I wanted to capture as much live as possible so set Mark up with the drums in the main room...standard micing for me...
Bass Drum..Audix D6 inside and Audio Technica 4047...summed to one track via a Rebis parametric EQ and a Focusrite Red 3 compressor.
Snare Drum....Sennheiser e609 on top, Shure SM57 underneath...summed to one track via a Rebis parametric EQ and my Urei 1176 compressor.
Hi Hats....ADK S7.
Toms...Sennheiser MD421s
Overheads...Neumann u87s close up with Hebden HS3000 omnis higher and further behind.
Room Mic...AKG C414 in omni placed 1 meter in front of the kit at snare drum level.
Kim Rooke played bass beautifully along with the drums. She used our Trace Elliott set up and the cab was mic'd with my trusty Neumann u47 fet, fed through a Golden Age Pre 73 preamp and then through a very old Audio Developments compressor direct to Radar. Incidentally we have a Laney 4x10 cab and a TE 1x15 cab attached to this amp..I always mic up one of the 10” speakers....gives a nice tight, focussed sound.
Nick played acoustic guitar and sang guide vocals for Kim and Mark. Because of the spill from the voice onto the guitar mics I re-recorded the guitar parts after we'd got good takes of the bass and drums.
Nick's guitar was mic'd using the Lewitt LTC 640 positioned looking at the body of the guitar to the left of the soundhole, and a Neumann Km84 aimed at where the neck joins the body and about 8 inches away. Apart from some bass roll-off these were more or less flat and recorded to seperate tracks. These were panned left and right whilst we were overdubbing but when I mixed I summed them to one side, copied the tracks
and panned them to the other side and delayed them by a few milliseconds. This enables me to place the guitar solid left and right whilst freeing up centre space for vocals and solo stuff.
On this track Nick also plays banjo and mandolin both mic'd using the Lewitt LTC640
...a very versatile mic with lots of very clean gain and an abundance of very usable polar patterns and filters.
The harmonica was recorded with the ADK TT but during the takes I realised that the tube was giving out which explains the noise on the harmonica track. This is my one and only criticism of the ADK Area 51 TT mic....it's a wonderful beast but mine has eaten two valves inside a year.
I would have used the TT on Nick's vocal had it been working but opted for the Lewitt...not ideal given that Nick's voice needs a certain amount of support in the “body” region.
Paul Blackburn played fiddle on this track and his violin was mic'd with the Lewitt about 10 inches above the soundboard, routed via an old AD compressor direct to Radar.
After recording some backing vocals from Kim using the Lewitt, all the Radar files were transferred to my Cubase system for mixing.
Just a basic balance using a small amount of reverb and a short stereo room simulating delay.
Enjoy playing!
