what unorthodox techniques have you used?

[ersheff]

Hi, all.
So, my girlfriend and I are working on a small recording project for her audio class.
We decided early on that we wanted to try and avoid doing the obvious things to force ourselves to be creative about the sounds. You know, like not putting LR overheads on the drumset, not using a blasted 57 on the guitar amp, limiting ourselves to 8 tracks total in PTLE, etc.
We've only done drums so far, and it's actually been a bit tamer than we originally intended. For one song, we doubled the drum part and only used one mic for each take. For the other song, it was one mono overhead mic with an RE20 in the hole on the kick drum, only because that sounds so good on this particular kick drum, we couldn't NOT do it. Once we move on to the next parts, I'm hoping it will get a little more interesting. I'll probably track some vocals through a guitar amp. We're definitely not doing any direct bass..........
Anyway, I'm really happy with the sounds so far, even though we haven't been as adventurous as we'd hoped.
Anyone have any stories to share about unorthodox or creative techniques they've tried?

[dannygold]

You should read a little about Eno and oblique Strategies:

A Primer On Oblique Strategizing

[guid0]

On a recent project, it was decided that the end of the chorus needed some sort of dramatic trumpet line, ala ennio morricone.

We plugged in a tele into a slightly overdriven fender amp and let it rest on a guitar stand while someone played the trumpet very loudly, directly into the guitar's pickups.

The amp was close mic'ed in an isolated room and we made sure that no part of the actual "accoustic" trumpet sound was captured.

What came out was a very eerie trumpet phrase augmented by the sympathetic vibration in the strings that just fit perfectly with the rest of the track.

Chuck that to a very bunch of weirdos trying to finish a song in the middle of the night.

[ersheff]

Originally Posted by dannygold

You should read a little about Eno and oblique Strategies:

A Primer On Oblique Strategizing

Very cool.
Unfortunately, the virtual version of the cards is only available as a classic app on Macs.

I should add to my original post that there is only so much experimenting we can do on this particular project since she's still expected to produce something that will sound "good" enough to be evaluated in a class that specifically deals with the technical side of audio.
Would definitely like to do more of it in the future though on other projects.

Have any of you seen this stuff?

:: milkcrate ::

Some of these albums they do are created from a single sound, within 24 hours.
Kind of inspiring how productive one can be with so little resources.

[Digitar]

Mopppish,

Speaking of sympathetic vibrations. I was producing a rock group in Chicago and I wanted a more unique reverb so I put a Mesa/Boogie combo underneath a Steinway Grand facing up at the strings of the piano. Then I put a weight on the sustain pedal of the piano, miked the grand with a couple of Neumann's. Then had the guitar player play his part and wound up with a strange kind of reverb from the sympathetic vibrations. Had to compress it quite a bit but it worked. You could try it with vocals or any other instruments pumped through some monitors. Just some more food for thought.

[Stevil]

Originally Posted by Digitar

Speaking of sympathetic vibrations. I was producing a rock group in Chicago and I wanted a more unique reverb so I put a Mesa/Boogie combo underneath a Steinway Grand facing up at the strings of the piano.

a friend did a similar trick with electronic drums. kick & snare sounds run on separate channels to separate amps with an actual kick & snare in front of them respectively.

[ersheff]

Originally Posted by Digitar

Mopppish,

Speaking of sympathetic vibrations. I was producing a rock group in Chicago and I wanted a more unique reverb so I put a Mesa/Boogie combo underneath a Steinway Grand facing up at the strings of the piano. Then I put a weight on the sustain pedal of the piano, miked the grand with a couple of Neumann's. Then had the guitar player play his part and wound up with a strange kind of reverb from the sympathetic vibrations. Had to compress it quite a bit but it worked. You could try it with vocals or any other instruments pumped through some monitors. Just some more food for thought.

Yeah! There have been some pieces composed that use this technique for other instruments as well.
My friend Trevor (he and I are both college music students) just wrote a piece for saxophone and percussion that has the sax playing into a piano with the pedal down and into a snare drum with the snares on.
Not recording techniques, but definitely some sympathetic vibrations going on there.

[dannygold]

Originally Posted by mopppish

Very cool.
Unfortunately, the virtual version of the cards is only available as a classic app on Macs.

Or Here:

Random Strategies - Oblique Strategies - blackhat-seo.com

[theblue1]

Originally Posted by dannygold

You should read a little about Eno and oblique Strategies:

A Primer On Oblique Strategizing

I have the 1978 revised edition of the Oblique Strategies deck (1975 being the first). I keep it within reach of my recording rig and consult it every now and then. I don't necessarily always take the advice I get on a single cut but just getting a piece of advice you don't want to take can help clarify your thinking sometimes.


____________

When I set up my first multichannel DAW (I'd been doing radio editing for a little while on the computer before I set up the 8 channel DAW) in 1996, I'd been 'pent up' working with ADATs for the previous 4 or 5 years -- and I had a big jones to do some serious editing.

I'd been pretty good with a block and blade back my analog tape days and I was already on top of moving around quickly in a stereo audio editing environment (not that my old editing software was fast on my old '386 but by the time I had a mighty Pentium 133 [as in 133 mega-Hz] underneath me in 1996, I was semi-stylin').

Anyhow, on one of the earliest pieces I did on the DAW, it started out with some cheezy falsetto back up vocals I'd done... and they were awful.

But there was something there I liked. So, after a while, I took them, used my DAW software to chop up the audio into 1/8th note slices and then, using my mouse, just randomly rearranged them. I mixed them kind of low and they bubbled underneath... completely incomprehensible but with this new, 1/8 pulsing rhythm. It was pretty cool. Actually, wth, you can hear it here. (This is revised version with an a capella intro. The chopped up stuff comes after the beat kicks in for a while. And, actually, now that I'm listening to it, again, I don't think it's entirely random. I think I found this one note that rises and is cut off and pasted that around to finish 'lines.' But, hey.)