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Justin Bruckerhoff
This past Saturday, 9/27, I returned to SongSmith Records to review Chapter 6: Microphone Placement with Jeff, and also dive into a suprise music theory lesson. We talked about different mic placements such ambient, accent, close, and distant mic placement. We went over some stereo miking techniques such as the mid-side technique, ORTF, spaced pair miking, X-Y miking, Blumlein pair miking, and decca tree, and discussed some situations and settings where these techniques would be utilized. We then talked a little bit about the miking of some instruments such as the electric and acoustic guitars, woodwind instruments, brass instruments, and the grand piano, which is one instrument he showed me his technique of miking.
After talking about chapter 6 and making sure I understand the material, we went into a music theory lesson. Jeff stresses to me time and time again how helpful and valuable it is to know music and REALLY hear it when working in the audio engineering field. I whole-heartedly agree with him. He tested my skills in hearing 2nds, 3rds, 4ths, 5ths and other intervals of their base notes, and gave me some techniques I could use to practice hearing and picking out the notes of different keys. We talked about majors and minors 1st, 2nd, 3rds and so on, and he gave me differents songs I can listen to help with identifying the various intervals. He wanted me to identify the notes on the piano and play different key signatures for him and he was pleased that I knew my way around the piano. We sat at the piano in the studio and talked about chords and their first and second inversions. We talked about naturals, flats, double flats, sharps and double sharps and Pythagoras and how he is credited with the discovery of ratios between harmonious tones.
We ended the session with Jeff showing me his collection of mics which is a lot more extensive than I originally thought. He tested me to see if I could identify what kind of mic each one was and I did a pretty decent job at it. Overall the session was a good learning experience.
