Recording Studio Madness - Capturing Electromagnetics !!
Given our passion for all things sound related – it’s no surprise that here at ShStudios we make all kinds of out there, weird & wonderful contrivances to capture the spirit of our artists at a specific point in time.
This – creation is an Electromagnetic microphone – plug it into any regular mic preamp – run it over your phone – laptop, microwave – anything electrical – & it’ll pick up & record the mutterings of said device. It’s a wonder – you can use the audio as a soundscape – or add it to existing music as an embellishment. We’re big on experimentation – which is why we make the best records!
Yes – it might sound a bit odd – nefarious & strangely radiophonic workshop – but once you add it to a track or existing audio source its’ free and abstract motion adds a deep sense of something interesting or otherworldly entering the soundstage.
If you hide it under white or pink noise you can blend it into the mix even more – creating intrigue & excitement to the most pedestrian offering – all this before we even start mixing or manipulating with effects & editing!
We have on occasion used an eyecrophone track purely by ittself to support a spoken word or poetry part. One time we used a ducker triggered by the vocal & added a huge reverb tail which was nothing short of magical – it was as if the speakers’ words then became noises of the universe reflected off the roof of the sky.
A little bit of experimentation generally yields pretty articulate results – and boy do we love experimentation.
Another way to use audio like this is to record a whole bunch of random noise – it’s usually beneficial to do this to click for editing purposes – then cut out random loops of said audio.
It’s similar to walking into a public building or high street & recording the environment – there may not initially seem to be much of interest going on – but as soon as you start looping chunks of the audio – all manner of strange & hidden rhythms reveal themselves.
You can literally build something monumentally interesting & creative from scratch in no time – et voila – a new exciting track is born.
A good trick to enhance this type of audio / music is to add filters (regular eq cuts and boosts) – and again if you sweep or modulate the equalizer peaks & troughs in time to the loop you’ll introduce new life to it. A sense of breathing if you will, though you’ll probably have to compress post eq to stop any horrid digital clipping.
If you are able to grab one of those old analog televisions (I think they still make them – or did until very recently) you will literally be able to record some of the fallout noise from the big bang!
No shit! – the white noise generated by the big bang is still floating around the universe as radio waves. So when an old tv is not tuned in to a station – you just get a lot of speckled images on the screen – and a bunch of white noise – some of which was generated way back then – check it out – it’s a real thing.
These Guys explain it way better then I can – how cool to have noise That old on one of your tracks.
Luckily for you we make & sell these things eh (£30.00 plus postage – request on the contact form).
It's All in the Microphone Windings
Icrophones – Electromagnetic microphones are similar technology to tape recorder heads – so they can pick up data from tape heads. The funnest thing we just about Ever did was to play a track of the band we were recording on youtube. Then we got an Icrophone – ran it over the phone face and body.
Every time it got close to the device speaker it would pick up parts of the song – kinda fading in and out with the general electronic & white noise.
Quite possibly one of the eeriest things ever heard – but special! And all of a sudden we had the beginnings of a very interesting remix – which like most happy accidents generated something rich & lovely that wouldn’t have existed had we not taken time to explore all the weird and wonderful possibilities open to us.
It’s kinda what we do ….. audio exploration. Might be turning a bit of sofware on its’ head – might be making the drummer play blindfold (sensory deprivation is a fine tool in some instances).
Might be abusing some tool or bit of hardware – whatever it is – we kinda do it best!!
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