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Post by cbdroege on Jun 13, 2017 23:04:25 GMT -8
Something I haven't been able to figure out in my home studio is how to record whistling. I'm a fairly talented whistler, but any attempts to capture it end up flat, and overly airy. Do I need a special mic for whistling? A special technique? A special setting in my software?
Has anyone had any particular success recording themselves whistling?
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Post by benedict on Jun 14, 2017 10:23:07 GMT -8
I haven't recorded myself whistling, but I've recorded a lot of birds, both inside my house and outside. (One of the things that makes my house such a dodgy recording environment: sharing it with seven birds.)
Just thinking out loud here, but it may come down to the difference between the spoken word and a musical instrument. The one is easier to record in a (relatively) dead space, and the other sounds better in a live space. Have you played around with room treatment, mic placement, and distance from the mic? Moving a couple of feet away from your microphone might take out some of the airy sound, if it's picking up the rush of air through your lips.
Now I want to go whistle at microphones to hear what happens!
After some Google searching, one other thing to try: A couple of threads on recording whistling mentioned using echo in addition to the direct signal. Try placing your mic a foot or two in front of a wall, pointed at the wall. Stand next to the microphone and whistle at the wall. The mic will pick up both you and the reflection, so experiment with placement, distance from you <-> wall, mic <-> wall, you <-> mic. The idea is to use the mix of the direct sound and the reflection to make it sound more full. I haven't had the chance to try this, but it's something to play with.
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Post by Rebekah Amber Clark on Jun 14, 2017 11:02:51 GMT -8
Something I haven't been able to figure out in my home studio is how to record whistling. I'm a fairly talented whistler, but any attempts to capture it end up flat, and overly airy. Do I need a special mic for whistling? A special technique? A special setting in my software? Has anyone had any particular success recording themselves whistling?
Not to be a broken record, but whenever I see threads like this asking for what to change, it strikes me there's a distinct lack of starting info:
*What microphone are you using? (Same for audio interface, DAW, etc.) *What mic placement are you using? *What is the recording space you're using? (Even if you've said in another thread, I never memorize what each person's studio space is like so it's good to mention it again.) *Can you link to a sound sample of what it DOES sound like?
It's really hard to say what to change without knowing what you're doing *now*. =)
...But off the top of my head, recording ocarina of any pitch (and I mean, bass through soprano) on my C01U sounds like the dying screams of the damned, so I wouldn't 100% rule out changing the mic.
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Post by cbdroege on Jun 15, 2017 5:57:47 GMT -8
I was asking generally if there is a trick to it, not specifically about changing my personal set-up for it. I feel like there is some basic trick that I'm missing. I'll try the bounce technique, though my imagination is telling me that would sound weird. (However, I have a USB Auna in a small, padded room with two pop-filters and an umbrella. I tried whistling directly into the pop filters, and just nearby, neither sounded very good. I've also tried with all my other mics, and various set-ups. If I get a sec in the next couple days, I'll upload a sample.)
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Post by benedict on Jun 15, 2017 12:10:48 GMT -8
Cool! I'd like to hear what you're getting. I played around with this a little last night, but it's tough to say if I'm getting anything useful without hearing what you've got.
Neat bit of history: I searched for some iconic whistling pieces to see if I could find the engineer's notes to see how they did it. I figured the theme song for the Andy Griffith Show would be a likely candidate. Nope, couldn't find the notes, but I did find out that the folks who wrote "The Fishin' Hole" (the actual name of the song), Earle Hagen and Herbert Spencer, wrote it in about fifteen minutes. Herbert Spencer did the whistling.
Needless to say all the tests I did last night were "The Fishin' Hole."
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Post by cbdroege on Jun 27, 2017 0:39:34 GMT -8
So, here is a recording of attempting to capture whistling. There are two takes. The first is just trying to whistle into the mic at the same set-up and range that I use for typical voice capture. The second uses the wall-bounce technique suggested. I also tried some other distances and placements in the room, but they all made it much worse, mostly by making it sound too distant. soundcloud.com/cb-droege-130876608/whistle-test/s-Li7rgThe two takes here actually don't sound all that different, I think. Maybe the second one (the bounce version) is a little better? There are fewer mouth sounds in it (especially annoying in the first take, you can hear the sound my throat makes when I change octave quickly), and it might be a little less airy, but also a little less rich? (Sorry it took a week to get to this. I was in Detroit for an event.)
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Post by benedict on Jun 27, 2017 13:19:15 GMT -8
Yeah, they sound really really similar, minus the mouth noises from the first. There's a little more life to the second, bounced one, but it still feels... close? Close and more sparse than the first.
I can play with this a little when I get home. All I've got on me at the moment is lavs.
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Post by benedict on Jul 1, 2017 23:52:13 GMT -8
Sorry for being so late getting back with you. I probably spent too much time dinking with this. As far as capturing the whistle, my best results were about 45 degrees off and normal operating distance from the microphone. (Basically what duffyweber said in the shoutbox earlier today.)
I got a little better reduction of mouth noise if I displaced the mic up and rotated down rather than having it off to one side. I tried varying the distance to the mic, but it just picked up more room reverb. (Makes sense.)
As for making the whistling sound not flat, I found having some reverb helped a lot. But small room reverb just made it sound harsh. (I tried recording in a round concrete room about 13m across. Pretty cool, but not all that practical.)
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