Part 2: noise. Rest assured dear reader, that I have done my Maths. You will find many opinions on sample rates, and presumably for all the rest of these posts, and that is a good thing.
Part 2A: noise. noisy lutes. too much noise, Dude. If you listen to a few hundred lute recordings, you will see that almost all of them are too noisy. This post will talk briefly about the noise from the lute, and how to make your recordings less noisy. The other parts of this post will go into the noise that comes from microphones and other parts of the recording process. [sidebar: the reason we are working backwards is because we need to arrive at the result--no amount of theory will be good unless the result is good, and science can only help for part of the task] Lute recording noise has several components. There is the noise from the recording gear, the noise from the lute, the noise from the player, and the noise from outside. In dealing with the noise, we must make a musical, interesting recording. It is not enough to simply remove the noise. And here, we must, again working backwards from the nice, low-noise musical recording, start with the lute. In starting with the lute it is important to understand what can be fixed right now, what can be fixed in the next few years, and figuring out what the recording is for. In the previous post, I talk about how the traditional sample rate is not ideal for the new marketing and aesthetic considerations of the internet, and down the line we will see how that connects to video. But first, we have to separate out the sounds that the lute makes that are problematic for noise. And here, the considerations are technique, stringing, and the setup. There are three parts to the lute as far as noise: setup, paired string technique, and tone. As long as the player can play every note in a composition, even one note at a time, it is possible to assemble those notes into an edited sequence. So there really is very little difference between a highly skilled player and one who isn't, as far as the notes are concerned. But the real difference is the tone and the noise. The highly skilled player has figured out how to strike the string and set up the lute. So the first key here is that the lute must be set up properly to make a beautiful sound, and, once it is set up, the players must learn the simple method of striking the paired strings so that they vibrate together, and then the player must be able to produce a sequence of good tones. Obviously, there is more to playing the lute, this is just about the recording. NB: The fact is, unless these three criteria are met, no microphone, no Zoom, no gear, no reverb or anything else will remove the noise and make a good recording. You could buy a truckload of zooms and they would all sound pretty much the same (but not exactly the same). It would be a complete waste of time. And, unless the lute is set up properly, the player will only be able to progress to certain point, but that's a subject for another day. You can easily reduce the amount of noise your instrument makes. Using pairs of strings under controlled conditions, it is possible to measure interference patterns that the strings create. It turns out that the strings must be in a certain phase relationship to make a good sound. You can see this phase with a high speed camera, and you can measure, in different ways, what happens when the pairs vibrate. That's not to say you can quantify a good sound, but most lute players know intuitively when the pair of strings seems to just pop out of the lute. That's when they are in phase, and that's why double strings are seriously cool. So step one is to get the setup right, and learn how to hit both strings so they vibrate together--the majority of players will hit one of the pairs before the other. If the strings are struck in sequence, instead of together, they clash, they interfere with each other. If the spacing and the setup is not right, it won't work. Most lutes simply have too little space between the pairs, or too much space. A narrow, roughly parallel pair can vibrate in phase, as well as a pair that is for example about 5.2 mm wide at the bridge. Most lutes fall in between these two workable dimensions, and they clash. Unless the strings can vibrate as pairs, the recording will always be noisy. There's a certain trick to hitting two at once, and you need the combo of the spacing and the stroke. Then you must hit pairs as you play. It is easy to do, but it takes patience. The next source of noise in the skritch skritch skritch of the fingers on the strings. Again, most lute recordings really have way too much surface noise, and though some of it can be removed digitally, there is just too much noise in relationship to the core tone. OTOH, if you are striking pairs, you will produce substantially more volume and so there will be more tone, less noise. This does not help, however, on the top string which is often single. So to remove this next layer of noise, one must stop sliding the finger on the strings, and also make sure that the surface of the string reacts with the finger is a way that does not produce noise. Of course, at this point, you can say "I like the noise", and that is absolutely a valid choice. Some strings simply make less noise. Carbon is the least noisy, and rectified nylon is one of the most noisy. Unrectified nylon can squeak. If you use just the right amount of oil, such as almond oil, you can remove most of the sound from gut strings. Depends on the strings. And there are other ways to make strings sound true and relatively noise free. Interestingly, there are references in treatises to using walnut. NB: If the interface between the gut string (not nylgut, not carbon, not nylon but gut) and the plucking point of your finger is just right, you will hear the perfect lute sound. However, you can make a very good, noise free recording with artificial materials. It is important to recognize that each type of string has its own noise properties. There is absolutely no point in using strings if they just make a lot of noise with very little center to the sound. So to review, the main source of noise is from the lute and the player, and if the lute is not set up right, there is no way to fix the noise issue. You can put a $2,000 mic in front of the noise, and it will amplify and record it. Good news is, if the lute is set up right, it is relative easy to make a good tone, and therefore a good recording, and, in the wild world of digital, you can play thousands of mistakes and still make a great recording, as long as the core tone is there. Now it could be that we would all be better off making realistic recordings that reflect the actual sound we make, and, in fact, there was a wave of recording realism in the early 1980s. The larger picture for me is that I realized at a certain point that I had just gotten used to all the extra noise, and decided to do something about it. And you may think this is obvious--make a good sound, make a good recording? Parts of it are obvious, it is putting together the pieces that is complex. It is easy, but still complex. Next up: room noise, mic noise, preamp noise, all go poof. -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
