So I dug up some cheep old mic and pluged it into my confusser, clicked on my creative soundblaster recording program and just about burned my whistles. It sounded like I was playing some tube of tin foil or worse. I can only say that if I sound like that I have been waisting my time. Even my Rayburn low G sounded like a thin role of tin foil. I will go to bed tonight praying that it was the mic and not my playing. What I was woundering is can one get a mic for less then say 50 bucks that would render a truer reflection of what sound I am making. Or am I just realy that bad. I know my ears are a little old and have been abussed somewhat but this was down right scary. Any suggestions?
The sound of a cheap mic plugged right into a PC soundcard is totally unlistenable to my ears. You should be able to hear if you play with good timing and so on of course, but the sound itself will be poor.
I bet the sound you hear when playing live is about what you would hear on a good recording of yourself. What often is sad to hear is that the timing and the “feel” of the playing/tune are just a little bit more “untight” and stressed up on the recording than what you believe it would be .
The recording equipment makes a big difference. My whistles - Dixon and Waltons - sound thin and raspy when recorded on my PC with a $10 mic. They sound great when I play them through my friend’s amp and $250 wireless mic.
Blackbeer,
I’m sorry to be the one to have to tell you this, but it isn’t your mic, it’s your playing. You should just forget about whistle playing completely and get rid of your whistles. Instead of burning them though, you can just send them to me.
If you would really like to stick with music, you could pick up one of those insturments that looks like an octopus that’s missing a couple of arms. That way, you won’t need to worry about how well you play. They sound bad no matter how you play them. (alright you pipers, that’s just a joke from someone who couldn’t play one if his life depended on it.)
Seriously though. I use an inexpensive $25 radio shack mic (the tie clip kind) that gives me a reasonably good sound. It’s certainly not something someone would want to record professionally on, but its good enough for me to get a reasonably good idea of how I sound.
Not that I don’t somehow relate to your obscure style but will you please erklaren this bit? I.e. do you mean:
Schwarzbier should take a practice set?
Do you confucius with squids, like any landsman, which has two arms and eight, er, legs? (the kraken, not the landsman except for Vogons)
Or are you perverting a whistler into playing gee-ouch-pee ?
Is it one CAN play a hooligan pipe even with a couple arms missing? I understand you can always step on the octopus bellies to make it bellow, then forget Reg’s uilleators–hey, let’s dereguilleate ITM–but what next? Use your toes to plug it its orifices?
“2) Do you confucius with squids, like any landsman, which has two arms and eight, er, legs? (the kraken, not the landsman except for Vogons)”
Do I confucius with squids? No. Not even with small furry animals.
“3) Or are you perverting a whistler into playing gee-ouch-pee ?”
We’ve already got plenty of perverts playing gee-ouch-pees don’t we?
“4) Is it one CAN play a hooligan pipe even with a couple arms missing? I understand you can always step on the octopus bellies to make it bellow, then forget Reg’s uilleators–hey, let’s dereguilleate ITM–but what next? Use your toes to plug it its orifices?”
I think it would be easier just to blow it away with a shotgun the closer the range the better.
Again, I’m just kidding here. I’m actually getting to like the pipes. You’ve got to admit, though, it is an acquired taste.
Jeez thanks guys. I knew I could count on my friends to help me out here. I feel a lot better now. Maybe I`ll take up the Bodhran or better yet just get back into sailing and play the wind in the rigging in D.
Speaking of orifices…
Hang in there, pal–I do a lot of audio stuff at work at we absolutely count on cheap PC speakers to cover up a lot of bad stuff. NOTHING sounds top-notch when you run it through them, especially if you record on a low-end mic.
For example, play a music CD on your computer and then in your stereo. Quite a difference, right?
If you still don’t believe me, send me your spare whistles and flutes–I’ll test them for you… Right!
Tom, use recording to pinpoint what you want to correct. It can be humbling, but it’s a useful tool, and can be used to your advantage. After all, how long have you been playing, now? Cut yourself some slack, and keep at it, my friend.
When I was teaching Shōtōkan karate (Nihon Karate-dō Kyōkai to you picky folks), the adult beginner classes had their own challenges. I saw that adults in new ventures usually have unrealistically high standards of performance for themselves in the beginning, and were often either prone to discouragement or denial when faced with areas for improvement. We adults need to feel competent. I remember a valued saying in my training/teaching days: the hardest thing is to really face oneself. That done, we can be more productively goal-oriented by being able to apply a level gaze when assessing ourselves or our efforts.
That’s just an overdressed way of saying: go ahead and wince at what you hear (we are human, after all), but then put it aside and zero in on what you want to change, and tackle the easiest things first, and usually one goal at a time is the norm for effective results. Some things are easier, some take more application.
I would like to add something for general discussion here: one of the revelations I had in the course of my own training was that I came to see advancing as not a process of accumulating , but rather one of discarding. This viewpoint came to be one of my continual reminders to students who would get stuck by way of hanging onto what worked at a certain level, was familiar, and was “theirs”. Time and again I would find that what I thought I understood could be reapplied with what I had preconceived as “opposite” or “incorrect”, but was really a matter of the difficulty of language as communication, and a matter of my seeing in a new way and so being able to move on. “It galls me. Jeez. I really suck after all.” --That’s just a notifier that you’re at the ready for improvement.
Except, I’d recommend you record yourself more often. It’s a useful way to pinpoint mistakes and bad habits that you don’t notice while playing, and you can also give yourself new ideas for variations, phrasing etc. It’s also encouraging to hear yourself making a mistake less and less from week to week.
It’s good to have a portable recorder around anyway, for picking up tunes in the wild, for festivals, lessons, and learning to learn learning tunes by ear. With the money you save by playing a whistle rather than a hurdy-gurdy, you can afford something nice like a MiniDisc recorder, which gives you decent recording quality when coupled with a half-decent mic.
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Maybe I`ll take up the Bodhran or better yet just get back into sailing and play the wind in the rigging in D.
The thing to do is to record yourself again in two months and see how much you have improved