Contact Mic, Ex. B, Two Violinists

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

Two contact microphone captures are present in this submix: the concertmaster and the second chair. Because they were summed in post-production, there is a rough blending of the signals that occurs even though the sounds captured by the contact microphones are internal to each instrument, and have not acoustically interacted with the room nor each other. This resulting submix is something that can only exist as the result of electronic summing techniques and is not the product of a musical perspective that's used for an orchestral performance or recording, at least under typical circumstances.

This excerpt is the same as the one above, except that the sources have been panned to opposite ends of the stereo image during post-production. This is also not perspective that exists in the concert hall, as in a classical recording these violinists would essentially be layered on top of each other (as they can be perceived in the spot microphone). Doubling in this fashion would be more often found in a pop mix, as such mixes do not necessarily employ the same stage metaphor. Panning in this instance is not an aesthetic choice but a perceptual one: when the signals are summed, auditory masking has an effect how much of each signal can be heard. By separating out our sources, more details of each violinist are exposed. We can hear that, while the concertmaster's instrument continues to have a distinctively mid-frequency heavy tone color, her stand partner's instrument sounds relatively brighter, even from this perspective.