Erich RussekRobbins: 2005

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

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

Friday, January 14, 2005

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.

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.

Monday, January 10, 2005

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