Didn't quite work out

Location
Melbourne
Equipment
Zoom F4
Sennheiser MKH 60
Boom pole array

In amongst all the possessions we needed to sort out and put into storage before we moved north were all my percussion toys and instruments as well as my pride and joy an upright piano minus the keyboard. While this might sound like a somewhat unusable instrument the strings and soundboard that are left can be used to create some incredible sounds. I spent several hours today working my way through bells, gongs, drums and a myriad of percussion toys collecting samples. These will take quite sometime to cut up and add to the database, but I am sure there will be plenty of samples to keep people busy for a while.

My favourite piano

A little bit of a time travel update here. I found when I came to editing all this material that much of it was unusable. I spent some time trying to figure out why and also consulted some of my peers in the industry. After several ideas I think I found the issue. Most of the gongs and bells produce a lot of high frequency material. The Sennheiser MKH60 is very sensitive at high frequency levels and in fact even has a boost above a certain frequency range. Even though the levels on the recorder were well within limits the mic itself doesn't seem to cope being so close to these kinds of instruments. I will re-record this material in the future.

Some of my percussion toys