On a chilly September day at Duinrell, I had the pleasure of recording the Vaksjaak Podcast in a tent. A recording filled with laughing children, roller coaster screams, and the challenge of creating a single-take recording in an uncontrollable environment.
A Podcast for Craftsmen
The Vaksjaak Podcast revolves around the world of professional painters. Hosts Ruben van der Kruis and Danny Rijken explore different aspects of the painting trade each episode, featuring guests from various corners of the paint and construction industry. From entrepreneurship to social media, from techniques to career paths – everything that happens on, under, and next to the scaffolding gets covered.
This time they brought their children to the recording, which immediately created the funniest moment of the day. At 9:26 in the episode, the children are asked: if you got a present at the paint store when buying paint, what would you want? One child’s answer: “A talking robot paintbrush.” I found that absolutely hilarious and so typical of children’s uninhibited honesty.
Technical Challenges in a Tent
For the recording I used Shure SM7B microphones – honestly not my favorite mics due to their relatively high noise floor, but I boosted each one with a FetHead to get sufficient gain. I recorded multitrack during the event, which we did in a single take. Afterward, my colleague Rik van Leeuwen rendered the final result.
The ambient sounds were an interesting challenge. We regularly heard people screaming their lungs out on rides, and that made its way onto the recording too. I thought it actually added a fun and interesting layer to the show. The wind rustling through nearby trees was trickier – I solved that by setting the gain just low enough to still have sufficient level left on the recording.
Nervous but Successful
I was quite nervous since I wanted to do it in a single take, but it worked. I had to do all setup and teardown myself, but during recording I had the show’s producer sitting next to me. We brought a small speaker, a Behringer Shoutbox type of contraption, but we had quite a crowd in our tent so they wanted to use it as a PA for the audience. I agreed, but had to hold my ground when they wanted to crank it all the way up. A shoutbox can never become a PA – it just doesn’t have the power. Also, it would have appeared in my recording as an echo, something I had to avoid at all costs.
The Mystery of the First Question
During the first audience question, I couldn’t hear anything coming through that channel. Fortunately, one of the hosts repeated the question before answering it – that saved the day. I had my producer run out to do a line check on the mic (just an SM58 on a stand). The check went fine – I had enough level. All other questions from the audience went perfectly. To this day, I still don’t know exactly what happened. Did the speaker speak too softly, or too far from the mic? Did my mixer (a Zoom LiveTrak L8, not the fanciest equipment) act up?
A Day of Contrasts
It was a fun day that started out a little chilly, but the weather improved. Only 30 minutes after wrapping we were hit by a massive rain shower – lucky us! Between the roller coaster screams, childlike honesty, and technical challenges, it was exactly the kind of unpredictable gig I love.
Watch the full episode on YouTube and discover more about the Vaksjaak Podcast on their website.