AA2 - Semester 3 - Week 1

As my main field of interest is ethnomusicology, for this week I thought of a recording session having few non-western musical instruments; say 3!

The first one is a didgeridoo-like woodwind. In order to get a proper sound out of this, the microphone I would use would be the same microphone designed to record a trumpet or saxophone. The important part of the procedure would be to clamp the microphone to the instrument.


The second instrument would be a frame drum (something like Daf, shown in the picture below). Recording this one is tricky. As a result of the shape of the instrument, the players usually tend to move while playing Daf. Therefore I would choose a microphone with a cardioid pattern of recording.

The third one would be a zither and it would be easier to record. Since the instrument does not move during the recording, a proper positioning makes a huge difference to the final result. I would take the instrument “Santour” as the example; and I would use 2 SM57s for two sides of it.


References:
Grice, David. 2008. “AA2 – Session planning.” Seminar presented at the University of Adelaide.