Ambisonic Tijuana Taxi

Soundstage positions and track details in approximate order of recording

Trumpet 1_1: dry -20, reverb acw panning via the ambisonic auto rotate approx 1Hz (woo I'd forgotten about that:)
Trumpet 1_2: dry +15 ditto
Trumpet 2_1: dry +15 reverb as above
Trumpet 2_2: dry -15 ditto
Bass Guitar: dry +45, reverb -135 quite subtle
Xylophone 1: dry -60, reverb -120
Xylophone 2: dry -60, reverb -120
Bass Drum: dry +60 SuperVerb(tm) +120
Cymbal: ditto with reverb on tank B
Side Snare: dry +75, reverb +105
Maracas: dry +75, reverb -105
Plucked Guitar : dry -45, reverb -135
Trombone 1: dry +85, reverb -105
Trombone 2: dry +105, reverb -85

I decided that the main trumpet parts needed a bounce with more reverb on and so I made separate new tracks with the triple tank spring reverb unit.

Trumpet 1_1 SuperVerb +150
Trumpet 1_2 SuperVerb -150
Trumpet 2_1 Super_Verb +150
Trumpet 2_2 Super_Verb -150

Also similar for the Xylophone

Xylophone 1 and 2 reverb parts at -60

Audio Samples - The Interesting Bit

Never wanting to be accused of being too studio bound and just using a fader to create a piss-poor panning effect, I decided to do some authentic drivebys in the trusty Peugeot 205 recorded with the cheap soundfield microphone. This was duly done, having checked out the frequency of the horn beforehand and calculating the required speed to drive at, such that the resulting Doppler shift would give us the first two main notes correct. So, far too early one morning with the soundfield mic element Blu-Tacked into the top of a borrowed traffic cone, our hardy recording engineer goes out to a hopefully quiet location near Farnborough to dump the DAT recorder and mic box out of the inclement drizzle under said cone and to drive past it like a loon with horn sounding several times at exactly 69mph in order to get a decent 'take'. This he does successfully and buggers off quick, as there was more traffic around at 05:30 than he expected. I see a couple of military police vehicles from the adjacent military aerodrome driving in the opposite direction towards the recording location just after I bugger off in a timely fashion. Whoopsie:) Fortunately while recording these takes a couple of cars and a motorbike drive past which also finds a place at the end of the tune. The initial drive away from positioning the mic is at the start of the tune. The mic was positioned underneath a concrete bridge which gives a nice natural reverb. A bit more UHJ recording on DAT inside the car the next day to get door effects and static horn sounds finished off the real life Ambisonic sound grabs that were needed to take the all-electronic sound curse off the tune.

This recording (c) Henry 2005, PRS apologies due to... Herb Alpert etc, I will check the LP.

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