Mobile recording
Mobile recording is now more accessible than ever and it’s a great way to enhance your tracks – you can even create entire productions based on found sounds. Hollin Jones gets on the move.
With each year that passes, huge strides are made in the field of mobile recording, thanks largely to the ongoing miniaturisation of high-quality audio recording kit. Just a decade ago, your mobile recording options were fairly limited. You’d have needed to shell out a chunk of cash for a portable DAT machine or taken your chances with a MiniDisc recorder. Laptops were far less powerful than they are today, their battery life far shorter and USB mics the stuff of dreams. Today, of course, much of this has changed. Small-form-factor laptops and netbooks have solid-state drives and processors easily capable of supporting multitrack audio recording. Portable hand-held recorders are inexpensive and offer astonishing audio quality (with some careful positioning). Smartphones are capable of CD-quality recording and devices such as the iPad are redefining the way we think about making music on the move. When once you had to record audio from tape into a hardware sampler then trigger it from a MIDI sequencer, now digital audio is everywhere, bringing with it the flexibility of rapid transfer and editing. Modern DAWs enable you to do things that could only have been imagined a few years ago, while specialised software instruments can use digital samples as the basis for synthesizing whole new types of sound.
Finders keepers
Using mobile recording techniques opens up a whole new world of possibilities to today’s musician and producer, but the history of ‘found sounds’ as they are sometimes known goes back to the 1940s, when French composer and theorist Pierre Schaeffer began to use sound as a compositional tool. The Musique Concrète movement took advantage of advances in recording technology at the time, which included Shellac record players, mixing desks, mechanical plate or spring reverb and filtering, to go beyond conventional recorded music and create something new and different. When magnetic tape first came into use around 1950, people realised that they could achieve unique results by splicing sections of tape together to create non-linear effects from bits of recorded sound. Tape, in one form or another, endured for a long time as the primary recording medium and was only supplanted years later by digital audio captured to disc or hard drive.
Even then, you were still quite limited in what you could achieve with, say, a digital sampler. Editing was fairly good, but other kinds of manipulation, especially time- and pitch-stretching, still had side effects that were hard to avoid. More recently, digital sound has become as flexible as MIDI thanks to the advent of different kinds of ‘elastic’ technologies such as Logic’s Flex Time, Melodyne and other advanced manipulation tools. Virtual instruments like Camel Audio’s Alchemy are able to use samples as templates for generating other sounds using a hybrid of different kinds of synthesis. Artists such as John Cage, Christopher Hobbs, Matthew Herbert and Scanner have all made extensive use of found sounds in their productions and even if it’s a technique still mostly used in more experimental works and art installations, it is gradually becoming more mainstream.
It’s worth mentioning the difference between mobile recording and using found sounds to make music. Mobile recording can apply to anything from capturing a live gig to recording the sound of the sea to use in the background of a piece of music or recording a piano at someone’s house. The concept of found-sound recording has its roots in the idea that music does not have to be made up of collections of musical notes, rather that everything around us can be made into music or a piece of audio art.
For all but the most ambient music, this often means using some sounds as rhythmic elements and others as textures or mapping samples across a keyboard to play them as if they were an instrument. So there is some crossover – you have to do mobile recording to use these sounds in your productions, but you don’t necessarily have to be making something really avant garde if you do. Mobile recording really just means recording free from the shackles of one particular studio or space. What you do with the sounds after that is up to you.
Tools of the trade
To record on the move you’ll need either a portable recorder or a laptop with an audio interface and a mic (maybe a USB mic). Hand-held recorders are relatively cheap now and offer incredible audio quality. If you’re using a video camera or DSLR to record sounds, you may not be aware that most aren’t really geared towards professional-quality audio recording. Their grainy characteristics can have uses in some cases and fitting a dedicated external mic is a step in the right direction, but a dedicated digital recorder will offer far better results. There are quite a few around, including models from Yamaha, Zoom, Tascam, Edirol and M-Audio, most of which have a stereo condenser microphone, headphone and a line input (and often a small loudspeaker). They are based on Flash memory so have no moving parts and they usually plug directly into your computer via USB for data transfer and recharging. These kinds of recorders are designed to cope with the high sound pressure levels of things like live rock gigs but also be sensitive enough to capture the nuances of an acoustic performance, for example.
This is achieved through a user-definable recording level control. They can record in uncompressed AIF or WAV format and usually as mp3 as well, so you can choose between longer record times or shorter times but at full CD quality. The line input gives them a second important function, which is the ability to take a feed directly from a mixing desk or other source. This would be a good way to capture the engineer’s mix of a gig, without any of the crowd noise or unwanted acoustic oddities of the room.
The big attraction of hand-held recorders is that they start up in no time and slip easily into your pocket, so you don’t need a power supply, cables or any of the stuff usually associated with making professional-quality sound recordings. There are other benefits, too. They’re discreet, so it’s possible to use them without anyone really noticing, which is infinitely preferable to waving a microphone around. Just like cameraphones let you snap moments of inspiration or scenes that exist only for a few seconds more easily than a big SLR would, you might be on a bus and hear the rhythmic throbbing of the engine, which could be used as the basis of a piece of music. You might look pretty odd if you whipped out a laptop and a mic, but a surreptitious pocket recorder will go unnoticed. Similarly, you can record cityscapes by placing a recorder in your pocket or holding it in your hand, making sure that the mic is unobstructed as you walk around. They can be pointed at things, stuck into spaces where you can’t fit and are generally incredibly useful. Lots of records make creative use of recorded sounds not only as musical elements, but also as backgrounds and textures. The sound of a city street, a plane taking off, a football crowd or an audience are all things that can add new layers and depth to your pieces and can’t be synthesised using instruments. Smartphones can perform a similar function to hand-held recorders, though you often have to use a separate microphone to get the best results. Blue Microphones makes the Mikey series for iPod and the iPhone (up to the 3GS) as well as Flip, which offers high-quality recording. Lupo’s Mini Microphone also works with the iPhone 4.
Mic placement
Hand-held devices are ideal for recording live performances, although unless you have incredible arm stamina you will want to fix the recorder somewhere so that it records in a consistent way and the sound doesn’t fluctuate too much. This will depend entirely on the venue of the recording. By placing the device somewhere in the room you will capture the ambience, but you may end up getting too much crowd noise and not enough music. Equally, by placing it too close to a performer you can put them in the foreground a bit too much – it’s a case of trying a few things to see what works best.
If you’re recording a classical concert or an acoustic performance during which the audience is likely to be more sedate, you will have a few more options. At a rock gig, it might be sensible to record from roughly the same location as the front-of-house desk, which will enable you to pick up the same sound that the mixing engineer is hearing. In either case, you could take a feed from the desk instead or, if you are feeling particularly adventurous, use two recorders, one taking a feed and one in the room. This might present some tricky sync and phase problems if you tried to sync them up later to mix between the two, but at least you would have the choice of which one to use.
Using a laptop for recording obviously involves carrying around some more kit, but it also opens up more possibilities. You would probably use a laptop only to record something static rather than wandering around with it, so you would need an audio interface of some kind and a mic (or perhaps a USB mic). Apple’s smaller MacBooks and new MacBook Airs are highly portable and will, of course, accept a USB-powered audio interface to which they will supply phantom power if the interface has the facility. Smaller PC laptops and netbooks are cheaper but at the lower end may struggle to run DAW software smoothly, though they should be fine with simple wave editors. You can cut down on kit even more by using a USB microphone, a relatively recent invention, as they typically offer great recording quality but without the need for a separate interface. Audio-Technica’s AT2020, sE’s USB220A and Shure’s PG42USB are a couple of good examples. Shure also makes the X2u, which is an XLR-to-USB mic adaptor that enables you to plug your favourite XLR mic into your computer, a clever solution. If you do opt for a two- or four-channel interface you could get more involved in things like stereo mic’ing, though this involves a little more planning and experimenting with mic placement to ensure that the sound is well balanced. Some people even record with three or four mics to get unique and interesting effects, but this involves some fiddling afterwards as you have to correct any phasing or sync issues.
Polar patterns
The principles for recording any sound on the move are broadly the same whether you are intending to use a noise as the basis for a rhythm or you’re recording an old upright piano. Background noise is usually the biggest problem when you are trying to isolate sounds. Sometimes road noise, overhead aircraft or humming fans aren’t a problem – they may even be the sound you’re recording – but other times they are. Recording outdoors or in different locations from your studio presents many potential problems, so it’s important firstly to isolate a sound if necessary. If you’re recording outdoors this might involve using baffles, windshields or increasing the directionality of the mic (if it has such a control). Different mics have different polar patterns and some are switchable. An omnidirectional mic would be better for picking up a wider vista of sounds. At the other end of the scale, a shotgun mic is far more directional, picking up the majority of its sound from directly in front. As such, this kind of mic is suited to recording specific sounds that are in front of you and they are widely used in film and other kinds of location recording. If it’s impossible to completely isolate a sound, you can use EQ and other mixing tools later to try to lessen the impact of the interfering frequencies.
Monitoring is an important part of recording on the move, and although most recorders offer a level indicator, it’s better if possible to use a decent pair of headphones or earphones to listen directly rather than relying on them for information. The closer you get to a sound source the more prominent it will be; the further away you are, the more ambience it will have. This applies both to recording instruments and sounds, and after a little practice you will get the hang of what works best in a given situation, especially if you are listening via headphones. Hand-held recorders sometimes feature ‘auto levels’ or ‘auto gain’, but these should probably be switched off to give you better control over the take.
As ever, a healthy level is preferable when recording. Recording too low and boosting it later will bring out hiss and other unwanted elements. Too loud and you risk distortion. Even if you want a distorted sound, it’s better to record clean and add distortion manually afterwards using software effects that you have control over.
DAW editing
You may have set out with the express intention of recording specific things or you may have just been out recording to see what you could find. Either way, when you get back to the studio you will need to transfer the recordings onto your PC or Mac, then load them into a wave editor or preferably a DAW in order to be able to work with them.
How you go about this depends on what your aims are. At its simplest, working with found sounds can just be a case of layering them up, making edits and using EQ to balance them. It’s fair to say that would result in something fairly ambient, so for a more musical approach you might have to look towards plug-ins or instruments to manipulate the samples. A common trick is to take sounds that are already rhythmic – such as footsteps, breathing or recordings of a machine – and use them as the basis of a track.
Most DAWs enable you to use a beat calculator to work out the tempo of a rhythm, then set the project tempo accordingly and cut the loop to fit. Alternatively, you could use something like ReCycle to chop it up. If you wanted to make the rhythm more regular than it originally was you can quantize it or use Flex Time, hitpoints or whatever your DAW’s equivalent is to move the transients around.
Sample magic
Sample-based instruments such as Battery, Reason’s ReDrum/NN-XT or Kontakt can be used to load and edit samples, the former two with the aim of building some sort of kit and the latter two to create a multi-layered instrument from your sounds. They all feature sample editing, effects and morphing and will enable you to tweak your sounds and play them almost as if they were instruments. Some people also favour Ableton Live as a tool for working with smaller snippets of sound. Other plug-ins, such as Sugar Bytes’ Effectrix and FXpansion’s GURU are able to take any audio sample and stretch, cut up, tweak, mash and mangle them beyond all recognition. This is part of the appeal of working with found sounds: what you start with need not bear any resemblance to what you end up with.
Plug-ins such as these that are able to randomise and cut up samples will frequently yield amazing results even if you are not an expert in using them, and many are so easy to use you can achieve good results in next to no time. They can turn innocuous sounds into beats, spoken-word recordings into melodies and much more. Other instruments, like Camel Audio’s Alchemy, Cakewalk’s Rapture and even Native Instruments’ Absynth, are able to take samples and use them for ‘re-synthesis’, extracting a waveshape and other characteristics then using them as the basis for synthesising a new sound.
Music on the move
Recording in the field is a really liberating thing to try and you often come back with material that you wouldn’t have expected to get – and that sounds much better when played back in your DAW than it did out in the street. From there you can be inspired to create music around the sounds or to use the sounds themselves as musical elements. Rhythms, textures and melodies can all flow from found sounds with a little out-of-the-box thinking and some in-the-box tinkering. Manipulating the samples using resynthesis techniques, advanced tools such as Reaktor or even just the application of some simple EQ and audio processing functions such as reversing or cutting them up can yield great results, and whether you use them as additional elements for a more conventional piece of music or in place of the music itself, it’s a working method that encourages you to be more creative and innovative, which is what helps music stand apart from the crowd. Ultimately, any of these techniques and approaches will result in your tracks sounding more unique – and that’s always a good thing. MTM
This feature first appeared in Music Tech Magazine issue 95
Filed under
Home,
General Features,
Features
Sign in to download this article
New users, please register here
See also...
 MTM 108 |
Brainworx Vertigo VSC-2 Review |
 MTM 108 |
Yamaha 01V96i Review |
|
 MTM 107 |
25 Tips for Mix Processing |
MTM 107 |
Control for Live Performance |
|
 |
Music Tech Focus - Ableton Live 2012 |
 |
Music Tech Focus - Synthesis 2012 |
|
MTM 106 |
25 Pro Tips for Kick-starting Composition |
MTM 106 |
Contemporary Mastering |
