camillo jr Posted November 29, 2010 Share Posted November 29, 2010 Yesterday I recorded some violin on a project and while we were tracking I thought everything was fine. And it was, in the sections where the performer was only playing single lines. But on listening to it today I hear some distortion in the sections where she was playing double stops - two strings at once. I don't know why it would sound like this. I had the mic about 18 inches from the instrument and left lots of headroom. I've recorded violins before and haven't noticed this effect. The one thing that may have contributed to that is the "tube enhancement" section (not real tubes) on my drawmer pre-amp although here I was also using conservative settings. Not the first time I've used this on violins but I've never had this distortion effect before. Is there something about violins that create this distortion effect when they play double stops? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ski Posted November 29, 2010 Share Posted November 29, 2010 Whenever you get two notes playing at once (double-stops, for those who are following along at home), they're going to beat against each other. The beating becomes a kind of natural "intermodulation distortion" that can be exacerbated when distortion is applied. Another situation can crop up when, depending on the notes being played, the frequency of the beating can actually be high enough in the audio range to be perceived as a "ghost note". So you get three notes from two from this complex beating. Anyway, these kinds of sounds don't always fare well when distortion is applied to them. It's really no different from how you can have a "clean but distorted" electric guitar tone. Playing single notes, the tone sings in a nice way. But when you get fifths, other intervals, or chords, all of a sudden the amount of distortion seems to ramp up considerably and makes the sound just one big mush of distortion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camillo jr Posted November 29, 2010 Author Share Posted November 29, 2010 OK, that makes sense. I'll have to find out if the client can actually hear this distortion. I'd like to re-record it but It wouldn't be the first time that some sonic anomaly that makes me cringe is not even noticed by the people I'm recording. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
camillo jr Posted November 29, 2010 Author Share Posted November 29, 2010 Next day... the client couldn't hear it. But by the time he got in, I'd done some fairly strong EQing on the top end and that helped a lot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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