the H4N for the Win

September 09, 2010  /  Cameron Magee

I'm not a recording kind of guy. I do Live Audio. I do Photography. I do Drums. I do Video. I'm not that hot at Recording.

But, my friend Taylor Wood really needed a handful of demo tracks, and couldn't really justify heading out to the full-out studio. So... I said I'd help out.

We laid down about 10 songs, two takes on some, one take on others.

Since this wasn't going to Nashville I really wanted a quick, flash way to capture the tracks, get them cleaned up, and get them right back out.

I don't have all the legit recording gear so we worked with what I did have. A Zoom H4N handheld recorder. This is the little guy who I hide behind unity candles at weddings. A great little recorder with a strikely attractive XY stereo pair up front.

To excite things I decided to put in my Westone's and "mix" the tracks "live". Let's be honest it was the closest thing to "Live Audio" I could pull off and it still be called recording. Just being honest.

I had a lot of fun mixing it, the Westone's gave me incredible isolation from the actual room, making sure what I was hearing was what was being laid down. That would definitely be the only sting on this setup. Without the in-ears, I'm not sure how well this would have worked. I was going to use my big Sony headphones but they simply would not have blocked the ambience out.

Also, since it was a true stereo XY pair, the sound was evolved not just from overall movement and adjustment of placement, but also by simple tilts and pans. That also kept things interesting in the process, just leaning a bit left or right to shift things up.

I would definitely ad a windscreen in the future though. I had to have Taylor keep his breath flowing in one exact spot so I could "steer" around his POPS.

Also a bit of fun was that we used our ProPresenter lyrics for him to read, that kept him in order and flowing confidently without worrying about lyrics.

I did 3 things in post.

a Thickening Limiter
a harder -2 Limiter
10% Reverb

That's all nothing too fancy. :D

Also, on this track only, he wanted me to lay down a simple DJembe beat, so we did that up in my bedroom afterwords. I would have done it in the original glass room, but that ring from the head was too much for the additional carrying on.

Well anyways there's that. A fresh view at recording. We had a lot of fun doing it this way, and the tracks came out simple and clean in the end. Our friend Cayla took a little video of us while we were doing it, so I've got that posted. I synced in the finished track from this song, along with it's phantom djembe player. :D

thanks for reading, let me know what you think!

Enjoying my PSC Class

September 01, 2010  /  Cameron Magee

As a Social Sciences major, I take a lot of history and political science classes. Here's two little blocks from class today, just for those who uh... can't get enough class. :D

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Tsar Nick was still fairly popular as a leader. Not perfect, but mostly. However, he makes a very serious mistake. Him and his wife have seven kids, all girls. He wanted a son. This son is a hemophiliac, if you get cut or whatever you bleed to death. So basically, the Tsar and Tsarina dedicate their lives to taking care of this kid. She hears about some mystical man out in the wilderness that has some magical powers or something, named Rasputin. She brings him into the palace. It's universally believed that he had some positive benefits on the child. He either hypnotized the boy or just encouraged him in general. Nobody knows exactly, but Rasputin definitely helped the boy in some way. But, Rasputin starts getting involved in court politics. He starts getting involved. He ends up convincing Tsar Nick to go to the front and take control of the Army. Huge mistake. One, Nick is not a military guy, no training. Two, he's out of the palace. Plus, slowly but surely the people start blaming the Tsar for the losses, just because he's up there. Not good. Rasputin has made everybody angry. He's butting into everybody's business. He's seducing all the women. He's universally hated. So they decide to kill him. They throw him a banquet to poison him with vodka and cake but he's not dying for some reason. Uh oh. They stab and shoot him, roll him in a carpet, and throw him in the river. Full of poison and bullets. Ends up drowning and hypothermia kicks in. Dude just wouldn't die.
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Lenin disguises himself and comes back into St. Petersburg in October. He's not afraid to kill somebody. Lenin was nicer than Stalin though. That guy was crazy. Killing everybody for looking at him weird. He gets a meeting with 12 others and the vote is 12:1. The next day it turns to 13:0. SMOOTH TALKER DANG. Over 2 nights, limited violence, they seize power.
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Yup. Gotta love that Russian stuff. :-)
thanks for reading.
I do this multiple times, every day. lol

Setlist: 8.30.10

August 30, 2010  /  Cameron Magee

Arkadelphia MBSF
Drums

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Marvelous Light
Hosanna (Praise is Rising)

Priorities (Written by our own Kimberly and Beth)

Lead me to the Cross
You're Beautiful

--- Josh Speaks ---

Like a Lion
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