Recording 101/8 - Simplicity

May 24, 2010 by Neps

It’s been quite some time since I’ve sat down to write something to do with either music and/or recording. So sorry in advance for the rambling but, this issomething that has mde me sit back and think and look at how I do things. The time spent away from being actively involved in my area of passion has made me realize a few things that I took for granted for so long. And that is the performance. Sitting at home today and drinking a nice cup of coffee , I had some time to reflect on what I’ve learnt in the last seven months that I so foolishly have forgotten.

The live industry is a monster all to itself, and only there can you properly (according to me) gauge on how good musicians actually perform on a daily basis. Sitting in studio you forget that you have time to get that one lick down just so, or that you can spend a bit of time getting the drummer to play that fill right on the click. Some do get overwhelmed in those situations but, you do have a bit of a luxury of time compared to doing it live, and that is where I found something that I started to love again... Simplicity!!

This however can also be pulled through to recording itself. The way I got to this realization was one evening when a couple of my friends asked me to record their live jazz session. To give you bit of background on the setup.

The venue is a lounge type with the band set on a small stage with a very small PA just to give the vocals a bit of punch. There is a Baby Grand piano, a small Yamaha drum kit, a Fender twin amp, an old Trace Elliot cab and then the normal assortment of 58’s for vocals if needed. The piano has two Crown PZM mic’s to amplify a bit if the drummer does bang a bit too loudly. My recording setup consisted of a small Mackie 1404, MacBook Pro, Prosonus FirePod and Logic 8. I had 2 spare AKG C414’s, a Shure SM81, an AKG C34 and 3 SM57’s.

Into the Presonus I ran a direct out from the Vocal mic and the 2 Crown PZM’s from the inside of the Piano. On the Fender Twin (the guitarist used a nice old Tele) I had one of the C441’s and the other 414 I had as a ‘room’ mic for the Sax and trumpet. The 81 was used as a single drum overhead and the C34 was set up on Omni on the one capsule and figure8 on the other. This setup about 8 feet away from the stage was a room and audience mic.

The band proceeded to play some incredible jazz and reworked some Dave Matthews and Oasis into a jazzier arrangement which was awesome. The Trumpet player used a number of mutes and also employed his hand as a form of mute to do tasteful barks. This setup is quite basic (well, in my experience it is) and worked like a charm. 

When it came down to mixing I used the least amount of EQ, because the drummer spent some time to get the kit to sound really hot and the rest of the instruments all sounded ace. Did I mention the bassist played an old Fender JazzBass?!! A little bit of compression on the master and on the C34 room mic to just keep it in the mix. And all of this was monitored on a cheap pair of Sony headphones and mixed on a pair of Genelecs and a 10 000W EAW PA system (just for the fun of it, and because I can). 

The reason I wrote this long rambling piece is to make a small point that I came across. You don’t need a huge amount of gear to have fun. Musicians can bring music to life, and when recording that piece of art it’s not always the biggest and most expensive setup that gets you what you want. As I always stated in earlier pieces, it’s always much more rewarding when you have fun doing things.

The following days I spent some time relistening to things I’ve done before and started to play around with my ‘new’ idea on the mixing front. Keeping it really simple with the least amount of plugin’s and automation. And guess what.., I couldn’t come to a clear winner. So it does sometimes depend on the music and what your aim was with it. At the end of the day though, you can’t go wrong by starting out simple and looking at it from a different perspective.