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Preliminary Experiments

Earlier this week I got the chance to conduct a series of preliminary experiments in order to determine what methods would work and what to avoid when conducting main experiment.

The first experiment was to try and determine where to place the microphones in order to capture the performance and generate a way in which capture the essence of each environment. After a few attempts at placing a variety of microphones in different positions, it was determined that a room microphone (Rode NT2-A) would be used with the polar pattern set to an omnidirectional polar pattern and placed in the centre of each environment. This would capture the the sound of the instrument in a way that when played back would represent an audience member perceiving the performance as if they were in the room.

The video below is an example of one of the experiments that took place in the garage at NOISE Recording.

Preliminary experiment 01: Garage

We tried and tested two environments at NOISE Recording, a music studio situated in the city of Wolverhampton. The first room was the Live Room which was acoustically 'dead' and aesthetically pleasing. The second room which was acoustically 'rich' and somewhat un-aesthetically pleasing comparison was the lower ground floor garage. The participant first performed using an acoustic guitar but we quickly found that there was no discernible difference when played in each environment. We decided to switch to vocals as the reverberation time of the room seemed to have a great effect on the way in which the participant performed.

Live Room: Guitar

Live Room: Vocals

Garage: Guitar

Garage: Vocals

After the experiment was done I got to sit down with the participant and ask him a few questions on how he performed in each environment. This then gave me a much clearer idea on how to conduct both the experiments and interviews for any future explorations. The interview will appear in the main documentary which will be uploaded soon!

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