Minimalist equipment revisited

I continued fumbling with my new audio gear at random, trying to get used to working as an audio journalist. I needed to find one a story project to get the feel of working with the equipment in a variety of changing situations and having to solve audio problems on the fly.

The opportunity for my first audio story came with a community workshop for youngsters wanting to learn how to play rock and roll music. I knew both the organizers, who gave me come-and-go access to the entire program, because they knew me, my role at the newspaper and my work habits. Even though I had explained my intentions, I drew questioning looks from both upon my arrival.

Instead of a Nikon and camera bag slung over one shoulder, I had only one small point-and-shoot camera either dangling from a strap on my left wrist or snugly bagged on my belt, along with an MP3-sized recorder wired from its own case on the other side of my belt. And then there were those over-the-ear headphones hanging around my neck. By the end of the first day, even I had second thoughts about those.

The whole point of minimizing gear – other than a tight budget – was to keep things simple enough to concentrate on learning the technical process of multimedia production. I wanted to think visually with only one camera and one lens – I mean, look what Henri Cartier-Bresson did with one camera and a 50mm lens! – and I didn't want to be encumbered with a conspicuous set of headphones that felt so awkward clasped around my neck when not in use.

I downsized.

What I wound up using was a high-quality set of ear buds [Philips SHE9500] with soft rubber caps (three sizes provided for a proper in-ear seal) and a fairly short cord, one of the strands being longer to stretch around the neck to the other ear. The shorter around-the-neck cording helped considerably to alleviate the cord tango I'd been dancing the day before. Not only that, but I could unplug one or both ear buds and just let them hang without looking like an out-of-work audio tech.

Two more days at covering the workshop left me convinced that I had at least one more piece of audio gear to acquire: a shotgun mic.

Moving from band room to small classroom to auditorium stage to hallway meant shifting tactics in order to gather decent audio. More than once I found myself holding my tiny Olympus microphone by its tie clasp at arm's length, straining to get better definition of different speakers involved in a group discussion.

The last straw came with my attempt to get a clean recording of both organizers in a sit-down interview with our reporter. This took place on the auditorium stage while a handful of staffers stood around somewhere upstage discussing the day's events. Without the ear buds I could hear both of the directors clearly. With the ear buds in place, I could also hear the upstage discussion, loud and clear. I wound up losing about half the interview for usable audio before clipping two separate lapel mics on the two interviewees, wiring them both into the recorder, and switching the recorder to "Dictation" mode.

That worked, but a shotgun mic might have been so much easier.

For the week's work I wound up with enough good images on the workshop to lay out a nice photo page for my newspaper, but I did not think I had the makings of an audio story, much less the images for a slide show production.