Recording Children

I am in the process of recording an album sung by dozen or more of my neighbor’s kids. These are elementary school aged kids with many of them in 1st grade (The same age as my daughter). Last year we did an album of Christmas songs but this year it will be pop tunes.

There are a couple of challenges that you may run across when you record small children.

The first is shyness. My daughter is often the key to solving the shyness problem. She views the recording sessions as a play date and treats the session like it is time to play. This can be a challenge with more than one other child because of the amount of disruption and noise it creates. I treat the recording session as a short diversion from the play date and this usually is enough to let them enjoy the experience.

The very young have little sense of pitch. Four things set the groundwork of all sessions that I record with young children. 1) The songs are familiar to them 2) I pre-record the tracks to sound similar to the version they know 3) I have a distinctive instrument to play the melody line 4) I have a pre recorded vocal track to guide them.

After the ground work has been set, you should expect to do a fair amount of slicing to fix timing issues and you are likely to need to do more pitch correction that simply running a plug-in. But it is equally important not to change the character of the voice. It is possible to over process a track until you lose the personality of a child’s voice.

· Can’t remember the lyrics. The more familiar the song is to them the better but the recording process can make small children forget. Depending on the patience of the child, I can record phrase by phrase where I can call out a phrase and record it, stop and call out the next phrase. Or more often, I simply record the song 6 or more times catching what words I can. Then I splice the words together to create a whole performance.

· Dynamics. Kids sing loud and soft and are random about it. I compress the tracks going in and coming out to minimize the dramatic volume changes as much as possible. At the end of the recording I have the children sing words they missed or had trouble performing. Then cut and paste, cut and paste.

La Valse de la Prison / Tit Galop Pour Mamou

Here are a couple of fun Cajun tunes. Please forgive my french.


La Valse de la Prison

Waltz //: D / G / G / G / D / D / D7 / D7 / D7 / D7 / G / G ://

Dan la prison, cherie, Assis sur mon lit
Comment donc Jvais fair cherie Sans ma petite fille

Sans ma petite fille, cherie, Avec les yeux bleus
Comment donc j'vais fair cherie Si tu n'm'aim' plus

S' tu n'm'aim' plus, cherie, Jvais m'en aller
J vais m'en aller, cherie, Dans l'paradis



Tit Galop Pour Mamou

//: A / A //: A D/ D E- :// A / A //

Tit galop tit galop pour mamou
J'ai vendu mon p'tit mulet pour 15 sous
J'ai ach te des souliers neufs pour les p'tits
Et du sucr et du cafe pour les vieux

Tit galop, tit galop pour mamou
Jai vendu mon p'tit wagon pour 15 sous
J'ai ach te du candy roug pour les p'tits
Et un metre de ruban pour la vieill'

Welcome Back

I found my old blog and decided to wake it up.

Benefit Pardee

Eleven bands played at the Beneift Pardee in Deland, Florida on Saturday February 19. They were all great but many are on my all time favorite list. WOW. The local community had a throwdown to help raise money for Helen Pardee who has to have surgery to remove a tumor from her spine.

I didn't take a lot of pictures. I was having too much fun. A few of the ones I did manage to take are below.

Dan Walters and the Nerve Band danwaltersmusic.com



Rick Bailey www.rickbailey.com



Heart Attack Diner (Their site is down)



Jeff Howell (Monsters of the Midday) jeffhowell.com www.wtks.com



Lawrence App and Wind Jammer www.lawrenceapp.com http://www.windjammermusic.com/



Joe King's BAG (Big American Gurus)
Forgot to take a picture.


It was an all day all night event.



Benefit Pardee site

Microphones and EQ

Last night I gave a talk on Microphones, Recording and Mixing pertaining mostly to video to the DV/FX group in Fairfax. I made a PowerPoint presentation that you can find here. It focuses more on recording sound for music. I also made a couple of handouts of random thoughts. For your technical enjoyment they are below.

Erich's Random Thoughts on Mics and Video

• Use a small diaphragm (1/2 inch or smaller) mic on video cameras.
• Omni to pick up the entire room, directional to isolate sound source, shotgun or hyper cardioid to mic from a distance and isolate the sound source.
• Condenser mics usually require power.
• Lavaliere mics work well on the chest.
• UHS is preferable to VHS wireless receivers. Either is better than FM.
• You can use a small mixing board to record to sound sources into the camera or you can record the sources to the L and R tracks and set levels in FCP.
• Always listen with headphones as you record. A computer in the room that you can't hear could be all that the camera picks up.
• When recording to analog media (cassette tape) try and record it loud as you can. This eliminates hiss. Over saturating an analog tape sounds like distortion.
• When recording to digital (DV tape) leave some headroom. Over saturating a digital recording is a horrible sound.
• XLR connectors are better sound quality that mini jacks.
  

Some words about mix down.

• You can make someone sound louder without raising the volume by using a compressor. TV commercials use this technique.
• Reverb/delay adds depth. Reverb/delay sounds different in headphones. After listening to reverb/delay for a few minutes you may want to add more. Don't.
• When you eq, it's better to remove a bad frequency than to try and boost a good one. Try this approach when trying to make to voices balance.
• It's a good idea to record backup audio from a different source.
  Know how many tracks you can record on and make a plan before the shoot.

EQ

• Before you change the EQ decide what you want to improve.
• Raising one vocal subject at 3 kHz can add clarity to that vocal to help it move to the front. You can lower the background vocals at that range to make them fall back. You can boost or raise eq or both but be selective.
• Presence to vocal is at 4-5 kHz
• Vocal sounds such as 'm', 'b', 'v' can get lost if 2-4 kHz are boosted too high.
• Don't over boost at 1-4 kHz It can strain the ear.
• Control sibilance at the 5-16 kHz range.
• Sibilance and brightness may be found at the 6 kHz range. Open up the sound or reduce sibilance.
• Add power to a vocal around 80 but start looking at 60-125. Too much of this area can also make things sound muddy.
• Speech fundamentals occur between about 125 and 250 Hz. This is where you can add warmth. If you are looking for a powerful vocal don't add much here and boost around 80.
• The character of the voice is 300-1 kHz
• To make a telephone or radio speaker voice boost in the 1 kHz area.
• Vocals to harsh? Cut at 1 - 2 kHz
• Roll off vocals below 60 Hz. Anything below that are probably not vocals.

New Band Member

Back in December we decided to add a fourth permanent member to our band. We have auditioned a few people. We had a couple of people we particularly liked but because of the holidays we haven’t chosen one. I look forward to coming to a band decision and letting everyone soon.

Recent Paintings

Here are some of my recent paintings. These were Christmas presents to my buddies from LA. We don't all live in LA anymore but we get together once a year. This last time was in Vegas.



Dallan and Erich in front of Vegas slot machines. Dallan's Christmas present.
Acrylic on Canvas Dec 2004 Acrylic on canvas December 2004.
More about Dallan

Harry Van Gorkum, Scott Nabat and Dallan Baumgarten in Vegas. Scott's Christmas present. Acrylic on canvas December 2004.

More about Scott

Harry Van Gorkum, Erich Russek, and Scott Nabat in a car in Vegas. Harry's Christmas present. Acrylic on canvas December 2004.

More about Harry Make sure you see his photography.

Raffer Weigel, John Sparger, Scott Nabat, and Erich Russek. Sparg's Christmas present.
Acrylic on canvas December 2004
More about Sparg

Harry's ear, Raffer Weigel, and Erich's eye. Raffer's Christmas present.
Acrylic on canvas December 2004.
More about Raffer.