This topic is brought to you via Old Blind Dongs Rory Campbell’s whistle tone.
Loren, I’m starting to see your statement about liking The Worlds Room a bit more. After a few listenings, I think it’s a richer album.
I bring up the second to last track “Edward”
Rory is playing his Kerry Pro F, and the thing has the warmest roundest sound! Pops to all get out as well.
My Goldie F doesn’t sound this warm. It has its own sound which I love. There are all the factors that can effect the tone that have been gone over countless times. What about studio effects such as EQ and others?
Rory does have a wet whistle (No pun intended)sound. I’m not a tech so I couldn’t say what is on his whistle, but the question stands how much can the studio tricks effect the actual tone of a whistle.
Just to make things a bit more clear and rhetorical, it’s not unthinkable that Rory’s F doesn’t sound super warm and poppy naturaly (plus his technique). How much can you change a whistle in the studio using tricks?
By the way, is it just me or has anyone else noticed it’s staying light later?
In my last CD, we used a generous amount of digital reverb and compression. It is the compressor (hopefully a tube-type for you) that will make the difference. Got that info from Joanie and have used it religiously ever since.
I have a compressor by presonus. Bluemax smart compressor. I would like one of better quality.
I didn’t even think of that. I’ll try it out, I must admit to not really experimenting to much with recording the whistle. My room is small so I have to set up and tear down when I want to record on the four track. I’ve resorted to a micro cassette for convienence
What a compressor can do is tighten up a signal. It can allow you to drive a processor or amp hard and keep your level down in the end. They are notorious for being difficult to use right. Many arguments have turned to “fist of cuffs” over the slightest turn of a knob on the compressor.
A limiter limits the dynamic range of a track. It’s useful for recording, say, percussion or slap bass or any other instrument with dynamic peaks; it limits those peaks without forcing you to use too little gain. The loudest notes get softer. It’s the gain equivalent of a lowpass filter, if that’s useful at all.
A compressor compresses the dynamic range of a track – it’s a limiter that works at the bottom end too, increasing the gain when the signal’s too low. The loudest notes get softer; the softest notes get louder. It’s the gain equivalent of a bandpass filter.
An expander is essentially a noise gate; it works precisely the other way around from a compressor. The softest notes get softer; the loudest notes get louder. The usual application of an expander is to lower the noise floor in a recording – very useful for live recordings when you want to push the audience into the background a little more relative to the music.
A compander is a compressor and expander in the same box. They’re useful to clean up a recording all at once – compression to even out the playing, and expansion to get rid of everything else.
-Rich
[ This Message was edited by: rich on 2002-01-19 17:28 ]
I would agree that for a very warm sound a tube compressor and good quality reverb processor is vital. It’s worth remembering that as well as making a signal fatter, the compressor ultimately makes all the elements of the mix blend together better.
Also using a large diaphragm capacitor mic can warm up a sound - as can some careful EQ’ing in the mid range.
The actual mic position is fairly influential too; more natural sound produced by keeping the mic away from the windway, whereas often low whistles are miked just above the windway airstream to capture maximum air/chiff.
