Part 1 - Introduction.
In year 2008 I decided to record a new didgeridoo solo cd.
It was an easy decision after I was brutally persuaded by my friends that I
must do it.
Recording an album can be quite a philosophical quest. Why
do I do it? What do I want with it? How should I do it? What songs?...
But I do not want to
go into absolute wideness and depth of recording questions. I'd like to keep
this as a sort of tutorial/help/directions/thoughts for people who want to
record didgeridoo, and also a little story of its own. I will develop it further in time, so I would
very much appreciate feedback on how it can be improved. I will be very happy
if you find this text helps you make
better recording.
I have to make clear
what my goal with this recording was. I
devote my life to exploring didgeridoo as a world of possiblities - it terms of
technical art, in terms of music making, in terms of instrument making and now in
the terms of recording. The last one puts everything before mentioned into one
point which can easily be transferred from me to you. During my life I have
heard many many many didgeridoo recordings. They were of all kinds. From very
bad to very good. However, there were very few of the very good and quite some
of the opposite kind. I myself, have never made a recording that I considered
to be good. But I had this vision that sound on a recording can go beyond and
beyond of what is known, and that it can allow you to express in the ways
impossible otherwise. I do not mean only in the terms of overdubbing, „perfect“
playing, digital editing, sound FX or anything like that.
Sound of didgeridoo can be very complex, and can carry a lot
of information inside itself. Usually not all information is available when
played live/acoustically. Why? You can understand that if you put your ear very close to didgeridoo
when somebody plays. You will hear things you never heard, and things you heard
before will sound like never before. It is a hidden world. You can make a
concert for only one person if you want to give that information. It is like
playing for one small man standing on the edge of your tube. Everything you
play is really big, and sounds inside the tube are hearable. So one point for
me is to drag out all of this sounds of invisible orchestra.
You could also say that recorded didgeridoo sound is
generally one dimensional, maybe sometimes two dimensional. I wanted to make it
a real 3D experience.
There is also another point that sound of the didgeridoo is
very specific in its nature. Usually the recordings I hear are quite „metallic“
in character, to oppose the „wood“ character I wanted to get. The warmth you
feel when you hear it acoustically, transfered to electrical signal.
These were my two main points that I wanted to achieve. In
the beginning I had almost no clue how. But I had no reserves. I did not care
how much energy, money, time, travelling, learning , mistaking it takes. I had
to exlplore and see if this feeling I had, about how didgeridoo can sound is
true. In this world. For me.
This journey is long so I divide it in separate chapters.
The chapters are about the choices of instruments and songs, room/studio extra
treatments, equipment choices, microphones placement, listening recorded
material, mixing, little bit of
mastering and an overwiew of all. Everything with real life examples I went
through in recording Kosmopterix.