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tags: Music
(previous studies) provide a thoroughly researched historical record of technologies and techniques which recordists used to create certain tracks, but they rarely explain the audible consequences of those techniques beyond the recorded repertoire of just one band in particular. In fact, very few studies have considered microphone practice as a fundamentally musical concern that is worthy of music-analytic scrutiny.
Microphone recording practice produces the characteristic sound of the record.
- microphone choice
- proximity
- placement or angle
BI’s unconventional use of a single dynamic microphone to transduce all of his vocal and acoustic guitar tracks is of particular importance.
Condenser microphones contain a capsule called a capacitor; the term condenser is outdated. It consists of two plates, one fixed and the other unfixed. The unfixed plate acts as the mic’s diaphragm. As the front plate is disturbed by the soundwaves it vibrates sympathetically, inducing a charge between itself and the unfixed plate.
In Skinny Love, two guitars play in unison, but when the track is split and panned left and right the difference in guitar tracks is clear. One track is warm with a mic positioned by the sound hole. This supplies the bass line. The second is slightly detuned with a drone or static tone from the open strings. The microphone is distant from the neck and slightly off axis.
It is also likely that Vernon recorded the hand claps from several angles of incidence to the microphone, in order to get several different ‘tones’, giving the impression of a group of people clapping rather than just one person clapping very loudly.
Comb-filtering is a phenomenon that can occur when two signals are summed. If the signals are out of phase with one another, discrepancies in their amplitude and/or frequency can cause certain frequencies to be cancelled out of the summed signal.