Contact Mic, Ex. D, Four Violinists

TOR / ODESSA Montreal / Subject 1 / Anatomy of a Mix / Contact Mic / Example D

This excerpt presents a rough balance of the four players who comprise the first to stand of the violin section. Because these contact microphone signals were summed in post-production, the signals from the individual violins do not interact with each other or the room. However the process of summing them together does give them a sense of blend that while generally quite dry has been gathering increasing acoustic elements as the quantity of contact microphone signals increase.

This excerpt is the same as the one above, except that the sources have been separated out using source panning in post-production. The concertmaster is centered (as always given away by the breathing), the second chair is panned hard left, and third and fourth chairs are panned at 45 and 90 degrees (to the right). This iteration showcases the most individualistic performances and the least amount of blended sound in comparison to all other systems. This perspective is not one that exists in the concert hall, though panning in this instance is not an aesthetic choice but a perceptual one: when the signals are summed, auditory masking effects how much of each contact microphone can be heard. By separating out our sources, more details about each violinist are exposed.