Tag: technique

Record in 3’s

One of the challenges of recording any kind of content (video or audio) to be distributed on the internet or a intranet is getting a good natural sounding “take”.

I came across this nice Camtasia audio article by Lon Naylor on capturing multiple attempts of the same audio to get a really natural “take” to be mixed or added to a longer audio sequence later.  The included youtube video is a great example of this (I’ve also included this video below).  The video also shows great microphone and pop filter placement.

This makes a lot of sense, once a person reads a script and gets comfortable with the content or phrase, repeating it will sound more natural the next time (also any nuances or word emphasis would be worked out by hearing yourself).  By the 3rd attempt it should sound good.

Thanks for the article and pointer to the youtube video Lon.

Enjoy!

– Dom

Direct link to video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t926G1FFzL4

Microphone placement for interviews … the “Hat Mic”

Here is a very good microphone placement technique I learned years ago for recording audio interviews and corporate educational materials.  Some people have called this the “Hat Mic” or “Hat (Mic) Trick” technique.  I’m posting this so more people can learn this great miking technique.

It involves is clipping a lavalier/lapel microphone to the brim of a baseball cap as shown here:

Then putting on the hat mic and running the microphone cable behind a ear and to the recorder or computer mic port.

This miking technique has several advantages.  The most important ones are a constant fixed distance between the speaker’s mouth and the microphone (really helps with setting gain levels) and the microphone is out of the breath path of the person speaking (removes breathing on the mic and plosives).

Here is a MP3 audio example of the the hat mic technique in action.

Here is a direct link to the MP3 example:  http://tribalgrowth.com/files/4scoreHM.output.mp3

The WAV audio was recorded with a Olympus LS-10 and “Hat Mic”.  The MP3 audio was edited and produced using Audacity and the Levelator.

Here are the blog posts where I initially found and learned about the Hat Mic technique.

Hope this was useful. Enjoy!

– Dom