audio engineering

A quick remix with an electro vibe to go with the Autotune:

• Bachhu Tune Electro Remix (mp3, 3.3MB, 2:24)

The previously uploaded version was cut short by about a minute. This new one is complete.

I spent some time today doing a little recording. My goals today were to start to iron out a work flow for recording, in preparation for the World Sankirtan Party album recording slated for next month, to play with a tune that I really like, and also to play with auto tune.

Here's the result:

• Bachhu's Tune Demo (mp3, 2:24, 3.3MB)

There are three guitar tracks (one rhythm, one lead, one harmony), a bass guitar track, two keyboard (gospel organ) tracks, and a lead and backing vocal. I used autotune on both the lead and backing vocal.

A few observations:

• Autotune rocks, and is the next evolutionary level in music in general, and recorded kirtan in particular.
• Autotune works better when you give it the scale to work with, rather than allowing it to work chromatically.
• The main vocal, which I did in one take, could benefit from a retake to get rid of some of the "warbling" that autotune produces when the pitch is indecisive.
• Getting a good result with autotune requires a particular singing technique (with no vibrato) which I will have to work to master.
• This tune rocks. I heard it from Bachhu when he came up to Brisbane for Maha Kirtan 2.

Excellence is not accidental - it's intentional.

Video courtesy of Krishnapada.

Here are a few subtle highlights of the sound mixing in this video segment:

You can hear at various points shifts in the balance of instruments. For example, the top end of the tabla comes up at 1:14, around 2:31 on the "turnaround", and again at 4:37. Changing the balance of the instruments creates a dynamic feel to the kirtan. It renews interest and energy and keeps it fresh.

There is a chorus effect on the harmonium during Vraja Dhama's kirtan. It's most noticeable around 3:37 during the response.

The booming of the bottom end of the mrdanga around 3:38 was me mucking around with Krishnapada. I maxed out the 80Hz on the AKG D770 mic we had on the bottom end of the tabla, and this caused the 800W subwoofer we had hooked up to go to town.

In the kirtans overall you can feel and hear a strong presence in the elusive 80Hz-120Hz range, delivered with authority and precision by an RCF ART 705A 800W active sub with an 80Hz crossover. This is balanced by a reasonable amount of 12kHz-20kHz provided by a few select cartals and a tambourine played by competent players. The overall effect was a relatively high SPL (sound pressure level) that was as much "felt" as it was heard, and didn't leave you with ringing ears and hearing damage afterwards.

Heaps of cartals in the 16kHz-20kHz range will make you deaf. Heaps of bass in the 80Hz-120Hz range will make you shake your booty.

To deliver those frequencies you need Lots.Of.Power. Shifting the amount of air needed for low-frequency, long wavelength sound needs a powerful amp and a big driver. The RCF ART705A, with 800 watts of power amp and a 15" driver delivers this.

Two of these would be ideal to get an equal experience throughout the room, and Yes, we will get there; but in the meantime we had a 100W Ashdown bass amp near the musicians to provide bass guitar foldback, and put the subwoofer at the back of the room to minimize feedback through the mics.

Bhakti Yoga is the "Yoga of Entertainment". Entertainment, from the Latin tenere, is all about capturing and holding the attention. Bhakti Yoga is about focusing and directing the attention to the transcendental reality beyond the veil of Maya.

Here's the final, stand-up kirtan of the Sunday Feast, ably lead by Maha-mantra das.

It's a simple four mic affair: a Shure WH-30 condenser headset mic for the lead vocal, a Behringer C2 condenser for the room, and a couple of Shure SM58s - one for the backing vocal (Param Satya and Prahlad), and one for Sridhar's saxophone.

If I'd had time to set up (this is just straight after the "stage" kirtan), I would have set up two additional mics - another C2 for a stereo image, and an omnidirectional condenser for more of the room, which would have helped to put more drums in it - I could have taken all the top end off that one and boosted it up to put more bass in the mix.

I've mastered this one really hot, and left the cartals in their full glory (I usually put a low pass filter on the room mics to bring them down). The vocal is so high that it's still the most prominent element, and that's the most important thing - the chanting.

• Maha-mantra Sunday Feast Kirtan (mp3, 30MB, 21:48)

Enjoy!
- Sitapati "That's me playing the chimptas" das

Here's a recording of Radha-ramana-hari from last night.

A few of things about this recording:

1. The main vocal is a bit distorted. This is because I used an extreme microphone technique, super close to the mic. I did this because for the two preceding kirtans I was manning the desk (as you can see from the video above). When it came my turn to sing I was in a different position and it sounded as though my voice wasn't coming through the PA. I had set up a foldback monitor (the Roland Street Cube) - but since things were running late (let me just add that I was personally on time) there was no time to soundcheck. In fact my voice was coming through at a normal volume, and my close miking caused the signal to clip.

2. The first part of the kirtan kicks up quite a few bpm when the tabla comes in. We'll need to practice this for the July 3 gig at Fusion, including some time with a metronome for me, I think. I am also going to separate the two melodies, so the first Hare Krishna kirtan will get a part C and maybe D, and Radha-ramana-hari stays as it is with Parts A (Radha-ramana-haribol), B (Sri Krishna Govinda...), C (Hare Krishna low), D (Hare Krishna high), and E (Sri Krishna Govinda high).

3. Without the sound check I wasn't able to get things set up nicely, but I think the two things that I could have done to make the sound better would have been to EQ the room using a graphic equalizer on the whole mix, and move the mixing station further back. Doing that will require a multicore - I'm going to look into that soon.

• Radha-ramana-hari (mp3, 26MB, 18:53)

Here's a video and a recording from last night's kirtan.

The kirtan is one of my mash-ups. It's constructed from a song I really liked in the 80's, a tune from Jai Uttal, and a song that was always playing on the bus when I lived in Perú. This take was a bit of a practice for tonight's Sunday Feast. Since the album isn't out yet peeps don't have the opportunity to thrash it on their iPods, and so they're learning the phrasing and melody by the old school method - trial and error and listening and repeating live. Vraj was also working out the bass line as we went. He came up with some funky stuff.

I'll record tonight's kirtan too, and we'll see how they compare.

• Radha-ramana-hari (mp3, 15MB, 10:41)

Enjoy!

-Sitapati "The only thing liberal about me is my use of the T-pain effect" das

By popular demand (shout out to Pulkit), here's another track from H.H. Prabhavishnu Swami's 24 May Bhajan session.

It's a crash-mix of Sri Rupa Manjari Pada. I basically copied the settings from the last mix I did, verbatim. The last mix had a mrdanga, but I've just applied the same EQ, effects, and gain to the tabla. In future, as long as the mics stay where they are I can just do one mix, then reuse it. The only thing to do then would be to ride the faders and do some live gain adjustments while listening to the track, to make it "breathe". I don't have time for that now - if I get my free Faderport, or even better, a 16-track R-16, I'll start doing that.

On this track Arjuna really let rip on the tabla, and Sridhar on the flute/saxophone. They'd warmed up on the previous tracks and the energy in the temple was peaking. Another two other factors - I'd gotten the hang of manipulating the FOH (front of house) sound, and had also pushed the faders up. At this point we were maxing out the PA system (300W Yamaha Stagepas). From memory this was the last track of the night. Somehow it's been dumped to my hard drive as 15/17, so there are two more tracks to come.

• Sri Rupa Manjari Pada (mp3, 16:26, 23MB)

You've got to approach a mixing job with a vision.

I listened to the songs I've mixed so far from 24 May, on my iPod with headphones.

I think I'm going to remix Parama Karuna with this vision in mind: I want the music to subside into the background, and the vocals to really become the focus. The musical elements should be a bed that the vocal floats over. The flute should sometimes rise up out of the bed and float over the music too, but not at the same time as the vocal.

I'll add a bass guitar track, using a Logic Pro bass amp and a compressor, to fill out the sound.

My concern with the tracks I have to work with are, again, the cartals. The performance is great, but the sound is overbearing, and I don't have a separate chorus track - something that I will be sure to address in the next recording session.