Sandyrb
14 Jun 2010, 23:32
Allo folks.
Thought you might find this interesting. We had the "Smoke River Singers" in the studio on Friday to do a CD of powwow music. Now, being fairly new to this country, I've never recorded any powwow music before, but all the recordings I've heard so far were absolute garbage. They sit in a circle, beat a huge "gathering drum" and sing. How to capture such a source? Most people seem to have tried a single stereo pair on the lot or mic'd everything separately. But this is what we did.
The drum was easy; a Beyer M201 over the edge of it worked really nice, a deep resonant tone and almost no spill from the singers. Brady (another of our fine engineers) suggested an RE20 and I'm sure that would have worked just as well too but the 201 was smaller and more discreet. This went through a Millennia Media preamp with a little bit of Drawmer six-pack compression.
For the singers, we got our AKG C426B set up in Blumlein config and hung it from a big stand right over the center of the drum so that the capsules would be aimed toward the singers at the same height as their heads - about 18" above the surface of the drum. This went through the NPNG preamp with a bit of super-fast Empirical Labs "distression" (:)) to control the peaks of the drum and bring out the singers a bit more. We tracked the group in our biggest room (2400sqft) which gave the sources some nice space and air and helped to impart a sense of size.
Once we'd got the stereo balance right and tamed the levels a bit (holy cow those boys were loud) I went to the wife's birthday bash and Brady carried on. Everything was put down live and the whole album of 14 songs was completed tracking in about five hours. Mixing and finalling (today) was an absolute breeze with just three tracks to work with so all that really involved was getting a nice balance between drum and singers, bit of additional squash to tame the loudest peaks and there you have it. One powwow album ready for the pressing plant and it's pretty bloomin' good. I'm extremely pleased with Brady's work and the Smoke River Singers are certainly the best powwow group I've heard.
So there ya go. Hope you find that interesting. :) Anyone else done this sort of work?
Cheers,
Thought you might find this interesting. We had the "Smoke River Singers" in the studio on Friday to do a CD of powwow music. Now, being fairly new to this country, I've never recorded any powwow music before, but all the recordings I've heard so far were absolute garbage. They sit in a circle, beat a huge "gathering drum" and sing. How to capture such a source? Most people seem to have tried a single stereo pair on the lot or mic'd everything separately. But this is what we did.
The drum was easy; a Beyer M201 over the edge of it worked really nice, a deep resonant tone and almost no spill from the singers. Brady (another of our fine engineers) suggested an RE20 and I'm sure that would have worked just as well too but the 201 was smaller and more discreet. This went through a Millennia Media preamp with a little bit of Drawmer six-pack compression.
For the singers, we got our AKG C426B set up in Blumlein config and hung it from a big stand right over the center of the drum so that the capsules would be aimed toward the singers at the same height as their heads - about 18" above the surface of the drum. This went through the NPNG preamp with a bit of super-fast Empirical Labs "distression" (:)) to control the peaks of the drum and bring out the singers a bit more. We tracked the group in our biggest room (2400sqft) which gave the sources some nice space and air and helped to impart a sense of size.
Once we'd got the stereo balance right and tamed the levels a bit (holy cow those boys were loud) I went to the wife's birthday bash and Brady carried on. Everything was put down live and the whole album of 14 songs was completed tracking in about five hours. Mixing and finalling (today) was an absolute breeze with just three tracks to work with so all that really involved was getting a nice balance between drum and singers, bit of additional squash to tame the loudest peaks and there you have it. One powwow album ready for the pressing plant and it's pretty bloomin' good. I'm extremely pleased with Brady's work and the Smoke River Singers are certainly the best powwow group I've heard.
So there ya go. Hope you find that interesting. :) Anyone else done this sort of work?
Cheers,