Tonight I had a visit from my sound guru, Richard Earnshaw, to advise me on sound equipment for the trip. What trip?? Well….
I’M TAKING 5 STUDENTS TO AMERICA IN MAY!
(I am afraid that is an all caps moment, and if you knew me you would hear it in my voice)
We have been working with a class outside of LA and it is all very exciting, and we are planning all sorts of things… For one, we are going to make an album as a result of our collaboration. The 6 from the UK will make a sort of string quartet (two cellos, a viola, and a violin), a guitar, and a vocalist. Besides being one of our chief cookie bakers for bake sales, I sorted out the audio equipment yesterday. In California, we will be recording on location in the fringes of Yosemite and are hoping to capture ambient sounds as well as interviews and music.
So back to Richard and audio equipment…
After talking about a few different mics and discussing how and where the recording would take place, we tested out this supremely cool little H4n zoom device. All by itself it sounds like this (well, Richard sounds like this when recorded on it, but you knew what I meant… and he is very silly -well worth a listen!)
https://soundcloud.com/laura_cello/test1-richard-singing
and some talking…
and then we recorded a bit of cello using my very portable stereo mic to see how well it picked up the sounds and the ring (in my kitchen?? I am not quite sure how this compares to Yosemite, but it’s a start). It is going to be really important to be easy to set up- and we might well be hiking somewhere and need to record – and not having a tag-along crew, well you know. We thought this little setup might just do the trick.
https://soundcloud.com/laura_cello/test-cello-sounds
Back to work for today. Meetings with students and planning and typing and practising 🙂 oh, and some baking. First bake sale is tomorrow!