ihatemusic

Anyone else out there record primarily in their apartment on a busy city street?

In order to avoid traffic noise (3 bus lines run back and forth on my corner until 1am, start up again at 5) I usually take a nap after work (needed after staying up till the dawn sometimes!) and restart my day around 10pm... All just to get a few good, useable, hours of recording time! An added benefit is that any daytime distractions, or nighttime ones, for that matter, are largely done away with, which increases my focus and concentration on the task at hand.

Part of the necessity for this practice is that I tend to record very quiet improvised sound on only one instrument/object at a time, to later be mixed with others.. any regular sound in the background would get compounded and amplified as more layers were added, which is, of course, some pretty basic audio engineering. I also record with in-ear binaural mics which have a very low noise floor and their intrinsically vivid spacial representation, so anything in the background is a concern.

I do realize that with a sm58 or contact mics I could localize the recording enough to not have to be so concerned with street noise, which is what I'm sure a lot of people on this board do, but nothing sounds as good to my ears as binaural recordings, and the occasional bus/floor creak/drunken-holler-in-the-night in the background that I have to double check whether is 'really' there fits in well with my aesthetic anyway.

Does anyone share my disposition to night recording? Do you live in the country and have no problem recording at noon? Does anyone employ studio time or otherwise have regular access to a sound studio? Or are some of the purists out there unworried about mixing later because they improvise with a group, say, and 'it is what it is' or whatever?

As a side note, some of my favorite albums have clearly discernable 'unintended' background details- Yoshimi and Yuka's barking dog on 'flower with no color', a(nother) dog on Graham Lambkin's 'draining the vats' (actually most of his recent stuff seems to include this sort of depth of recording), early morning street noise(?) on the last track of "english" by english, and I seem to recall some Greg Kelley track where I wasn't sure whether he or the room was making a sound, but can't seem to find it now... huh.

Btw, not really posting here for advice, should anyone read this that way, more out of curiosity about this sort of music skewing other peoples practices towards the rarefied.

Thanks!

I used to have the same problem as you some time ago. Somewhere I've got a recording with a traffic jam outside, lots of horns honking. But back then I had just as many problems with flatmates - either keeping them awake by playing in the room above or someone coming in in the middle of a recording. You should have a listen to Organum's Vacant Lights, which is one approach - to accept it, and play along...

Nowadays I do indeed live in the country, I have a workspace in a barn, but have as many problems with the wind rattling the roof as I had with traffic before - admittedly it's a 'better' background noise to have to work with.

I also use studios sometimes (performance spaces rather than proper recording studios) but find that in both of my favourites certain frequencies will set the vent/light rigging quaking, nevertheless these are still far and away my favourite spaces to record in.

Noisy recordings can be great, pristine recordings can be great, but I really can't handle those decisions being made for me (by my surroundings or whatever). I like to be able to make the choice myself.

The English track you reference, by the way, was intentional--I'd put a mic on the balcony of my 20th floor apartment (Yangpyeong-dong REPRESENT!), and as Bonnie and I started recording I raised the volume. Glad you like it!

Yes, a constant issue.

I am between a 'sound proof' studio pod and my humble room when it comes to source recordings, one thing I've found is that it can be a real pain having to lug heavy/bulky/otherwise inconvenient objects around to treated spaces.

At the moment, the studios I (have) been using have issues with the air con.. no matter how much of a little hut you make out of isolation boards you can still hear the hush of the air con, which ultimately makes the recordings sound worse as they are much like hiss.

My little room posesses a much more identifiable 'room' acoustic but once everything is off and there are no planes (I hate planes) it is a great space, with a warmth.

there are few things/techniques I use to minimise noise as much as possible:

first thing I do is take an impulse of the noise (signal noise, acoustic noise, sometimes hitting record and then pulling the mics out so I have an impression of the noise generated by the preamp/recorder) and reduce it using the spectral dynamics option in SoundHack (saved my life many times). Using the small file as a template, and then remove from about -9 db (or whatever works) and below.

another thing, is to painstakingly pick out the events using a volume automation, shaping to the attacks and decays, and subsequently reducing the acoustic floor. (its cleaner than spectral removal)

I use a stereo pair of Neuman KM184s and they are sensitive, so little things (like next door's scrabblings) are picked up..

I also using carpet cut-offs as isolation panels (mainly behind the mics, or infront of my mouth/nose so that I dont have to breathe quite so slowly) and place them under the mic stand to minimise unwanted vibrations (footing etc.)

I have on occasion had no choice but to include unintentional environmental sound, actually I was making recordings in a friend's kitchen in Bordeaux and someone was on the phone outside for like 50 mins.. it was extreamly irritating. So I then started to record them, when they finished I realised that the ambient sounds coming from the rooms below (like a stairwell setting) were much more interesting (people singing while washing their dishes etc.)

I havent found a use for them yet..

But all said and done, ultimately, I am more often than not forced to make my source recordings at night..

horaflora wrote:Anyone else out there record primarily in their apartment on a busy city street?

yes, I record primarily in the one of the noisiest place in Paris (near Pigalle). the problem during the day is the traffic... I used to record in the daytime and then try to clean up the sound, like filtering out some frequencies or locating the exact place where the noise were, but it was way too much work so I gave up.

In order to avoid traffic noise (...) I usually take a nap after work (...) and restart my day around 10pm... (...) Does anyone share my disposition to night recording?

that doesn't work here, people start going out around that time, there's much partying, groups of people in the streets, noise from the clubs and bars, and later on there are fights and drunk people screaming at each other...

So now if I have to record something very quiet I have to do it in the bathroom, or do it at someone else's place.

That's kind of a reversed 'onkyo-syndrome', I tend to use louder sounds as time goes and I'm sure my environment plays a part into that.

Night is the other half of life, and the better half.

GOETHE

personally, if i want to make a silent recording during the day, i use of contact microphones or line outputs, if I wanted to record with a pair stereo condenser microphones , I am compelled to record at night or in a very isolated place.


I am fascinated when I hear the sound quality (and low ambient sound) records as The Room or Cathnor´s Poor Trade, but for me the balance is found in recordings where there is a perceived natural sound of the room and the sound of the improvisors can be heard clearly, but not plastic, digitally treated. i like a lot the sound of records like 'Kid ailack 5' and 'Düsseldorf vielfaches' of B-boim records.