fun with dopplers

here's  a quickie tutorial I just did with regards to how I use the Waves doppler plugin to make bys out of steady onboard vehicle recordings.  In this case I used the onboards that I recorded of my motorcycle a few weeks back.

Structurally, the concept draws heavily from Charles Deenan's 100 whooshes in 2 minutes tutorial on designingsound.org

The main change I made to his process was to really work the ins and outs of each by using the faders.
 
Some things I didn't really discuss, but you can see how they would work are the fact that you can make stylized whooshes with this technique as well.  That 100 whooshes post goes into great detail on that, though my preference is to go a little more focused than what Charles does.  For example, I'll  substitute a bunch of bow waves  and streams running, and get a bunch of underwater waves going on.  

In the vid I'm using a controller instead of a mouse to move the faders (so that I can move several simultaneously)and I'm performing the moves in real time.

skip the first 15 seconds or so.  Vimeo seems to have a pause glitch in there.



My two wishlist items for doppler would be an option to make it stop at the end of the path, and 96k support.

recording my moto: the VTX1300

My motorcycle has been sitting for too long, so I'm going to sell it.

Anytime an audio person makes the decision to sell a vehicle the first question is always "have I recorded it sufficiently?"

In my case the answer was no.  I'd recorded the bike before, but I had never really given it the full treatment, so I rolled it to work last week and set about recording it after hours but before the sun set.

This bike is a Honda VTX1300 with aftermarket Vance and Hines big shot exhaust.  Honda's VTX line has a big, beefy transmission that clunks loudly when you drop into and out of first, and the big shot exhaust really does that distinctive chopper cruiser sound well.

Outside of those two main elements I didn't see much else on the the bike that I felt as though I could record cleanly and at speed.  Tires were pretty out of the question, as was any noise that my feet made on the gear kicks.  My plan was to find the best compromise of drafting placement and proximity to the transmission/exhaust for the onboard mics.

Drafting is a huge deal anytime you want to record a vehicle going faster than about 10mph.  Drafting is the concept of placing mics within the shape and structure of a vehicle in a way that minimizes direct wind exposure when the vehicle is in motion.  No amount of wind protection will stop an 80mph direct exposure to wind, but proper placement will allow for minimal wind protection to be sufficient even at that speed. 

Motorcycles are a little trickier than cars and trucks when it comes to this because they have less surface area on which to mount things and the bodies don't divert nearly as much wind around them, so drafting options are more limited.  This bike is pretty sporty and stripped down, which limited my drafting options further.

I decided to go with the following mic placements, wrapping each mic in a few layers of a cut up T-shirt:

• Line Audio CM3 behind the shock and near the exhaust
• Line Audio CM3 behind the engine block and aimed at the transmission
• Sanken COS11 lav behind the engine, under the seat for general engine bite
• Crown PZM 6D behind the license plate and near the exhaust.

here are the placement pix and isolated tracks of a 60mph run.

 

Of all of them, I feel as though I could have walked away happy with just the combination of the PZM and the Lav (which I almost didn't put up).  Both mics capture a ton of detail, and the PZM in particular felt like the gold standard of someone behind the vehicle moving at speed with a mic aimed right at the exhaust and no wind.  That mic just had tons of low end, and got the quick transient nature of the cylinders just right.

The CM3s acted a little wooly and took on the most wind of all the mics, though they were certainly still acceptable and in the end gave me some interesting lower mid punch that the other two mics weren't picking up.

When they all came together I just about came out of my seat because I heard for the first time a representation of what it really does sound like to be piloting that bike.



Everything is there.  The transmission kicks when I'm climbing the gears,  the whine as the engine lets up, the fluffy kind of release in the exhaust, and all of the power of that bike feels like its there.  The only thing missing is the wind, which is a pretty crazy experience given how intimate I am with the sound of this thing.

Its easily one of the best recordings I've ever made, and I feel like that PZM near the exhaust is going to be my new secret weapon when it comes to the exhaust portion of vehicle recordings.  That thing took zero wind behind about 4 layers of cotton T-shirt even at 80mph on the highway over a 10 minute ride I did the same day.  It was kind of magical.

I had my intern out helping me on the shoot, and he captured a perspective that I'm less familiar with: the exterior by.  He was running a 416 in a blimp and was tracking me as I passed.  These recording also came out great:



In all I got a full compliment of sounds from the favorite moto I've ever owned in about 3 hours of recording (including setup and teardown).

Things never seem to come together this well, so its important to sit back and appreciate it when they do.  Feel free to use these recordings in whatever context you see fit.

Enjoy!

truck record - this time not rained out!

First a little backstory: I needed to find a 50s model Ford F150 to match what we see on screen in the film we're working on, so my brother in law suggest a car show north of town to scout. It was a pretty small show, but lo and behold I ran into a really cool guy named Doug who just happened to be driving the exact car I needed to record. We exchanged info and two weeks later we set the date for a Saturday morning.

Of course, it rained and we moved the date to Monday after work.

By moving to a weekday we heavily compressed my recording schedule though, so I was sure to be as prepared as I could get before heading out there. Prep included:

- putting every frame of the film that included the truck on a quicktime that could be played on my ipad on location
- pre-wrapping my onboard mics with terrycloth towel for wind protection
- testing and setting up media, batteries, recorder settings, etc.

I showed up at Doug's house at around 6:30, and sunset was going to hit hard at about 8:30, so I had to work fast. I mounted the undercarriage mics with bungee cords and gaff tape, secured the boom from the back of the tailgate, and mounted the engine mic. A quick level test and we were off to find a suitable street to roll with.

No I had not scouted a street in that part of the world, but Doug knew exactly where to take us: a little gravel road with a short turn around where he could do bys and stops with little traffic intervention.

We covered the basic things we needed (mostly slow bys on gravel, slow bys on clean pavement, and some gravely tire work) and we were already starting to lose light. We did some stop n go driving so that I could catch interiors with the VP-88, and headed back.

When we arrived back at the house I pulled and re-set all of the mics for foley. The bungee cords really made that work go quickly though, because a couple of yanks and all of my mics were loose and free.

Door foley setup was VP-88 inside, Schoeps outside near, and mkh60 outside far.

We also did some glove compartment moves, and by that time we were completely dark outside and working by flashlight. Also, in summertime in Texas the cicadas come out around dusk. Out in the country the coyotes decided to announce their presence as well. I pressed on, getting what I could get and knowing that I'd have to edit a fair amount later on.

When I got back into the studio on Tuesday I opened it all up and found myself very happy with the results. The truck got just over 3 minutes of total screen time in the film and I had the entire thing cut in and sounding good by the end of the day, which was just a joy to get done.

Here's what I learned:

--Proper drafing makes all the difference in the world--

Each time I record a vehicle I get better at finding good drafting spots quickly, and this record really worked out well with regards to wind noise. Axels are great spots for mounting and drafting, but just hanging the blimp from the tailgate in the jetstream really worked out well too. I'm sure it didn't hurt that we really didn't get above 40mph, but this was truly my first vehicle record where wind noise was a complete nonfactor in all mics.

--put your best mic on the exhaust--

I made a conscious decision to get that schoeps mic in the best spot I could find for the exhaust note and it paid off in spades. I took a risk by using an unknown miking technique (at least to me) by hanging it in the blimp, but in my mixed onboard sound that mic is almost all of what I went with. man that thing sounds good.

--brighter and less true mics work well as detail spots for engine and tires--

NT5 on the tire for the gravel sound worked out really well. I wasn't relying on that mic for my exhaust note, so I was free to put it in a spot where I could get some nice crispyness from the gravel with that spot. Ditto the SM81 in the engine. While the engine does have some interesting midrange stuff going on, its mostly a much brighter sound than the exhaust and the 81 choice and placement ended up working out very well in that application.

--it doesn't take 100 mics to get a good sound--

I knew that I'd be running this record solo, so instead of bringing the 788t and a giant collection of mics to mount onto the truck, I ran the 744t and just the 4 mics. in the end, I'm more happy with the sound I got from this setup than from some others where I put much more effort and many more mics onboard. Each record teaches me more and more, and the biggest thing I learned in this one is that I really need to have those "money" mics locked down and rocking, then I'm good.

So, without further adieu here are some results and samples. enjoy!

truck onboard mix sample by Rcoronado
truck doors by Rcoronado

Truck record-part 3:editing

In part 1 of my truck record retrospective I talked about the prep work required to get ready for a full on vehicle record. Part 2 covered the actual recording date, and this part will go over the post and editing process with the final recorded files.

I've thought a bit about how to approach this particular blog post, and I think I'm just going to go mostly with words here and less with screenshots and audio or video.
-------------

Once I got all of the files back into the studio I dumped the raw tracks and photos into a folder on a drive called 1993 Ford F150-raw. I needed to jump right into editing the sounds into the film, which mean I really didn't have time to go through a formal library edit/metadata tag process at first.

I had tons of stuff, so I started listening to the audio slates I had given at the top, and used those to roughly rename the files. This was mostly a working naming system that looked something like Truck-onboard-tire-start stop by-20mph.

Once I had my roughs labeled I opened a 24 bit 96k protools session and imported everything. My first order of business was to come up with something from the onboard mics that I liked. Each onboard truck mic angle was put on a track, the tracks were routed through an aux and out to a mono print track. I started playing with balances and EQ until I was getting a moving vibe that I liked.

My initial impression was that I was very happy with my control of the wind during the shoot. I was also a little surprised at how much rattling and craziness was going on in the engine compartment when monitored soloed out on the big speakers. When I put together a comp track like this I'm looking for which mics and textures are working in which frequency range. For example, the tire mic was very good for mid range whirring and high end grit so I pulled back the low end there, while shelving back the top end of the exhaust mic a bit to replace that part of the spectrum with a better texture. The engine mics were used pretty sparingly, and the end result of each move was a balanced and mixed mono track. I knew I still had the split out iso's if I needed them in the edit, but I had made the determination that I'd go to them only as needed.

My next move was to deal with all of the foley. Some of the foly was in mono, some was in stereo, some was pretty loud, some was pretty soft. I did no dynamics processing here, though I did boost the levels on some of the wide angle door opens and other softer moves for usability. Mostly I was dividing sorting and naming though.

The same process followed for interior driving moves, exterior moves recorded with the shotgun, and anything else we recorded that day. Listen, divide, name, and process if needed.

This whole routine took the better part of one working day, but it made the next step very efficient - cutting the sounds into the picture.



With all of the prep, this step actually went pretty smoothly. Only in a few spots did I feel like I needed more coverage, and I was able to augment my recordings with a variety of library stuff and other recordings I'd done. I got through the entire truck edit for the film in around 2 days, and was very happy with the result.

------------------

My main takeaway from this part was that the time spent prepping the whole process paid huge dividends when it came time to actually cut the sounds into the film. A lot of sound effects editing is ingredient based cooking, and when you take the time to get the recordings right and mapped out on the front end then the back end editing becomes the easy part.

Truck record-part 2:recording

In part 1 of my Benavides Born truck postmortem I discussed the spotting, scouting and planning of the record. Now on to the actual record date.

As one final bit of planning before heading out I assembled all of the gear the night before, hooked it all up and tested it all out. I then prepped my wind protection and travel setup to be as pre-made and lightweight as possible. I transported the 552 mixer and 744t recorder in the petrol bag (wired), the mics in a hardshell multi-mic case, and the cables, batteries, headphones and hd-p2 recorder in a pair of softie tote bags. The microphones that were going to be strapped to the vehicle were pre-wrapped with wind protection.

On the day of recording this was a three person shoot: myself to record, my friend Dave to drive, and our intern Mike to handle exterior perspectives. We met after breakfast and headed South to Ennis and the trucks by 10 am.






When we arrived on the scene everyone had jobs that could be handled simultaneously. Dave went to work combing through the truck and removing or securing any loose items floating around in the cab. Mike started unpacking and setting up the recorders and cables, and I went about mounting the mics.

I used zip ties to secure a pair of Sennheiser 421s to the axle and rear frame of the truck to catch the tire and exhaust perspectives. You're not looking at the final mount points (that axle mic ended up with more zipties and rotated up to allow the axle to block the wind), but you get the idea.

Those two angles ended up being incredibly useful in post and make up the majority of the onboard sound. Also, i'll note here that the combination of towels and drafting location worked incredibly well with regards to wind protection. Dealing with wind is one of the trickiest parts of vehicle recording, and I wasn't really hearing anything out of place on those mics until we passed 60mph or so.





I placed the sanken lav mic in the back of the engine compartment away from the radiator, and had Dave crank the engine to listen for the best spot to put the SM81. After some trial and error we found a good spot shooting up from underneath at the engine from right in front of the passenger floorboard. Again, you're not looking at the final mounting setup on that SM81. Many more zip ties came into play there.

Cables were carefully run along mount points under the truck and up through the passenger window, where they landed at the 552 and 788t in the bag.

Interior perspectives came via my PCM D50.


The process of mounting, cabling, and testing the mics took about 90 minutes. We had allowed time for experimentation and listening and took our time making sure all of the mount points and cable runs were secure before setting out. With everything in place, we broke for lunch and then set about covering the shot list.

For each of the moving shots I sat in the back seat with the recorders, Dave drove from up front, and Mike followed us with the boom from outside. Our moving coverage included idling (5 minutes) starts, stops, rollbys and peelouts on gravel, some bumpy roads, and street coverage of bys at 20, 35, 45, and 60 mph. Were were careful not to spend time recording things outside of the list because we only had access for the one day and needed to cover everything within our time frame.

Here's a sampling of some of the moving truck sounds:

With movement covered we shifted our attention to foley. My foley list was pretty extensive so we used multiple mics and recorders to cover perspectives simultaneously.



I learned from participating in Tim Prebble's Doors project the value of multiple perspectives and performances on these types of things. As such we caught near, wide and int perspectives on each move, and ran 5x iterations of soft, medium and hard. Coverage for this treatment included doors, tailgate, and hood. The doors were the really important part of this though, as people were constantly getting in and out of the truck in the film and variations on perspective and performance were imperative when cutting doors in.

Once those were finished Mike and I crawled into the cab with just the MKH60 and started covering everything else in mono. Seatbelts, locks, windows, body movements in seats, and most importantly a bunch of iterations of the dry transmission shifter moving.



By now we had lost our light, so we stripped the truck back down, packed and secured our stuff, thanked the owners and headed back.

In part three I'll go over how those sounds worked in post and what I did to add them to our library.

Truck record-part 1: prep

Benavides Born has just premiered in the dramatic competition at Sundance, and as lead sound designer I thought I'd give a little insight into one specific element of the audio design: the truck.

The film is about a South Texas girl played by Corina Calderon who embarks on a journey of self-discovery in her home, the world of weightlifting, and college. Much of this journey happens in an old 1993 Chevy pickup.

During the initial spotting session I knew I'd need to find and record a similar truck to even hope to do that part of the soundtrack justice. We were working on a condensed schedule, so time and planning were very important.

Step one for me was research. I had done some recordings of my car a month or so prior, as much to scout possible vehicle recording locations as it was to acquire the sounds and practice the technique. I reviewed my notes from that session, and re-read the thoughts of Tim Prebble and Rob Nokes on recording vehicles. That Rob Nokes article is incredible and was pretty instrumental in both my car recordings months earlier and the truck record on this go-round.

I also had to find the right truck. I tried the usual methods of poking friends and family, but that didn't pan out as quickly as I was needing it to, so I started cruising craigslist, which was both enlightening and scary. In the end one of my good friends did come through with his father's vehicles which were conveniently located at his house outside of Ennis, TX - the middle of nowhere and roughly 45 minutes from me in downtown Dallas .
View Larger Map

The location I ran my car tests before was a strip of road behind a high school in Ennis, andI ended up ruling out that location for future records because of a crazy interference I was getting from what's likely a microwave tower in that part of town.

Strange flutter distortion by Rcoronado

Unfazed, I used google maps to scout other roads from afar and talked to the owners in advance to find other recording locations nearby. While I did not end up with some perfect mecca of car recording locales down there, I did manage to get what I needed cleanly enough to satisfy the film and the library.

The truck in the film was a 1993 Chevy V8. I had a choice of a 1993 Ford V8 and a 1995 Chevy V6. I went with the Ford.


With my location and vehicle secured, I set about creating my two main checklists: performances and gear.

Performances first. I opened up the film in a protools session and separated out every shot in which the truck appeared. Playing back at 2x speed helped the process. In the end I had a 20 minute compilation of nothing but truck movements. I output this as a separate quicktime in m4v format so that I could have it on my iphone or ipad during the shoot.

Then I sat down with my notepad and watched the 20 minutes down again, noting every specific move that I saw. Door open, door close, hit tailgate, pull up head-on, peel out on gravel, etc. If moves were repeated I put down a x3 or whatever it happened to be.

With my performance list in place I began compiling my gear list. From my experience and the Rob Nokes article I knew I wanted mics on the axle, exhaust, engine compartment, interior and exterior. I went with a pair of Senn 421's for the tire and exhaust mounts, a Sanken COS11 for the engine compartment, and an SM81 for another engine compartment angle. These all ran through a sound devices 442 into a 744t. For the interior I used my Sony PCM D50. For exteriors I went with a Senn MKH60 in a rycote blimp recording to a Tascam HD-P2. For wind protection on the truck mounted mics I stole from Tim Prebble and used ripped to fit terrycloth towels as well as good drafting placement. I had tested this in my initial car record and was very impressed with the results.

I was also sure to pack lots of batteries, gaffer tape, cash, cables, zip ties, water and snacks.

With my lists and gear in place I was ready for the record date.