video of my jazz trio

[nnajar]

at one of my recent concert appearances here at home I recorded the
trio and a buddy shot some video. just single camera stuff, nothing
great. The band is loose (for all the arrangements we have, we play
very loosely!) and I'll always be a sloppy player, but some of it is
still a little charming. Anyway, my buddy got two of the songs synced
to the video so I put them up on youtube.

Brazilville YouTube - The Nate Najar Trio- Brazilville

Tenderly YouTube - The Nate Najar Trio- Tenderly

me on guitar, John Lamb on bass and Stephen Bucholtz on
drums.

I don't know why when he synced up the video, Brazilville ended up in
mono. I gave him a stereo file. Tenderly managed to stay stereo.
also, he asked why it wasn't syncing up timewise properly and then I
realized I recorded at 44.1 and I think his camera did 48. so there's
a little drift. but these videos were just for youtube anyway so I'm
not too concerned.

I multitracked into pro tools 8 on my laptop and mixed it in logic
with uad.

dpa4099g on guitar
dpa imk4061 on bass
THE hypercardioid on drum OH
schoeps mk41 in XY on the room about 6 feet out and 10 feet up.

no eq on any individual tracks except a high pass on the room mics. I
did use some la2 compression on the guitar to help bring it out (of
course it also brought out the drum ambiance a lot but hearing the
guitar was more important than clean drums). and some gentle bus
compression. very slight room reverb on the guitar to help it fit in
with the ambiance of the actual room. I did use some manley massive passive eq and light compression then then limiting when i pseudo mastered it.

True precision 8 mic preamp and maudio 2626 interface/converters. I
like my preamps but i really want some decent converters- something I
can use at home and also take out to a gig like this.

I like that little dpa- it sounds very natural- but of course it picks
up lots of cymbals in the room because they're there.... I'm
interested to try the schoeps compact mic and inside guitar mount, but
then I imagine it will require severe eq and still sound like the
inside of the guitar. this is impossible. one day I will discover a
way to record this type of group.

I'd also like to use 2 mics on the drums but the schoeps is my only
pair and I used them on the room. I'm wondering if I should get a
pair of mics for the room and use the schoeps on drums, and if so,
what should I get? I'd love another pair of schoeps (or a whole
locker full) but I can't afford that.

anyway, comments, suggestions, criticism, anything welcome.... thanks!

Nate

[jimjazzdad]

Very nice Nate! Nice groove and I think the videos capture the feel very well. I am very amateur, but I do know how difficult it is to make a good live recording...and I am amazed that you can find time to be the engineer on top of you musical duties! Too bad Brazilville turned out mono - the recording doesn't do justice to the performance. On Tenderly I liked the sound much more - with stereo, the bass started to come out a bit . Personally I like to hear more of the fingerboard on the bass and that would probably necessitate someting in addition to the DPA IMK4061 and maybe moving further away from the drum kit? And what was the % of Schoeps room mics versus the spot mics? Anyway, this is the kind of music I love to listen to, recorded the way I prefer to hear it. Thanks for sharing!

[666666]

Originally Posted by nnajar

.... I'm wondering if I should get a pair of mics for the room and use the schoeps on drums, and if so, what should I get?....

Nice, man!!!

re: Schoeps... in my personal opinion, MK41s are a bit tight for drums, but of course it depends on your goals. When I've tried MK41s as drum overheads, they focused too much on what was right in their path, overall pick-up was not as even as I would have liked, plus they tend to lack "body" in that application, a bit thin sounding... which is pretty common of tight hyper-cardioids.

You might want to try a pair of MK4 cardioids, a lot more forgiving and versatile overall.... for room as well as drum overheads. The MK4 is my current drum overhead mic of choice, there's a pair in XY configuration hanging over my kit at this very moment. These tend to grab the entire picture about as evenly as could be expected, plus nice balanced tone from highs to lows, more body and fullness than what the MK41s tend to capture.

The MK41s to me are extremely directional, like shotguns... might be the tightest mics I've ever used that were not actually considered "shotguns". As you likely already realize, when using MK41s in a room, the angle is extremely important. I once used a pair of MK41s on an electric jazz / rock trio in a club, in XY pattern, out in front of the band, had the X pointing at the guitar (off to the left), the Y pointing at the bass (off to the right), and the drums were in the center of the stage. The resulting recording had almost no drums in it even though the drums were the loudest thing in the room during the performance. Those MK41s grabbed mostly guitar and bass and the drums were barely there. I should have tightened my XY pattern and got them pointing more towards the drums... but this was before I was familiar with the inherent behavior of the MK41. MK4s would have been fine in this application and mic position, end result would have been more natural and balanced, even if the positioning was not "perfect".

But of course the MK41 can be really helpful if the room is noisy or poor sounding. I still tend to use my MK41s a lot in situations where I DO wish to really zoom in on things. Very useful mics.

Another option... instead of getting two MK4s for XY use (or AB use), you might want to try one MK4 and one MK8 figure-8... then you can run a mid-side stereo configuration for either your room OR drum overheads. M/S can be really neat in these applications. It's worth trying out. Back before I had much experience, I was intimidated by the idea of M/S, but then one day I finally made the plunge, got my hands on a good figure-8 mic, and now I'm a serious fan of M/S. It's the kind of thing that you may not really appreciate until you try it. Depending on the room size, positioning etc, you can in some cases get an even deeper, wider and more realistic image of the space with M/S than if using XY... you have more spacial control in the mix in any case.

I really enjoyed the videos / performances... NICE!!!

[nnajar]

thanks for the kind words!

The room mics are up just enough to get a sense of space. They're almost low enough to where you don't notice if you mute it, but then a little higher so you get some room.

I wish I could do better on the guitar vs drums, but in order to hear the guitar properly I have to have it up enough and the drums are heard very well in the guitar mic! it's all indirect sound of course- at least these dpa mics have good off axis response- so it isn't smeary or crappy or harsh, but it still sounds like room sound! oh well, i'll figure something out!

N

[nnajar]

Originally Posted by 666666

Nice, man!!!

re: Schoeps... in my personal opinion, MK41s are a bit tight for drums, but of course it depends on your goals. When I've tried MK41s as drum overheads, they focused too much on what was right in their path, overall pick-up was not as even as I would have liked, plus they tend to lack "body" in that application, a bit thin sounding... which is pretty common of tight hyper-cardioids.

You might want to try a pair of MK4 cardioids, a lot more forgiving and versatile overall.... for room as well as drum overheads. The MK4 is my current drum overhead mic of choice, there's a pair in XY configuration hanging over my kit at this very moment. These tend to grab the entire picture about as evenly as could be expected, plus nice balanced tone from highs to lows, more body and fullness than what the MK41s tend to capture.

The MK41s to me are extremely directional, like shotguns... might be the tightest mics I've ever used that were not actually considered "shotguns". As you likely already realize, when using MK41s in a room, the angle is extremely important. I once used a pair of MK41s on an electric jazz / rock trio in a club, in XY pattern, out in front of the band, had the X pointing at the guitar (off to the left), the Y pointing at the bass (off to the right), and the drums were in the center of the stage. The resulting recording had almost no drums in it even though the drums were the loudest thing in the room during the performance. Those MK41s grabbed mostly guitar and bass and the drums were barely there. I should have tightened my XY pattern and got them pointing more towards the drums... but this was before I was familiar with the inherent behavior of the MK41. MK4s would have been fine in this application and mic position, end result would have been more natural and balanced, even if the positioning was not "perfect".

But of course the MK41 can be really helpful if the room is noisy or poor sounding. I still tend to use my MK41s a lot in situations where I DO wish to really zoom in on things. Very useful mics.

Another option... instead of getting two MK4s for XY use (or AB use), you might want to try one MK4 and one MK8 figure-8... then you can run a mid-side stereo configuration for either your room OR drum overheads. M/S can be really neat in these applications. It's worth trying out. Back before I had much experience, I was intimidated by the idea of M/S, but then one day I finally made the plunge, got my hands on a good figure-8 mic, and now I'm a serious fan of M/S. It's the kind of thing that you may not really appreciate until you try it. Depending on the room size, positioning etc, you can in some cases get an even deeper, wider and more realistic image of the space with M/S than if using XY... you have more spacial control in the mix in any case.

I really enjoyed the videos / performances... NICE!!!

Thank you!

a pair of mk4's would probably be a good investment. part of me was even thinking of a pair of mk2's for room mics.

I also want to try the schoeps compact mic with the "inside guitar" mount. problem is, then it will sound like the inside of a guitar! I also don't know what pattern mic to use in that situation. omni? no proximity effect, but all kinds of resonances. hypercardioid? where to point it? cardioid? wide cardioid? hmmmmmmm.

If i could get a decent sound from the inside of the guitar, that would solve a lot of problems!


N

[imaginaryday]

nicely done! it was fun the watch.

cheers.

[digitalolive]

Very nice! You guys are just the band my wife has been looking for for a gig at her hotel next wednesday in Sarasota.

And I've got a matched set of MK4s if you want to check them out sometime.

[nnajar]

Originally Posted by digitalolive

Very nice! You guys are just the band my wife has been looking for for a gig at her hotel next wednesday in Sarasota.

And I've got a matched set of MK4s if you want to check them out sometime.

Email me!

Natenajar@me.com

And I may want to rent your ml4's sometime. I haven't found anywhere around here to get them! Atlas doesn't rent anymore....

N