Cool, and gettin’ yer money’s worth with that drum! 
Sure am! It all started when I was driving around with the drum in the back of my car. Cranking tunes, arrived and shut the car down and I heard the resonation and thought “That would make a cool reverb!”
LOL
She and the client that hired her loved it 
The alternate was to have her play in the bathroom lol
You should make some impulse file of that 
Clever, simply a mic behind the drumhead is enough?
Sounds great though, can’t fault that 
Aloha T,
‘Afro-Engineering 101’ at its finest!
Really creative and very kool.
{‘-’}
out-of-the-solar-system nifty!!! 
Do the neighbours’ kids stop and point when you drive by lately Tom?
Any mic will pick up the resonance. You have to remember that when you position a cardioid mic close to a source that the proximity effect will add bass and change the sound. In this case, that would be bad (IMO). The sensitivity of the microphone is important too as well as the preamp that is amplifying its signal.
I used an omni at4049 (original version) into a mind print DTC.
Omni microphones have far less proximity effect so you can snug it to the head. Not only will is sound more natural than a cardioid, it picked up a wider portion of the head, capturing a broader musical resonance as well as some of the bleed which I like.
Pencil condensers have greater sensitivity due to the size of the capsule, so more detail will be picked up.
The DTC is a fast preamp so it let’s the detail and nuances come through in the recording.
I also used the compressor of the DTC to bring out the nuances of the resonance and a boost on its eq +3db@3.8kHz with a Q of .35 . This was done outboard coming in while listening to the viola in the mix. The pans you hear in the comp viola sample was created this way too (the barometer of what I was after with the other elements in the mix)
Indeed and I will give it to Steve so he can load it into a vsti
One day during the summer I was driving over to a friends house, I had a mallet in my hand as I drove through my friend’s neighborhood and was beating it with the windows down to show the kiddos what a sub really sounds like!
Sounds great Tom, really mellow but a viola is mellow anyway, what’s it like with other instruments?
Cheers
Phil
Phil,
The only thing I didn’t like was how straight the player played. The player’s father who got her the job to come in told us she was excellent at improv and could work off a skeleton idea. This was totally not the case. The day was really frustrating. I was talking to my client last night and he was so frustrated how the day went and also being pissed that she was totally not how she was described by her father that he hadn’t even wanted to listen to the rough with her added part in the mix.
I think it sounds good. There is trumpet which will lead the solo region of the song so her straightness should be fine. We will be auditioning people in person this time for this position.
I will say this: Dana was probablly the best viola player I recorded as far as technique and pitch. She just was no where near an improv player. Jim and I tried coaching here so many ways to get something out of her. She wound up only playing the skeleton Jim and I wrote in a brainstorming session the week prior. That was a bummer but the quality of her playing was great and I like how it sounds in the mix.