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La Blogotheque - Take Away Shows


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On the Baden Baden TAS, this is my guess:

- ORTF stereo boom mic, operated by François from behind the camera.

- One lav mic hidden in the singer's shirt.

- One lav mix hidden on the elec guitar amp.

 

I guess that's it? I can't see anything else, but as someone here mentioned it the trumpet is loud enough, the glockenspiel goes through any microphone around (I'm mixing a Mermonte Take Away Show coming out in a week and they have one of those - not that it's a nightmare, but it can really kill your boom if you get too close - even though if a glockenspiel was an animal, it would probably by a kitten: so cute).

 

I'm surprised there's nothing on the acoustic guitar though. Maybe an H4 is in the acoustic guitar player's jacket pocket and picking up the signal.

 

You guys got me very curious now :)

I can't wait to know how François pulled this off!

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I don't know about this one. Perhaps the background was quiet, or the fountain in the back was covering the city noise. This is a mixing issue though so it would be better to ask Julien about it.

 

On my mixes, if there's too much background noise i can try to make it quieter by using noise removing plug ins (Waves' Z-noise or Izotopes Noise remover). Also, we usually get rid of wireless interferences with Izotope Spectral Repair. In this Baden Baden one i think I hear one of those around 2m40s by the way.

 

Often, the background noise occurs in the boom mic. The lav mix have a "signal to noise" ratio (or perhaps i should say "musical signal to background noise" ratio) good enough to neglect the background noise. So whenever there's way too much noise, I'll usually ride the boom fader and fade it down a couple seconds and let the lav mics bring most of the signal (and therefore having the whole wide spectrum of the instrument untouched). In the mixing process we ride the faders A LOT because these sessions often get polluted with ambiant urban sound.

 

Does this answer your question?

 

Oh, we sometimes use the sound of the camera when there's no other choice... But let's not talk about that! ;)

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"It's music. We are talking for music. Not for dialogue. Music."

 

Exactly. Music just produces way different levels than dialogue. Hence background noise is much less of an issue (even less so because it is a "real" situation where mostz things you hear are part of the scenery.

 

Vas, forgive me but I have to say it: YOU LOSE! >:D

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Vas, forgive me but I have to say it: YOU LOSE! >:D

 

Only you can say that. You think in that way.

You have a inferiority maybe.

 

I can remember when I post something your answers is "Greeks they stole money".

 

Really. I'm really sad with your answer.

My answers is about "who can" and you say me "LOSER".

 

WTF man?

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Hi everyone, and thank you for your interest, It's so nice to see discussions like these !

 

What Henri said is very precise, complete and true. I'll just add specifications on the Baden Baden recording session.

Someone is going to be an astronaut :)

 

About the mic position : you guess it right with its shadows, it's a Schoeps ortf, hold on a very short boom, behind the camera. This provide the background, with winds in the trees, and bicycle on this one.

The there's a lot of lavs, hidden when possible. those where DPA's 4060, as far as I remember. This equipment was rented because we were fortunate enough to have good gears. But mainly it's poor stuff on take away shows.

 

The singer is miked, behind his shirt. it also takes shakers

There's an electric guitar with a small amp (honeytone), the amp is miked. (but you can't see it, it's not filmed. also the clearly see the jack at 4'42).

The acoustic guitar is either miked inside with a countryman (very discrete, easy to hide) or directly on its performer so has to get both guitar and baking vocals (it really works, and I think on this one he was doing both : on 1:07 you see the guitar player making the "oh, oh").

For the glock it's a balance between ambiance sound (you're right it's quite loud as a percussive instrument) and the lav on the glock player.

 

Trumpet is only ambiance. (or maybe he has a lav too ? I need to go back to the files...)

 

 

a few more info on this one :

 

- the band has a REALLY good acoustic balance between them (even with drums ; the singer was the only source that needs more level on mix).

- the weither was excellent, and we were in the middle of a quite quiet park (the van was at sloww speed)

- DPA's were good (sometimes you try a position and it's not working), so I was able to go else where grab the sound of the leaves during recording, to make it more real, beautiful.

- when everything is good, you can concentrate only on your "stereo image", i.e. you just listen to your stereo couple : you try to make smooth movements, and keep the overall balance OK (not going tooo close to the drums, etc, or trying to always face the band).

Then when mixed you have the possibility to choose what you wanna do (more real, more stereo, more close to sources and kind of "studio-like", etc....)

 

I think there's some answers here, you replied 4 times during my post that took long because I went back to the video to remember the details.

 

Nothing in the trees, too long to install, and too far from the band... (we only had 50 minutes to do the all recording of this one).

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for the frequencies question it's a really intersting one. It's all about mixing it and Julien did an excellent job. Hopefully the vocals turned out to be good so it requires few eqing (not too destructive for timbral profile); but a lot of time I'm sad because the balance is not perfect (not enough bass, aspecially, aprt for city rumble or wind in those take away shows).

 

But I really think you can go very far on EQs and get good sound out of it. Or sometimes you just lav everyone and mainly use the stereo couple. (

)

 

 

But for the first song, I'm not convinced by the percussive part at the end. It lacks maybe a bass instrument (just a tom floor for example).

 

On this session we have our crappy mics used :

sennheiser G2 transmitters

4 octavas (2 on marimba, 2 for ambiance)

1 or 2 sanken cos 11 (one on cello)

a crappy mic on the harp.

and my 788T cause I love the fact you can take it everywhere (light, efficient), and have 8 good channels.

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I did a series of Take Away Shows for South by Southwest in 2008. Working with Vincent Moon was probably the most fun and creative experience a sound guy could have. We filmed about 10 or 12 bands of the course of 3 days. The shows were made for Crackle.com and seem to have been taken down. If anyone can find these shows on the web, they are a lot of fun to watch and they sound pretty good too. Back in '08 the 788 had just been released and the entire time I was wishing I had one. I just remember somehow putting an Edirol R4, 744T, 8 411s, and a boom into my Petrol Organizer. It was a true back breaker. 

 

Ben

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The acoustic guitar is miked (...) directly on its performer so has to get both guitar and baking vocals.

For the glock it's a balance between ambiance sound (you're right it's quite loud as a percussive instrument) and the lav on the glock player.

 

I forgot you would do that sometimes. It works REALLY well! Shiieeeeeeeeeeet!

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I did a series of Take Away Shows for South by Southwest in 2008. Working with Vincent Moon was probably the most fun and creative experience a sound guy could have. We filmed about 10 or 12 bands of the course of 3 days. The shows were made for Crackle.com and seem to have been taken down. If anyone can find these shows on the web, they are a lot of fun to watch and they sound pretty good too. Back in '08 the 788 had just been released and the entire time I was wishing I had one. I just remember somehow putting an Edirol R4, 744T, 8 411s, and a boom into my Petrol Organizer. It was a true back breaker. 

 

Ben

hi ben do you remember the band you filmed ?

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Today I have bit surprised.

In a theory "you can't" and the next time you hear this (especially from Baden Baden).

 

Is that the most interesting recording work in street music who I have hear in life.

And Francois, Henri, Julien and the team did a brilliant work!

 

PS. I feel to say sorry to Jeff and other members for all disruption.

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Wow wow wow. I go to sleep and the next day all this. Vas, dude, come on, you wanted to play didn't you? If you act like you know it all (and better than everybody else) and can't deal with being wrong then I'm sorry to say you're a bad loser. My advice: be humble, watch and learn from others. Reading a lot is good but it doesn't replace proper experience. Now I just wish you hadn't watered down this otherwise excellent discussion with your worked up posts. I'll accept your apology above for offending me without reason. And don't worry, this was my last statement to this matter.

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Hi Francois,

We filmed many bands, here are the ones I remember off the top of my head:

Joseph Arthur, Jonah and the Whale, Stars like Fleas, Why, the Rodeo, Los Campesinos, Akron/Family, Radar Bros.

Probably 3 - 5 more bands whose names I can't remember. We went all around Austin filming these guys in the back of my friends big orange pickup truck. I think each band did 3 songs and 1 was always centered around the truck.

Ben

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