Mujitsu and Tairaku's Shakuhachi BBQ

hi, i am new here and also learning to play and make shakuhachi. also like you i  am meeting the same problem with the cheap and expensive equipment. even wanted to sell some cheap plastic shakuhachi that i think are well made but for now stopped because in fact can not make a good record and without a good sound file the people would think i am joking with some whistle not an instrument as i hear it when i play.
so to the problem. i read here in the forum where to put the microphone. its obvious that i dont have 5 microphones each 500euro. what i have done is  to open the cheap one i have and take from the body  just the microphone element. then soldered directly the element to the end of the wire insuring that only about 0.5 to 1mm of the wire is out of the shielding. this to ensure no interferences. checked how the microphone is working. of course better and captures even from distance.when it was inside the different type of shields made it maybe 5 times more unsensitive. ok, now the problems with the unwanted noise but this later. then found about 30cm bigger copper wire which serves for house el. instalation. i put the second bigger wire right after the microphone and binded it with scotch together with the microphone cable. what i had was a copy of a clip on microphone. found a clip and put the microphone  half the distance from the utaguchi to the fourth hole from the bottom/the first near the utaguchi,but not thee thumb hole. now i moved the wire to different positions and found thet the best is almostperpendicular to the shakuhachi,a litlle bit forth to the end and the micro looking in the direction to the end also,in your looking direction. so in other words the best results with my microphone were made  when it was situated somewhere 15cm above the middle of  3 and 4 sound holes looking down.the other best result that i connected it the same way to a hat just straight looking fort where i look. well for first time i was able to hear at the laptop what i hear when i play
of course the flexible wire makes it possible to play and check where is the best place for any special microphone. also i cut from a kitchen sponge for cleaning the dishes/a new one/ a little cube twise the element sise,formed it like round,cut a hole to the center and put it like a hat to the microphone element.now i have a wind prtection.the microphone i use is from my old skype headphones. now i am waiting to recieve my new sony stereo microphone and if  it doesnt work well for me it will suffer the same.well,funny,just the postman knocked on the door and gave it to me. will tell you later how it works. 7 days from china,not bad.in two word with all the above mentioned i managed to record acceptable sound for further editting

now for the software.
i am not a pro musician but have always been an audio maniac. at home have harmon cardon ampl. with 8 hifi loudspeakers and the biggest of them are pair of very expensive jbl/second hand of course/.this i say only to show you that when i edit something i hear well what i do. from many years i use only steinberg products and mainly wavelab and many related  pluggins. in my country this is used by all the musicians that i know. in internet also i have seen that steinberg products are the preffered. for me is intuitive to use,tried others but still this is the best,fast and good algorythms are used.that means the sound is better. i know the pro-s will smile at my post but thats the real life.
this maybe will enage sb but i use cracked by radium version and also the plugins are cracked mainly by them and even many things are bettered.
sory, i dont have for now 600$ to pay for the prog and 50 - 200 for a single plugin. if sb needs it as its difficult to find on the web,contact me and i will put it somewhere with the pluggins i have to download. i hope i dont offend some body with this post. thanks for reading and hope to be helpfull

ps.now i checked with the sony mini stereo microphone which original use is for pda or laptop or a similar purpuse. the sound is better even from one meter. in fact its small rotating body is very inviting to put it somwhere at the shakuhachi.when i do some experiments and have results will show them in the form of a sound file.

Last edited by costademaria (2006-12-12 06:00:03)

"high pitched noise" suggests to me initially Feedback. Though that would not be of a consistent volume and usually increase painfully.

Do you have your speakers on while recording ?

Kel.

Thanks everybody. It seems that part of a problem is me being too close to the mic. The waveform has some (and sometimes almost all) peaks cut off. I am using headphones, so there should not be a feedback problem. There is no preamp, just USB mic.
I will play with mic positioning, distance and volume and then give an update on results.
Thanks again,
Eugene