Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Echo Chamber


I made a little echo chamber out of my parent's living room today. The basement where I recorded Air Waves was small, with low ceilings and carpet, so there was virtually no room sound. I could just add fake plugin reverb to stuff, but my reverb plugins suck, so I did this. I think the sound of this room is better than I could get with most plugins anyway. It sounds like a small reflective living room. Perfect!

Another reason I wanted to do this was because almost all the sounds other than the drum kit were miked in mono, which is boring.

6 comments:

BrianFrancisMcC said...

How do you use this new echo chamber to change the way your recordings already sound? Do you run the tracks through the chamber or something? I don't get it!

Cheddar Gouda said...

Yeah... I'll take the solo'd vocal track and feed it into the room, then the mics pick up the sound of the vocals, kind of as if she was singing in the room. Then I blend the original signal with the newly recorded (stereo) signal, and it sounds kind of like she was standing relatively close to the mic in a live room!

BrianFrancisMcC said...

yo, that's wicked.

Anonymous said...

Are you calling us boring?

Cheddar Gouda said...

yes.








but no one has to know but me.

hahaha. YOU KNOW!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/v/gFW9nUZZUk4&rel=1

Eff Gwazdor said...

This is conceptually interesting too - it's as though the music occupies two spaces.

Chet I know we've talked about this, but I wonder about the others... One of my favorite composers is Alvin Lucier - he did "I am sitting in a room" which played back a recording into a room, re-recording it every time until the resonant frequencies of the room overpowered the music. Amazingly beautiful conceptually, and also just beautiful sounds.

here is his site.

I was wondering whether you had any thoughts on the relationship of sound to space, now that you are travelling through different spaces to record in such an intense manner... Do you respond more to the social situation (the bohemian myth, the construction of home spaces, decoration, class, etc.) or as an abstract sound space (room tone, the relationship of space to the juxtaposition of people while playing, ambient sounds, interuptions, etc.)? Or a combination? I'd like to see you respond musically to these conditions.

Also, I wonder if there are any recording spaces in second life? Wouldn't it be possible to create a simulated room tone effect that correlates directly to the simulated space of the room?