RØDE PinMic SONG

Chadfish

Chadfish

Veteran
Well here it is. With no prompting from Rode I decided to make this song/video for the heck of it because business is slow and I have a lot of time on my hands this month.


Drums by Justin Hoopes. Everything else by Chad Johnson.

So I got myself this thing called a “PinMic” from Rode Microphones. It’s a kind of lavalier that is less visible than your typical lavalier because the cables go behind your clothes, and the capsule just sits on your shirt or jacket looking like a button or something. I thought they sounded pretty good, so on a lark I decided to record a whole song using only the Rode PinMic (for most tracks), the Lavalier (on lead guitar and kick drum) and their Hs1 headset mic (on backing vocals). It was an exercise to show that used the right way, you can get a great recording without using the traditional high priced studio mics that are the norm. Not that I would really choose a PinMic to use in the studio, but it does show that it’s a pretty decent mic. I think it’s hecka tight.
 
Very cool Chad. I'm glad to see someone having so much fun doing what they love. You're making me want to learn to play guitar and sing lol.
 
Yes it was a very fun project. The lead guitar, shaker, drums, and xylophone video you see are all played live. What you hear is what you see. The others I recorded normally and playsynced & lip synced. It takes too many takes to get it right all the way through. The lead guitar track was played from front to back in one take, but that was take 6. A lot of disc space on unused video tracks. It started when I was just testing out the lav on that miniature Fender "Mini Delux" amp and thought it sounded pretty good, so I just basically wrote down the words I improvised when I sang in the PinMic review and went full bore on recording. The bass surprised me the most. It was pretty dang usable as a track for any song. Granted a rock song is different than something more delicate like classical, but hey.

So I'm selling my shotgun mics and I'll just use the PinMic on a pole now! I think it will be much easier on the arms for sure.
 
Yes Rippie. LOL I can be foolish, but I'm no fool. I won't be using the lavs for anything but lav duty from here on out.
 
You should reverse the direction of the audio to the pin mic and use them as earbuds.
Imagine the possibilities with pierced ears!
 
Hey Everyone, CHAD IS FAMOUS!

Low and behold I get a email news from Rode talking up their stuff and there he is, Chad that is, with the PinMic Video.

Congrats Chad, you got a Rodee Award for that. Know that your 15 minutes will soon fade, but for now, you can bask in the warm glow of the audio spotlight.

Kidding aside, the vid was very good and very creative.

Grant
 
Dude. that is hecka tight.

Really. It reminds me of the Jack Conte videos I'm a big fan of. I thought this was a really creative way to demonstrate the versatility of the pin mic. I hope they'll be nice and either give you a little check for the promotion or a free mic or something. It takes A LOT of work to put something like that together.
 
Yes I'm now famous in the world of email spam! Still it hasn't uped the view count on my video too much, but it feels pretty cool to see my name in print higher than the golden boy Phillip Bloom.

Yes that's a PinMic where a button should be on Chuck's shirt. Though no civilian would notice...

And yes I did manage to talk Rode into handing over a nice pair of NT2000 microphones for all the effort I put into that video. (Thank you so much Rode!) And believe me it was a lot of effort to record usable tracks while simultaneously shooting video on every take. Like that lead guitar track was really played live all the way through, but that was the 6th take too. I couldn't do it on the vocal tracks though. I had to comp a track out of a few takes. It's much more fun to lip sync anyway.

I can see the similarity with the Jack Conte videos. But I like to think I came up with that style myself out of boredom while healing from a major surgery that removed a disc out of my neck and replaced it with a piece of my hip. In January 2007 I was stuck at my mother's house down south in Oxnard because that's where the doctor was. I couldn't handle the drive back to Humboldt for a couple months while my vertebrae fused together. (Try living with you mother for 2 months at 40). Anyway I brought my VX2100 and a Rode NT3 and made this little jam that I think predates the Jack Conte stuff, though I envy that lucky dog for being able to do it all the time and somehow make a living from it. Maybe if I got a cute girl to sing and mug for the camera like in his Pomplamoose videos, I could get more hits on my videos! This is a re-uploaded video so it doesn't say 2007, but hey it was my start of playing live tracks on video and editing them together - using Vegas, which is the most audio friendly of all the video apps. I miss that now that I'm a FCP guy...

 
Your above post reminds me of this video which I absolutely adore.



I always appreciate your videos Chad. Now that you've taken $ (in the form of microphones)
from Rode (which is the least they can do) when you do comparisons in the future with rode products
you probably should let people know that. Kinda sucks but people will have the attitude of
"ohh he is just saying that because they pay him"..etc.
 
That is a great video! The little guy's got it going on...

I didn't hide that I got paid to do my initial "Lav Shootout!" but that was Guy who paid me not a mic company. My way of comparing mics (I'm working on a real comparison of 4 LDC mics now) is to put up the video/audio and ask what YOU think. Like the lav shootout, I had no conclusion. It's hard to really call a "winner" because it's often subjective. Also I don't work with crappy stuff, so there is no "loser" either. But yeah, I should say "Rode provided me with XXX mic, and this is what I think. What do you think?"
 
Chad. I hope you didn't think I was implying you were ripping off Jack Conte. That was not my intent. Sorry if it came off that way.

I just really love these kinds of videos where the music and video are recorded live at the same time. I've done music recording. I've done sound design. I've done video editing, and I know that putting something like that takes a ton of time and energy, not to mention hard drive space.
 
No no Dave, I didn't think you were saying I was copying him! I appreciate your complements. Thank you very much. I have heard the comparison a few times now, and I guess I unnecessarily tried to justify using that style. Man I'm jealous he gets to do that stuff all day long too. Still, I'm pretty happy just working in the video/audio field at all. I was a frickin' goat milker for 8 years. So this beats literally getting **** on at work any day of the week.
 
I think it's a great way for you to demonstrate your talents for sure. Maybe Hyundai will have you do their commercials next holiday season. If not that, then maybe Rode and other audio manufacturers should hire you to do "video songs" for their products. I think what you did was a great way to highlight the pin mic...pretty brilliant, actually.
 
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