Christopher Kennedy Alpiar

The main thing is what *type* of mic to buy, less then what brand. For recording acoustic instruments or voice in a controlled environment you want to use large diaphragm condensor mic's. For recording interview type vocals, lavalier is the way to go. For recording really loud instruments or ones with a harsh attack, like a marshall stack turned up to "11" ;) or a snare drum of a rock player something like a Shure SM-57 is the way to go. If recording outside and recording voice, shotgun is the way to go. There is no all purpose mic that will give you pro results for any situation. I understand budget constraints, but try your best to treat your audio with equal importance to your film/video in terms of planning, care and money spent on gear and you will get far =)

Yes I miss it, mostly the amazing beach at cape florida, the party atmosphere on south beach, the great cuban culture spread all over, the many other latin and carribean cultures. The HEAT i can do without tho! (unless your talking basketball and then i LOVE going to heat games!!). Things like how coconut grove USED to be with all the hippies and artists I miss but that is gone forever and replaced with trendy boutiques :P Overall tho I do miss it, maybe when I can afford a second house I will get a place down there ;)

AES/EBU i/o is GREAT! That looks like a winner from Edirol. Ahhh Armand you are from Miami, I grew up there. I miss the live bands they used to have on calle ocho, but i hear that is mostly gone now

Very good point Phil! I am not trying to say my list of brands is all-encompassing for sure! And nothing can replace personal experience! Also even the schleprock brands like behringer make gear that is meant to be used so anything you get new will have some ability or you call the BBB ;) But just from my many years in audio production that list is a general guideline of my experience with brands. Fostex used to be a much better company but its gone down hill the last 10 years in my opinion. Their pro-grade gear you can get much much better from another manufacturer, again my opinion :) Just trying to offer some help for new folks to audio who havent had 25+ years working with these brands to maybe get off on the right foot. Main caveat to all my posts: My experience is largely in pro-audio and music recording in the studio. While I have some experience in video filming/production and very little with film production, what I write is coming from an audio engineer's and a modern composer's perspective.

I used to keep ambient loops that I made on hand in a video tracking studio I built in Seattle. I had nice up close 5 mins of the HVAC at the coil and just room ambience from a large diaphragm condensor about 2 inches from the HVAC vent into a conference room, some other stuff too but I used those 2 loops more then anything for adding live sound to an ADR based project. the key is that its familiar to be unobtrusive and since you created the loop you control its dynamics exactly. Good stuff James :)

zoom H4 sounds PRETTY darn good for the 200 bucks it costs and what its capabilities are. The embedded stereo mics are not bad sounding either. Its not hard core pro recording but for the money you cant beat it

I would say anything with tape or discs is out. DAT is outdated, ADAT is outdated, CD/DVD are ok with the right situation. Other then disc tho: Fughedabaddit (as they say in NYC). flash recording or hard disk recording is the only real solution that wont be outdated and impossible to find media for in 5 years. Brand name is important, bad or cheap brands (today not necessarily ever) include: fostex, alesis, akai, behringer. Medium brands that might be pro-sumer but good or used to be excellent and are in decline include: edirol, HHB, Tascam, M-Audio, Korg. Good brands that are pro-sumer and excellent or at least decent on all levels professional include: TC Electronics, Presonus, Apogee, Sony (professional Sony), Marantz. Hope this is helpful :)

I dont know much about technical aspect of flatbeds but here is a historical perspective that at least is interesting :) before multitrack analog recorders, music and foley was done LIVE on the set. So there had to be arragned to do LIVE recording of full orchestra in real time with the scene being filmed. Paramount and all the classic production companies housed IN-house thousands of orchestral musicians, hundreds of composers, hundreds of orchestrators, copyists, foley artists, vocalists, etc etc. Until the big anti-trust law suits came out in the 40s/50s. Later when it was possible to seperate the dialog recording from the music / foley recording, the camera department would burn holes into the film to give cues and tempo to the conductor "punches and streamers". "Alfred Newman is often credited with the creation of the Hollywood string sound, and for adding the Broadway sound to the motion picture. He also responsible for the Newman system, a means of synchronizing the performance and recording of a movie score with the film itself. The system uses a special print of the film that is played for the conductor's reference. This print is specially marked with punches and streamers. Punches are tiny marks in the film (for two of every ten frames) that provide a standard beat to help the conductor keep in synch with the tempo. To synchronize music and action, the conductor then uses streamers. These are horizontal lines which move across the screen at a regular pace. This system was created by Newman while he was the Musical Director at Fox, and is still used today."

As for your problem "PS - I currently only have the mic feeding into the left channel, as I don't have a XLR splitter to feed my single mic source into both the left and right channels. I am going to be picking up a splitter later today so I can feed into both channels, hoping this will reduce the hiss somewhat." Why do you want to record stereo with a mono source? Your hiss will only get worse when you split it into 2 seperate feeds (double! and add in noise created from the splitter!) Mono microphone should be recorded in mono, or run through a mixer or distribution amp and recorded as stereo. But when you go to edit your mono signal is just fine and can be turned into stereo sound much more efficiently and with greater quality at that time. If you want to "record" stereo well you need a stereo mic or a pair of mono mics positioned as their polarity requires to capture stereo. Otherwise just record your mic in the left channel once you have a nice clean path with noise filtered out and if you want more then a mono signal you can adjust it during editing

using and getting in tune with a decent noise gate is also ultra important! Any hyper sensitive microphone used directly into a recorder is going to pickup noise. So especially for on location shoots where you cannot isolate in a controlled environment it is important to understand where your noise is coming from, what kind of mic is right for the situation, and how to use a noise gate. Many mic preamps have a gate built in that you can adjust the parameters. Its important to experiment a bit to find the right balance between getting out unwanted ambient noise and also not sounding weird with the gate opening too fast (the attack will sound like a walkie talkie clicking on) and not closing too fast behind also. If you arent using a mic pre or your pre has no gate, You can pick up cheap and cheaper used a stand alone noise gate, or even better a compressor with a gate included. I have mentioned a few places my ISA 430s and I live by them for getting great sound in almost any situation =) As for WYE cords, I never would make or use one, was that comment in jest? WYE is just asking for trouble. If you must split your signal and cant use a mixing board of some kind, get a line distribution amp which will guarantee that the power of your signal once split will remain constant

Cassette is out!! Dont do it man you will regret the money you waste on a cassette recorder. Its like doing your shoot on VHS, laughable... Most folks are going digital these days because it is easy to sync to picture in a non linear editor. New technology allows prices to stay low. for 300 bucks you can get a really nice portable audio recorder. Check out some of these: http://www.sweetwater.com/c860--Flash_Players_Recorders Multi track is not necessary for recording unless you want to record in surround (5.1 or whatever setup you are working with). For the most part a decent stereo (2 track) recorder is just fine. If you have a decent laptop, you can also consider a much better solution then *any* tape/digital recorder: getting a USB2 or Firewire audio interface for your laptop. Some of those are REALLY cheap, 100 bucks even in some cases. Of course you get what you pay for and every 100 bucks more you are getting added value for the most part. M-Audio makes really decent pro-sumer level audio interfaces. http://www.sweetwater.com/shop/computer-au...dio_interfaces/ I am definately an audio guy and I bet you guys know a LOT more about cameras and stuff then me, but if I was going for a decent complete setup for getting off the ground, I would do something like this: >DV/miniDV Camera with firewire, if you have money something like JVC DV-500-ENG2 or a Canon XL H1, if you are looking for something cheaper yet still pro I recommend a Canon GL1 still a bad-ass camera and you can get on ebay for under 1k >assortment of lenses/filters >multi purpose lighting kits like Lowel LC-98 Rifa, >2 sennheiser K6 bases with 2 lavalier capsules and 2 ME66 capsules, boom poles and stands etc >a 2 channel mic preamp with as much goodies as I could afford, including A/D converter if possible >a 2 channel audio interface (firewire or USB2 as mentioned above) >a laptop (OSX or XP, whichever floats your noodle) >Final Cut Pro or Avid =>> if going Avid I would try hard to have enough money to get a digidesign firewire interface for the audio (like Digi002 or an M-Box) since avid is now owned by digidesign there are many perks to keeping hardware/software in the same house With that package you have every thing you possibly need to do great single camera shoots and get great audio, and enough mic power to make GOOD quality 2 actor interview scenarios, which has a lot of meat and potatos jobs to be had around. When people you do that kind of shoot see and hear what you have going on, you will be hi on the callback list :)

Check out my posts on this topic : http://www.cinematography.com/forum2004/in...showtopic=24708 We talk in detail about the ME66 and the K6 base and stuff :)

I should also pipe in about my focusrite ISA 430 - Along with the preamp, it also has tons of other nice toys on it like compression and gate etc but REALLY hip point is it has GREAT A>D conversion so you can use it as the only analog portion of your recordings and do yourself much justice. Meaning your setup would be mic >> cable >> ISA430 (A-D) >> computer/digital audio recorder/DV tape/etc and the sound quality is just amazing. Normally you would add in the extra gear in your chain to include an industry A-D converter like Apogee Rosetta A-D converter (which sounds amazing but is extra $ for extra gear) That setup would be like: mic >> cable >> mic pre >> cable >> processing (compressor/limiter/eq/gate/etc) >> cable >> A-D converter >> digital cable >> digital tape or computer file An important thing to keep in mind in recording audio is 1. make sure as small of a signal path as possible is used (especially in the analog portion of the chain. So use as few cables as possible, short of cables as possible etc) 2. make sure your cables are highest quality (Mogami is the absolute best analog audio cable manufacturer) 3. make sure that your analog domain and your digital domain are seperate and do not recross (ie never go digital then reconvert to analog to process in a nice tube compressor or some such). People who record to Pro Tools and then dump to analog tape to say they are going to sweeten or fatten the mix are full of it lol. It should have been recorded in analog in the first place if thats the sound they wanted and all it does is possible make up for poor recording (possibly) Its like filming on 35mm and then capturing it all on Avid then bouncing your film to analog beta tape and then capturing it again afterwards hello??? lol But this is now a new topic of A-D converting and all kinda things around that so I will just shut the yapp now and go back to work ;)

As far as the ME66 (I am not familiar with the 67), but You can use this for nice distance recording on a grip pole. If you are going to use it outside tho or in any hi traffic area, make sure you get the windscreen, as it is a hyper sensitive mic and will pickup all kinds of ambient air noise. If you are doing interviews you are still better off with the lavaliers in my opinion but you will get 1001 good uses of the ME66 or any of that series. Hope that helps some!

A pre-amp does amazing things! And different manufacturers have different sounds. Avalon sounds VERY different then Presonus. A mic pre is the initial conditioning that takes the weaker audio as picked up by the mic and normalizes the levels to line level. During the process that sound is subject to compression of a sort and as the sound runs through whatever the technology of the preamp is (tubes, etc) it changes the sound in subtle yet tasty ways. There is no professional studio in the world that records vocals without them, nor a professional mobile recording unit. Here is a great article on basics of mic pres: http://www.tweakheadz.com/microphone_preamps.htm Maybe you can borrow or rent one someplace and experiment with the amazing sound difference of running your mics throu pre-amps and not. You will be astounded :)

Yes ribbons are amazing sounding! They are unfortunately very delicate requiring extra care so if you get some cool great sounding ribbons make sure you do some reading on proper care! The only other negative is that mic position is absolutely important as since it picks up sound waves only on the flat face of the ribbon (either side) that any position where the waves arent hitting dead on you lose tremendous amount of signal, and even if you scream into it with the mic turned sideways, you will get no signal at all hehe. So REALLY cool mics but tempermental to some small degree. Very worth it tho if you have the patience to get to know your mics well tho!

Indeed! What an amazingly creative series of books. I never saw the movies but I read all of this series. Tremendous humor and insight. People world over know that the answer to life the universe and everything is "42" and that indeed the universe was sneezed from the nose of the Great Green Arkaloyd! ;)

I would absolutely love to Michael, send me email to chris (at) alpiar (dawt) com and lets get some dialog going, I LOVE psych thrillers ;)

Thank you for the feedback James :) I was told by several trusted sources to not try and cover all the gamuts out there and just focus on one style that I enjoy the most. And yea I am lost in my own epic adventure where I am the hero! I have tons and tons of rap, electronica, pop, stage-theater, traditional jazz, avant garde, etc stuff, do you think i should post all manner of things? Or do you mean more like other flavors within my orchestral writing? Thanks again tho I really appreciate your critique, its rare someone will take the time to say whats not grabbing them

Hey Joe, I don't know this mic specifically, but I can say that in my experience there is no mic that is good enough to just plug in via USB. My advice to you is to stick with a good lav and invest in a decent single channel pre-amp at some point. If you are going to do lots of single person lav type recordings I strongly recommend the Sennheiser powered capsule K-6 series. It is a battery powered base with various screw-on capsules (including a GREAT sounding lav and an amazing shotgun) this means that you have many options for pro-quality mic situations and minimal investment. I own many mics but the best for video deal I have is a pair of those Sennheiser K6 bases, with 2 MKE2-60 lavaliers and 2 ME66 shotgun capsules. And with those pieces I have almost all my live video sound covered. They arent like large diaphragm condensors but the sound will blow you away ;) http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_e...rs_recording_k6 http://www.sennheiser.com/sennheiser/icm_e...K6_overview.jpg As for a pre-amps, I dont know the best for compact portable pre-amps as i do most everything in studio, but my favorite pre is my focusrite ISA430 Producer Pack, which is a single channel pre with all kinds of stuff on it including GREAT EQ, Compressor, gate, limiter, de-esser and A/D conversion. For all the versatility it gives you it is an amazing piece of gear. It is kinda pricy at 3k but sooo worth it: http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/ISA430mkII/ If you just want pre's without all the options then there are a few great manufacturers to choose from, presonus, manley, avalon, TC Electronics are some of the better ones. You can even buy single strips of Neve consoles if you got some bucks to let fly. If you are serious about your sound, you will eventually have an arsenal of mics and preamps. Shortcuts and cheap tricks will give you like in product. Rather then spend 200 bucks on a crazy USB mic, why dont you take a trip to your local guitar center or sam ashe and look for used mic pres Hope this info is helpful :)

Its just an "I'm trying to be a hipster but I'm really a geek" reference to one of the Douglas Adams Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy books (book 3?) "So long, and thanks for all the fish" :) Any thoughts of the music other then "interesting"? Would love some feedback! Thanks

Hi all! My Name is Chris Alpiar and I am a composer of music for film, TV, stage theater and video games. I went to Berklee College of Music with a dual major in performance (sax) and Jazz composition. After more then 15 years of writing and touring as a jazz player I have gravitated my musical voice in music for picture. While I have tons of experience as an award winning composer I am still new to film and tv. So I am looking for projects to expand my portfolio. Shorts or features or any kind of music for picture project really! Please come to my website to hear some samples at http://www.alpiar.com/demos.aspx and also to read more about me and my studio :) Thanks for all the fish! ==================== Christopher Kennedy Alpiar Cinematic Composer http://www.alpiar.com