Truth Recordings

2 x DPA4006A omnis, AB arrangement in Rycote cyclones into Nagra VI

2 x DPA4006A omnis in Rycote cyclones into Nagra 7

Ten days recording Bart Willoughby and soundscapes around the Bungle Bungles alongside good friend and photographer Cole Bennetts. For the trip I took two stereo mic rigs: a stereo bar with two Rycote cyclones (bottom left) containing DPA4006A omni mics for AB recordings, and the DPA4023 cardioids in the Rycote ORTF windshield. The bottom far right windshield got the 4017 shotgun. Nagra VI and 7 with the EMP preamp.

Pair of DPA4023s (ORTF arrangement) inside Rycote Stereo Windshield into Nagra VI.

Pair of DPA4023s (ORTF arrangement) inside Rycote Stereo Windshield into Nagra VI.

Pair of DPA4023s (ORTF arrangement) inside Rycote Stereo Windshield into Nagra VI.

25km outside Jabiru. Pair of DPA4023s (ORTF arrangement) inside Rycote Stereo Windshield into Nagra VI.

3 days recording drums and organ for Bart Willoughby

Pair of DPA4023s setup for ORTF inside a Rode blimp.

Choir recording for the Divinyls Reworked CD. Great project and wonderful to see it come to fruition.

Great demonstration of the Dolby Atmos system and histroy of film sound presented at SoundFirm by Chris Goodes. Upcoming AES meeting info here

Recording & surround mix for De Anima video installation by Brook Andrew.

Audio visual production, operate and record for Bart Willoughby concert at Sacred Heart Cathedral. Great sounding organ and acoustics. Interesting blend of sound having the organ placed at the rear whilst choir & musicians at the front of the audience. Midas M32 console with remote stage box at the cathedral and stage box at the stage and a number of DSP112 speakers down the cathedral to help spread the sound more appropriately. Video camera on Bart at organ sent to projector on stage.

Location effects recordings with Ben Cook at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre for an augmented reality presentation demonstrating the main Plenary changing shape through the use of the Unity 3D game engine, projected on the Plenary walls.

Picked this up and finding it more practical than the standard Nagra VI bag. It has cable windows so wireless receivers can sit neatly in the pouch without cables running through the top opening. Also the recorder can be removed without needing to undo screws (like the original bag) and it has a large see through plastic rain cover that covers both the recorder and removable pouch.

Bungle Bungle Ranges at Purnululu National Park at the top of Western Australia, IRT and NOS soundscape recordings and testing acoustics for an upcoming project. Amazing place!

Contracted by the National Film and Sound Archives to record audio and video for Bart Willoughby’s performance at the Melbourne Town Hall. A great night and a full house. We captured the show with four Canon 5D3 cameras, a ProTools rig (Nagra VI clocked with RME UFX & ADI-QS8 interfaces) and a Sound Devices 702 with boom for two cameras mobile interviews concluding the performance.

Sound Librarian’s Stephan Schutze ran his Recording Workshop again at the Docklands Studios and we were asked to film and record the event for a series of upcoming youtube clips. This year around 90 people attended and a quick headcount showed that around half of the attendees brought field recorders to the event, along with three Sound Devices 788T recorders and our Nagra VI. Factory Sound (on behalf of Amber Technology) were kind enough to bring a couple of DPA 4017B Shotgun microphones to the event so I quickly borrowed one and attached it for the day to my four channel IRT cross setup (4 x DPA4023s) turning it into a five channel rig. The chaps from Portfire Studios brought in a number of guns to record including a revolver, shotgun, uzi and assault rifle and after firing them had a great Q&A session. Stephan showed how the mic up two motorbikes using DPA4062 microphones, made a series of crowd recordings and went through a section of vegetable recording (for bone shattering effects and squishes). The day finished with a great discussion on hyper-realistic vs real sound use in film and looking forward to the third instalment next year.

More all night recording sessions for Bart back at the Melbourne Town Hall, interestingly the organ has 6024 pipes and stands at 9.75 metres high. Jon O’Neil lent a hand for these and brought along a bag of extra microphones (including a pair of AKG C414 XLS’, Carillon AXIS 70 ribbon and a Neumann TLM 49). Nick Sorich also assisted on the final night. Following the recording sessions we took impulse responses of the hall using sine wave sweeps and a starter pistol (conducted around 4am which was nice and quiet) recorded across 8 microphones spread throughout the hall.

Choristry ran a crowd funding campaign through Pozible and managed to raise funds to produce a new CD. This recording took place over three nights at St Johns Church in Southbank. For the first two nights Ben Cook assisted with the recording and on the third night Jon O’Neil assisted. We setup the main matched pair of DPA4023s cardiod mics in ORTF configuration to capture a natural wide stereo image; the second matched pair of DPA4023s were positioned in XY, three quarters of the way down the church facing the rear to pick up more of the diffuse field just in case we needed a little more later down the track. Mics run into the Nagra VI with additional EMP pres. In addition we took several impulse responses of the church using 45 second sine sweeps using the Convolution Reverb Pro plugin from Max for Live.

Recording session with Bart Willoughby on organ at the Melbourne Town Hall. Took various impulse responses of the hall (sine sweeps through a pair of Mackie HR824 monitors) for instruments recorded later in the studio.

Over the weekend James and I headed over to the Northcote Uniting Church to record three fantastic musicians perform a mixture of Indian and Chinese music. I haven’t been to this particular Church before and it was obvious that street noise was going to be an issue as the Church fronts onto a main street. So we put emphasis on the positioning of the instrument microphones, with the plan of adding room microphones subtly to glue the overall recording together. Microphones were run to the Nagra VI recorder coupled with the Nagra EMP preamp. We used two DPA 4023s in overhead ORTF configuration and two 4023s for spots on the guzheng and bansuri flute as well as two Shure SM57s on the tablas. The concert featured Mindy Mang Wang on guzheng, Vinod Prasanna playing bansuri flute and Glen Kniebeiss on tabla.

Contracted to record and produce a run of CDs for the Star Chorale Choir and Orchestra. Concert recorded in the James Tatoulis Auditorium at the Methodist Ladies’ College with assistance from James Howard. A week before the concert I headed along to a rehearsal to meet and hear the choir, check the acoustics of the auditorium and plan the recording setup.

We used 4 DPA 4023 compact mics & 4 Neumann U89s for this recording. The main ORTF pair behind and above the conductor and a second ORTF pair in front of the choir. We used two DPA 4060s as outriggers for the choir and setup 4 Neumann U89s \to cover the orchestra and soloists. The microphones were run into the Nagra VI recorder alongside a 4 channel GML preamp and interface combo in a room on stage left. The Choir and Orchestra gave a fantastic performance to a full house.

The concert was directed by Jane Elton Brown and the featured soloists were Jane O’Toole, Kerrie Bolton, Roy Best and Gary Rowley.

Choristry performing Dvořák’s Stabat Mater at St John’s Southgate, a modern medium sized  church in a quiet pocket of Southbank. The soloists were: Diipti Firmstone (Soprano), Christina Jonas (Alto), Michael Lapina (Tenor)  and Andrea Carcassi (Bass). The concert was conducted by Trevor Jones with Piano by Peter Dumsday.

Throughout 2010 and 2011 I’ve been recording and producing CDs with Dya Singh which has been a great experience, both for honing recording skills and learning more about music. Amongst the recordings I traveled to a few festivals and concerts to see Dya and his group perform and one moment which sticks out is from the Woodford Folk Festival. Straight after one of the performances Bob Hawke came backstage to meet Dya and I caught him say “thanks Dya, you’re doing a wonderful thing”.

Bukhchuluun Ganburged came to Melbourne late January to perform at Federation Square and he got me interested in finding out more. I’d taken some portfolio photos for Bukhu before previously and having since heard one of his CDs offered to do some recording whilst he was in town. As things turned out we both found time and recorded two songs. Amongst the music we had a great chat about Mongolian music and Bukhu explained the importance of the horse hair fiddle and some stories of the fiddle’s origins. For the recording we made do with my living room and used two DPA4023 microphones into the Nagra VI – one mic for voice and the other for the horse hair fiddle.

I drove up to the Woodford Folk Festival to record and photograph a number of artist performances including: Dya Singh World Music Group, The Bird, Mista Savona, Leah Flannigan, RedBantoo, Hermitude and Spankinhide. Most of the concert recordings were made taking a direct mix out from the console alongside a stereo pair of DPA4023s in ORTF a couple of meters above the mixing position inside a blimp. I shot some video from different positions during Hermitude’s show which they liked, and they ended up cutting an entire video from it for their track ‘Get in my Life’ which is viewable here

During my road trip up to the Woodford Festival I got stuck in Warwick because of floods blocking the way out of town and the way I’d drove in. So I spent the night with around 250 others camping out on the floor of the Aquatic Centre. It was good meeting the locals and other travellers but sad to hear about people who’d lost animals and houses.

Here’s some Australian soundscapes made at various intervals between Sydney and Brisbane using a Nagra VI field recorder and a pair of DPA 4023 microphones.

About 15km northeast of Cowra.

1am soundscape of a dam just outside of Orange, NSW. Recorded using a Nagra VI field recording and pair of DPA 4023 microphones in ORTF configuration.

96kHz stereo daytime Australian farm soundscapes collected between 2pm and 4pm, west of Orange, NSW. Recorded to a Nagra VI field recorder with a matched pair of DPA4023 cardiod microphones in ORTF arrangement.

96kHz stereo daytime Australian bushland soundscapes collected between midday and 3pm, north of Orange, NSW. Recorded to a Nagra VI field recorder with a matched pair of DPA4023 cardiod microphones in ORTF arrangement.

Sound of seagulls at the docklands Melbourne, 1.30am. Matched pair DPA4023 cardioids in ORTF to Nagra VI.

Headed down to the Trinity Uniting Church in Brighton on a sunny Sunday with Sam McNicol to record the Five Pointed Star concert for the Melbourne Composers League. Here’s an excerpt of composer Andrew Batterham’s song Such Sweet Sorrow, performed by the Silo String Quartet.

Contracted to produce a 20 minute music piece used in the Australian Pavilion throughout the World Expo in Shanghai to accompany sand art performances; the piece was a fuse of instrument recordings, outback soundscapes and sample-based production.

As part of the GEOS expedition led by Greg Simmons we recorded monks chanting at the Gyuto Monastery in January 2010

On the GEOS expedition with Greg Simmons we recorded shehnai player Ustad Ali Abbas Khan and his ensemble in the grounds of the Chet Singh Palace in Varanasi, overlooking the Ganges River.