 |
|
|
|
|
|
“At some point he envisioned an outdoors sound,” recalls Bernd Burgdorf of a memorable gig with Tom Waits. “So we went outside, set up some mics, and recorded local children banging along to his track with some old dead tree branches Tom had pulled out of the trunk of his car.” Burgdorf has written, produced, engineered, programmed, mixed and/or remixed
for the likes of Waits, Enrique Iglesias, Sara Paxton, Kelly Osbourne, Spearhead,
Hilary Duff, and Green Day. He also programmed and remixed on Pink’s “Get
This Party Started,” produced, remixed, and programmed a 5.1 surround
project for Orgy, and mixed the last Kelly Osbourne record. Recently Bernd finished
soundtrack work for Sony’s horror flick Frankenfish, and he is currently
developing an urban artist named Shade.
BERND: I usually stick with dynamic mics for the rougher, edgier stuff I work on. PZMs and ribbon mics can be cool for that, too. In the end it's more about the right kind of compression than the mic. RED: Talk a bit about your audio chain and tracking with compression and EQ. Does it change depending on whom or what you're recording? BERND: Absolutely. While you'll be hard pressed not to like the sound of anything through a condenser mic into a vintage Neve and a Fairchild, you need to keep in mind the character you're after. Sometimes you want pretty, and sometimes you don't. The emotional response is what matters most.
BERND: Looks, color, and smell are, of course, important [laughing.] For vocals, all the rules often go out the window—the little cheapo mic may sound superior to a $10k vintage tube mic. As for condensers, I like vocal mics with dual capsules so they can be switched to omni. This allows the singer to go nuts moving all over the place with fairly little change in sound. RED: Using a track you’ve recently recorded as an example, describe briefly how you set up a mic to record part in that track. BERND: For the lead vocals on a recent song I had the singer positioned three inches from a cardioid mic. The song was in a low key, so I slightly angled the mic upward for him to be able to relax his vocal cords as he sang. RED: We like to ask about crazy sounds you've gotten in the studio—maybe you planned those, or they were accidental. When have you tried a weird idea that seemed like it absolutely wouldn't work, technically or creatively, but then it did? BERND: That’s always the case with PZMs. You can tape them to anything and they always sound out-there, but blend beautifully. RED: What would you say is the toughest thing that engineers consistently have to deal with in the studio? BERND: Aside from keeping the artist happy? [laughing] The toughest thing is probably mixing in different control rooms you haven't worked in before. http://www.tsunamient.com/producers/producers.asp#Bernd%20Burgdorf
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|
© 2008 Vintage Microphones (a Galaris LLC company). All rights reserved. Compare Pro Audio Prices! |
||||||
