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New York-based composer, sound editor, sound designer, mixer, and musician Matt Rocker is one busy guy. In just five years since college he’s added numerous film sound (Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers, Senses of Place, Everything Is Illuminated), television (NBC’s Ed), music (Salt Lake City Olympics piece and a gospel song for the new film My Brother), and children’s animation (Pokemon, Pilar’s Adventures) credits to his resume. He’s also self-produced his six solo albums and contributed to performance music pieces at the Guggenheim and Chicago Museum for Contemporary Art. In the latter piece, choreographer John Jasper’s California, he recently donned a new job title to his long job descriptions list: Live foley artist. “I somewhat musically dropped beans, ping pong balls, baseballs, and
pots and pans onto a piano bench that had a plate contact mic sealed to it,”
laughs Rocker. “I wore the same costume as the dancers. Then, in true
rock ‘n’ roll fashion, I was allowed to kick over my equipment at
the end of the show.”
MATT: It always changes. First, with mic selection for singers, there is no "perfect microphone.” It is always specific to the character of the voice. The supposed best mic you have is not always the best mic for the job! For some people—especially male rock vocalists—a larger or standard cardioid dynamic mic works much better than a more sensitive, full range condenser. For film ADR [automatic dialog replacement] you strive for a sound that matches the production tracks from the set. A large diaphragm mic in this case might sound amazing, but you will have to degrade its sound to match the production tracks when you mix, so you’re better off using the same mic the sound recordist used on set. Finally, for voiceover sessions, you are much more likely to use a gold standard type of microphone like a large diaphragm condenser mic going through the Avalon tube mic preamp. With pop music production, close miking is very common so you see more dynamic mics there. That works fine in this case, as you are really creating an unreal environment with your song. For jazz and classical work the room sound becomes a huge consideration, and you’re looking for the best possible condenser mics for each instrument. The ears have to be the judge but, that being said, you can save a lot of time by really knowing the behavior and responses of your mics and gear. RED: Talk a bit about your audio chain and tracking with EQ and compression. Does it change depending on whom or what you're recording? MATT: Not too much. I am very conservative in that area, but I will say I'm very likely going to compress V/O’s to my DAW without much concern. Any EQ I add will be very conservative and depend on the quality of the EQs in the studio. I might roll off the low end, or give a tiny hint of air in the high end, but I’m very cautious not to ruin a great take with printed effects that I can't take back. For pop/rock music, I tend to put a little compression on the drums and bass and, ideally, I'd be tracking through tube pre's to take some of the edge off the signal. Also lately I've been interested in folk, acoustic, or delicate instrumental music where decreasing dynamic range with compression could really lessen the intensity of the performance. RED: How do you choose which microphone you'll use in a given scenario? What are the three most important criteria you look at when choosing a mic for a given application? MATT: As I mentioned before, it's never about the best mic but rather the best mic for the job. Every vocalist has one microphone that works best for their voice, and as the engineer you’ll find that mic for them no matter what—whether it’s a $5,000 tube condenser or a clip-on lavaliere! As for criteria, here’s how I approach mic selections: RED: Using a track you’ve recently recorded as an example, describe briefly how you set up a mic to record with it. MATT: Recently I produced a folk rock project for the band O Pioneers, fronted by New York singer/songwriter Sara Shaoul. For the electric guitar on the song “Kickstand” I used a standard dynamic cardioid mic slightly off axis and about two inches away. I ran that through a Grace Solid Sate Preamp. I then placed a large diaphragm condenser mic set to omni mode at least 4-6 feet away and above the amp and ran that through my new preamp, an Anthropic Audio 351, a replica of the famed Ampex 351. The dynamic mic usually gets a very clean representative sound on it's own, whereas the omni condenser pushing the vintage tube pre pretty hard can be very interesting in the right room. Usually it is pointed at walls, not the source. I've even played with the mic in figure 8 pattern and set still further away from the amp to create a "fake" M/S effect, which can sometimes widen the sound. RED: We like to ask about crazy sounds you've gotten in the studio. Maybe you planned those, or maybe you didn’t. When have you tried a weird idea that seemed like it absolutely wouldn't work, technically or creatively, but it did? MATT: I was doing the preproduction for the O Pioneers record at Sara's house. She only has a two-input Digi MBox so we record live to stereo, or go with one mic per person. In this case she was unhappy with the scratch drums I was playing on her mini Ludwig kit in her tiny office room, so I recorded her guitar with two different condenser mics at once then had her play the drum part to her scratch. I did a few takes with a dynamic mic on the kick and snare, then a few takes with a mic below the kick and snare and a room condenser and a few with the two condenser mics as a stereo pair. When a mic stand broke it seemed our session was over, but then tried something different: I left one mic two feet above and three feet away, which was as much as the small room would allow, and placed the other mic on the chair where the laptop was sitting six feet down the hall. The bass response on the hallway mic was amazing! The combination made such a great sound that we used the drum part for one song in the final version on the album. RED: What would you say is the toughest thing that engineers consistently have to deal with in the studio? MATT: Other than a wishy-washy client [laughs], that would be accounting for the problems of the room. Especially since the proliferation of home/project studios, you really do have to figure out the shortcomings of each new facility. There is such a variation in studio environments, so you might have to alter your approach for the room. To a certain extent that has always been the case. Rooms have never been standardized; that’s part of the fun, but now it's the difference between choosing between ten good rooms and ten with different compromises. Necessity is the mother of invention!
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