Hey everybody!  Hope everyone is getting ready to have a great Winter holiday with lots of family, friends, and food!  I added a couple videos for you to check out some of the rehearsal at the Musician’s Union.  Just a few small clips so that you can get an idea of the music and the scope of the project!  Still more on its way!  Don’t touch that dial!

Your Livable Garden is a radio show that I produce every week for broadcast every Saturday on KSEV700 AM.  At 15+ years, it is the longest-running landscape architectural show in the nation.  Every week, the hosts, Shawn and Blinda Kelly come to the studio with a bottle of wine and 2 hours of the most interesting gardening/landscaping/pool stories, tips and jokes.  It’s a very amusing show and I recommend you checking it out if you get the chance.  It airs Saturday mornings from 6:00 am – 8:00 am.

To record the show, I use a Shure SM7B on Shawn and an EV RE-20 on Blinda.  The mics are patched to a pair of AMEK PurePath Channel Strips, with filters and dynamics applied.  The calls are recorded with a Comrex DH20 patch, I make my little comments with a SM57 (going through an Audient  mic pre) and everything is mixed live on a Mackie HUI in Pro Tools.

It’s a lot of fun and we are glad to have Shawn and Blinda working here at Tierra Studios!

Welcome to the beginning of Tierra Studios’ adventure into extreme recording.  We have recently begun a project involving Bernie Hatch, Dennis Dodson, and Dr. Robert Linder – just to name a VERY small few.  We began rehearsal for the first segment of recording on November 4th at the AFM union hall.  The orchestra is rehearsing 2 original jazz pieces written by Bernie Hatch.  Much, much more to come about this project! Stay Tuned!

The CD release party for Thomas Hultén’s album Slide Side was an amazing success. Many people came together at Tierra Studios from 6:00 pm until almost 10:00 pm on Monday, October 19th. There was music, mingling, food, and a few drinks floating around, as we celebrated the second release in Tierra Studios’ jazz series. We would like to extend a very special thanks to Kathryn Sherman, Jim Sherman, Traey Hatch, Glenn Wheeler, Dr. Robert Linder, Thomas Hultén, Dan Kramlich, Lana Smith, Andrea Sedeno, all the FMI staff, and everyone else that was involved in this project from start to finish. We couldn’t have done it without each and everyone of you!!!!

Just checkin in, internet world!!! I’m here in the studio today doing voice-over sessions. These are always fun because you get to hear people do the voices that you hear on TV. Not sure what spots we are doing yet, but these sessions are always pretty fun and interesting. Hope everyone else out there is enjoying what is probably the most beautiful day of 2009.

Storms are not fun.  As much as we needed the rain here in Houston, the concomitant effects of the rain can be very taxing and undesirable.  Due to unforeseen electrical issues caused by storm damage to the surrounding grid, our energy supply is experiencing intermittent glitches, causing us to need to reschedule sessions and contact electricians to ensure that our facility can run without risk of damage to equipment.  And thus, we forge on. Yesterday, we had the privilege of entertaining one of the music industry’s top movers and shakers who gave us a little insight on the evolution of the the music publishing business.  It was a fascinating meeting and very informative.  The rest of this week is stocked with various sessions involving a variety of artists and continued preparation for Thomas Hultén’s album release.

Larry Murphy, staff engineer at Tierra Studios, begins his Mic’s With Murphy series with an overview of microphones.  Watch the video and read more about mics below.

(This image is from the Wikipedia Blumlein entry)

The Blumlein pair recording technique is a type of stereo recording technique invented by Alan Blumlein designed to create recordings that replicate the spatial characteristics of the recorded signal.

A Blumlein pair consists of two matched microphones set to the bi-directional, or figure 8, pickup pattern and positioned 90° from each other.  This configuration should allow the transducers of the microphones to occupy the same physical space, or at least as close to the same space as possible. The mics are then positioned so that the audio signal is in a line bisecting the angle between the two microphones.  The pickup patterns of the pair, combined with their positioning, delivers a high degree of stereo separation in the source signal as well as the room ambiance.

Properly used, the Blumlein pair can produce a “true” stereo image.

The traditional microphone for Blumlein Pair recording is the ribbon microphone, although some microphones are purpose-built for the type of coincident arrangements that are required for the Blumlein pair.

There is a lot of stuff going on this week, and today is no exception.  In addition to getting some quotes for the Thomas Hultén press release and finishing the final editing as well, I’ve got a lot of work on the website to do.  Marla is coming by to get her hard drive, and the talented Patti Rabaza will be coming in this afternoon to track some piano and vocals on a couple songs.

The weather is changing (slowly), the leaves are browning (one at a time), and fall is upon us. In totally unrelated news, I am shipping Thomas Hultén’s master out to be pressed and manufactured today. This week promises a lot of prep work for Thomas’ album release, as well as upkeep for our finished and ongoing projects. We’ve got some good stuff in the works right now, and with Glenn in NYC helping keep the ball moving, we move forward into the new season with fresh goals and continued momentum.

Whilst compiling data for our web page, I found that there was a lack of information regarding what constitutes a matched pair and a stereo pair of microphones.  So, I decided to address this topic in a blog post for all you readers out there in the blogosphere.

Using a stereo pair of microphones allows an audio engineer to capture a sound source in a stereo image.  That is, using two of the same make and model mics placed to the left and right of the sound source allows the engineer to pan the signals left and right, giving the audience a true stereo perspective. Some of the benefits of using stereo miking include providing the left-to-right position of an instrument(s), the depth and/or distance of the instrument(s), the distance of the instrument(s) from the audience, the recording environment in a spatial or acoustic sense, as well as the timbres of the instrument(s) from the listeners point of view.

So what can you do to make a stereo pair sound even better? Try using a matched stereo pair. A matched stereo pair consists of 2 microphones of the same make and model that were manufactured at the same time in the same plant with the same parts. The easiest way to determine that little bit of information is by examining the serial numbers on the casings of the mics. Two mics with serial numbers that are generally consecutive are considered a matched pair of mics. When you use mics that are built adjacent to each other at the factory, you reduce the risk of slight differences in manufacturing that can change the tone of your audio signal. Some people might say that the difference is negligible, but a trained ear can hear those subtle nuances that make the difference between a good recording and a great recording.