Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

Micing depends a lot on the player.

With most players I don't like close micing, my preference is a minimalist approach: stereo pair of omnis at a distance in a really good space (no added reverb). The sound of the shakuhachi can be considered a collaboration with the environment -- nobody listens to a shakuhachi as close as a mic right in front of it. Close micing is problematic in part because the mic picks up so much air sound. If you roll off the air, you lose a sense of presence; if you keep the air, it makes any added reverb sound very artificial.

When it comes to adding reverb -- either hardware or software -- anything less than the very best is not very good, unfortunately. If you feel compelled to add reverb to a shakuhachi recording, try a convolution algorithm instead of traditional reverb. If you use traditional reverb, you probably need to play a lot with the high-end rolloff setting. But many shakuhachi recordings are way too wet for my taste -- you lose a lot of the nuances to a very generalized sense of the instrument.

Another problem you may run into is running analog into your computer and having it converted there by the PCI card. The computer is an elecrically noisy environment, so it is much better to do your conversion to digital externally and then run it in through firewire or optical cable. I realize that not everyone can do it this way, but for what it's worth my best shakuhachi recordings have been with two Earthworks spaced omnis into Grace preamps into Benchmark converters then direct to disk -- no effects, no EQing, no manipulation at all other than dithering down to 16 bits when necessary for final output.

Best of luck with your recordings!

I've noticed that artificial reverb just doesn't really cut it like as I'd like; of course, I don't have any SONY sampling Reverbs, so that could be part of it.   I do prefer recording in an ambient environment, as well. There's a giant underground tank with around 10+ seconds of decay near me that I'd like to record in, and there's an old train station here in Seattle that has amazing 6-7 second decay, as well. Stairwells are good, too, but you always run the risk of people coming in and out. Funny thing is, reverb isn't necessarily "natural" for Shakuhachi; how much did players of old get to play in reverberating caves, or acoustically-sound rooms? Japanese structures are known for thier quiet, or at least for thier minimal reflection due to construction materials; outside playing doesn't give much in the way of reverb, as you need things in a space to bounce the sound back to you, rather than drift off into nothing. Even if you're standing like 30 feet from someone playing flute on a windy hill, you don't hear much reverb, just the ambient space; part of the reason you think it's reverb is that you're not hearing the attack as much, since you're not that close to the player...anyway...I'm just not sure reverb is a good thing for recording flutes, if you want an "old school" sound.

I agree with these guys...I'd think that a few feet away for the main mics, and at least one stereo pair if you want to capture room ambience, which will put the listener a little more  "in" the room with the player, should work pretty well.

Another trick, if you dont' have a bunch of mics, is to record your piece in your software, then copy the track to a new track, and give that track ALL room ambience, with none of the original signal; render it and mix it subtly back into your mix, and that should give you some nice room effects.

-E

Last edited by kyoreiflutes (2005-11-28 15:21:46)