Nitai Pada Kamala - Experimental Mix

OK, this one is a bit experimental.

On the second song of the night (and from memory the third) Arjuna didn't play tabla - Janardana played the white Balarama mrdanga in the picture.

The sound of an untuned Balarama mrdanga is truly that of a plastic drum. If you tune it up you can get something half-way decent out of it. However, this was untuned, and to boot, unmiked to begin with. I noticed after the first few moments of the kirtan, which were spent trimming input gain and setting up the live sound, then turned around and adjusted the mics. As a result initially the sound level of the mrdanga is low.

However, this kind of works, as it allows the dynamics to build. Speaking of dynamics, I got a free Faderport - I'm just waiting for it to arrive. Now if I can use that, then I can (relatively) easily do the same thing with a recorded mix that I did on the night, riding the fader and recording it with automation. At least until I get the Zed R16, at which time the whole thing becomes a no-brainer. In the meantime you get a mix where the flute wanders all over the top of the whole kirtan - on the night I raised the volume during the response and lowered it while Maharaja sang.

I boosted the 760Hz on the top end of the mrdanga, and tried something I read about in Owsinski's book "Recording Engineers Handbook" [read online at Google Books].

In the book Owsinski explains that R&B producers put a 32Hz tone through a channel and trigger it from the kick drum. This gives you a real deep sub bass feel. I tried that with the wimpy plastic mrdanga to give it more oomph.

I put an test oscillator on a channel and set it to 66.910Hz. Then I put a noisegate on the channel and set the sidechain to the channel with the mrdanga. The noisegate settings are: Threshold (-17db) | Attack (3ms) | Hold (40ms) | Release (1824.6ms).

What this does is gate the oscillator until the bottom end of the mrdanga is hit hard, at which point the gate opens and the test oscillator's tone comes through. The effect, at least in the small amount of listening I've been able to do, is like a deep djembe playing in the kirtan.

In this mix I also played around with stereo positioning of elements, to make them closer to the actual layout of the room as captured in the stereo room mic. On the night I tried to position people to avoid leakage between mics. Next time I'll also take stereo balance into account.

OK, here's the track. Let me know how it sounds / what you think.

• Nitai Pada Kamala (mp3, 11:27, 16MB)

Oh yeah, at the end, in the last few minutes, Janardana and Rohan go to double time in 6/8 time. This song is in 3/4 (waltz) time. The feel changes going to 6/8, but the timing works. Maharaja was not used to that change but he quickly fell into the groove. The chimpta really helps in a situation like to keep the beat anchored.