Saxophone Log: September 2012

Opps, it's been awhile since I did one of these. I have been keeping up the sax on and off - lately I've been having a bout of illness, of which I had major fits of coughing so I've laid of alot of saxy times, and only tooted the horn on and off.

In any case, I really wanted to do this this month, so whilst I was recovering most of this month, I think this bout of sick is more or less over and I hope to return.

I've been thinking about the recording for a fair bit, and previously I was sort of playing into a corner - the Heil PR31BW has a hypercardioid pattern, so it accepts a slight bit of sound from the corner. Today instead, I had my back to a corner of the room, and the rear of the mic pointed towards the tiny hallway connecting my room to the bathroom. I think the signal is clearer and does not sound as boxy as before.

On the flip side, it appears I just had my first encounter with a resonant room mode. I didn't pick up on this until after I put on my VRM box for the final checks, and hear very clearly, a whistling, like flutes, on two of the loud notes. I had to use some serious high-Q on my notch filters to remove it. But by doing so, it caused the body of the instrument to be removed as well.

Annoying, but what I did was split of the section (it was two quarter notes long) and EQ'ed it separately to the rest.

Erm, apart from that I thought my arrangement could really use more umph, some parts just feel dead. Ah well, always next month :)