lauded and appreciated by a vanishingly thin slice of humanity.
Thank you for sharing...
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AlanP
Joined: Mar 11, 2014
Posts: 746
Location: New Zealand
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| Posted: Thu Mar 14, 2019 7:29 pm Post subject:
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Isn't that how songs were originally recorded, back in the Dark Ages of Technology?
The band, around the one mike (because those things were expensive!) and, when it was time for the solo, the solo-ist stepped forward, closer to the mike for more volume. |
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
Posts: 2071
Location: Berks County, PA
Audio files: 89
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 12:41 pm Post subject:
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I do that in our planetarium, and not only rotating instrument-to-speaker location, but also permuting them as part of the composition, using location-in-the-room just like key, meter, timbre, and other compositional degrees of freedom. Wrote an open access paper A Circular Planetarium as a Spatial Visual Musical Instrument last summer, gave an invited talk at the IMERSA Summit 2019 on immersive media in planetariums & related environments last month. It's a good approach. 
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Grumble
Joined: Nov 23, 2015
Posts: 1303
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:59 pm Post subject:
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About recording with microphones:
I once took styropor sheets about 2cm thick, and made a head out of it, complete with ears and in the ears I placed electret microphones and here you have a great recording microphone.
I could hear where someone was in the room, not even in direction but also in elevation.
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
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Location: Berks County, PA
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 7:44 am Post subject:
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| Grumble wrote: | About recording with microphones:
I once took styropor sheets about 2cm thick, and made a head out of it, complete with ears and in the ears I placed electret microphones and here you have a great recording microphone.
I could hear where someone was in the room, not even in direction but also in elevation. |
Were the mics omnidirectional or unidirectional? I'd like to try that!
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Grumble
Joined: Nov 23, 2015
Posts: 1303
Location: Netherlands
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 7:50 am Post subject:
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They were just the standard electret microphones like this:
I did this about 40 years ago, nowadays more ppl seen to have found this a nice way to record live music, it looked something like this:
Search for diy binaural microphone and a whole new world opens up on you 
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Acoustic Interloper
Joined: Jul 07, 2007
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Location: Berks County, PA
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| Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 12:19 pm Post subject:
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Thanks!
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KarmanHardon
Joined: Jan 14, 2007
Posts: 142
Location: Montreal
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| Posted: Mon Aug 05, 2019 8:39 am Post subject:
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| Hey thanks for your thoughts, everyone! |
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RingMad
Joined: Jan 15, 2011
Posts: 428
Location: Montreal, Canada
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| Posted: Fri Aug 09, 2019 4:56 am Post subject:
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| 1roomstudio wrote: | | A performance art piece from the 60’s (maybe 70’s?) involved a mic swinging from the ceiling within a ring of speakers causing various feedback effects |
I believe you are referring to Steve Reich's Pendulum Music (For Microphones, Amplifiers Speakers and Performers), composed in 1968. It usually involved at least 3 mics.
I built myself some binaural mics years ago, and still use them.
For years here in Montreal, there used to be an event called "Rien à voir" ("nothing to see"), which involved a venue with 12 speakers spaced evenly around the audience, and the composer would perform a live mix of their electro-acoustic piece.
Francisco Lopez insisted on a quadraphonic sound system, wherein he would be in the center of the room and perform a mix in the dark (often the audience would be given blindfolds). Kaffe Matthews also preferred to perform that way, but without the darkness part.
It makes sense for this type of music to move away from the traditional performer on the stage at one end of the room, flanked by P.A. speakers. But it's not always practical, and can be more involved to set up.
.:james:. |
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KarmanHardon
Joined: Jan 14, 2007
Posts: 142
Location: Montreal
Audio files: 1
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| Posted: Thu Apr 23, 2020 6:53 am Post subject:
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| RingMad wrote: |
For years here in Montreal |
Oh!
Hey, neighbor!
Have you recorded the eerie silence of the city yet?
Man, I should like it but I find it unsettling. It's the voices of people that are missing. Too silent. |
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airlock
Joined: Apr 06, 2007
Posts: 299
Location: Calabash, NC USA
Audio files: 53
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| Posted: Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:19 pm Post subject:
Re: Your thoughts on a crazy approach to mixing... |
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| KarmanHardon wrote: | Hey everyone.
Me and a friend I occasionally mix songs for were drunk and thought of something kind of completely nuts and impractical but interesting nonetheless... |
Well, I'd say it is nuts- but I'm setting up to do something similar and I don't have the excuse of being drunk when I thought of it, so no, not nuts, I think you guys do brilliant work when you're drunk. The tracks getting out into air and doing all the things sound waves do to each other is going to provide a unique effect that you might be hard-pressed to duplicate.
I just need another couple class d amps and I'm ready to go. The limitation would be of the 12 outputs I have available from the interface 2 are needed to monitor, so I figure on putting out 5 stereo groups or 10 mono or some combination of the same.
Getting all the speakers together was not a problem:
Thank God for wives who are no longer willing to tolerate their husbands large floor standing speakers in their living rooms.
Good luck! |
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1roomstudio
Joined: Nov 25, 2018
Posts: 68
Location: California
Audio files: 1
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| Posted: Sun Apr 26, 2020 8:58 am Post subject:
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| RingMad wrote: | | 1roomstudio wrote: | | A performance art piece from the 60’s (maybe 70’s?) involved a mic swinging from the ceiling within a ring of speakers causing various feedback effects |
I believe you are referring to Steve Reich's Pendulum Music (For Microphones, Amplifiers Speakers and Performers), composed in 1968. It usually involved at least 3 mics.
It makes sense for this type of music to move away from the traditional performer on the stage at one end of the room, flanked by P.A. speakers. But it's not always practical, and can be more involved to set up.
.:james:. |
I’m sure you are correct that it was Steve Reich... and yes music from speakers should not be limited to a pair in front of the audience. Interesting that everyone excepts surround sound as obvious in a theater; but somehow novel at a concert. 😎
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