Advice Re: Live Recording In The Amazon Options

[omoanya]

Im going to record traditional music in southamerican amazon and am planning on taking a g4 power book.
Does any one know of:

a: battery operated hardware that i can use to get mic inputs into the power book?... i prefer to use 4-6 mics and record live multitrack
b. the most reliable software i can use


needless to say i wont be able to call tech support so it has to work!

theres a possibility ill have an a/c generator

i want the best quality as i will be releasing records from this material ,,,


any resources you can hip me to, i would appreciate,,

thanks for your help

[Miss Kiki]

I would never do that with a powerbook.
go and record with a tape recorder something like a nagra or at least a tascam DAP1 ...
Nagra is the best for wilderness and extrem latitude recordings...
it was taken from sound engineers from north pole to africa etc
remember that in amazonia the air is full of 60% of ...water !
so you have to keep this in mind for the choice of your gear and mics.

[Doug]

From Doug,

I agree with Miss kiki, the best computer in the world (such as a Mac !!) will almost certainly fail in that location, for hundreds of reasons.

Also don't use condenser mics unless youi have them weatherised. Sennheiser do a job on their guns and stereo mics, but its costly. I suggest good quality dynamics and work close.

As a recorder, consider the new hard disc recorders such as Tascam or Fostex, they offer 8 tracks from 8 mic inputs, no computer, full digital spec. But still be warned, unless you use a Nagra (2 track) things will go wrong ... I've done it in the Caribbean (rainy season) and even my analogue audio cassette recorder failed ... moisture, rust, plugs and connections, infestations, slipperness, sweat, tape warp and stretch, moisture inside the meters, mic failures etyc etc.
Good Luck !!

[Tim Clark]

Miss Kiki is right! Recording in the Amazon needs some special prep. Tom Lopez and I did it a couple of times in the 1986 and 1987. The best thing we had to record on at the time was a F-1 that recorded on Beta cassettes. We rigged the whole thing up in an aluminum frame so we (meaning me!) could carry it in a backpack. I think it weighed about 25 pounds. I remember it didn’t feel so good after a couple of hours.

There are a couple of things that’ll shut you down pretty quick. One of them is batteries. We found that out when we needed extras in Manaus and spent 2 days trying to track some down. No deal. There’s no way to describe the despair you feel when you’re 3 days out in the jungle, great sounds are happening all around you, and you know you’ve got 15 minutes of recording time left. So as far as batteries are concerned-Backup, backup, backup, backup! The other thing that’s going to get you is the humidity. We hauled a Kunstkopf binaural head mic all the way down there and could never use it because of the humidity. Actually, we had the best luck with tiny lapel mics made by Tram.

I think you can probably safely record on a digital machine. The Nagra is great, of course, but it costs a fortune, no one in their right mind will lend you one, and if you could rent one, the fee would be more than you’d spend on a digital recorder. In any case, you might want to send a note to Tom Lopez via info@zbs.org. I’m sure he could tell you some of the best things to use, especially if you’re on a tight budget.

Good luck. Watch out for the spiders. They’re pretty big.
Tim Clark

[omoanya]

Thanks guys for pointing me in the right direction, that makes a lot of sense.
Would you say in a drier climate, maybe w. africa dry season, that a powerbook rig would be ok?
what would you suggest for the mac ..in that case ?


thanks again
omoanya

[rickenbacker]

The best thing you could do is read as much as possible about the 1 Giant Leap project, in particular the Sound On Sound article and interview (sometime early last year, Feb 2003?) about their global trip, in which they detail their full gear list. They recorded everywhere, on all continents, using battery packs. I also know for a fact that they took a G3 PowerBook and external hard drives to record it all with and several condenser mics.

Really, get hold of that SOS article. If you have trouble, I've got it, so I can copy and send it to you. It breaks it all down and virtually gives you a shopping list. Check out the 1 Giant Leap DVD, too - you'll see how they did it, what they had with them etc. Pretty good music, too.

One thing I remember one of the people involved saying was that what would have saved a lot of trouble is having something like the Apogee Mini-Me USB interface - excellent quality, phantom power, very tiny and light. It wasn't available when they travelled.

[pepece]

Hi,

Maybe i'm arriving a bit too late, but if you plan to work in such extreme conditions, you should consider using simple and "work-proof" gear. Simple, because, as you mentionned it, you wont be able to call the tech-guy-that-will-save-your-work. I've been working with all types of Nagra machines, and they will do the job, with Sennheinser MD21 mics, witch are undestructibles. But, you will have to carry a LOT of tapes, and batteries. If you can afford to buy (or rent?) some digital or DAT recorders (marantz pmd, fostex FR2) some are tropicalized and offer 4 inputs, have a low battery consumption, and a fantastic sound quality. Another solution is to use some mini-mixers from Sonosax (all-weather+ excellent mics pre-amps) and record your takes on an "All-Weather"minidisc. The MD in itself is definitively not as good as, say, a DAT, because of the high compression ratio, but i work on some occasions with a very simple and cheap MD, with good mics pre-amps, and it's the lightest system ever. The other advantage of the MD is that you can do multitrack recordings, by adding MD's! I saw recently a report about some sound engineers who have made great recordings with a self powered mixer and 8 MD recorders: 5 hours of work with new batterys, in Africa. And if one MD recorder fails, you still have the other ones working. Hope this will be usefull...

The Giant Leap project

This post has been edited by pepece: Wed 17 Mar 2004, 21:02