This Week
Enjoying a moment’s repose here before Nick Reddel comes in tomorrow, with a full entourage, to record his album. This is a guy who writes software, sings Tamino, and cooks up a world-class cous-cous just for fun. He’s graced several of the projects that have come the studio in the last couple of years with violin, guitar, piano, and vocals, and now he’s gotten an album’s worth of his own songs together. Added bonus for me: his compliment of sidemen and sidewomen this time include several dear friends.
Now then: a new friend have I made, in Andrea Galli from Firenze. His sessions a couple of weeks ago were a joy! We recorded and mixed his whole album in three days, and now he’s flown back to Italy (in spite of a certain Icelandic volcano) to shop it around to labels. Here’s a pic:
That happens to have been one of the nicest acoustic guitars I’ve had the pleasure to record, a Gibson from the custom shop in Kalamazoo, just like the one Lenin (oops! Lennon) played. The astute among you will notice that there’s a mess of mics on the setup. I allowed myself the indulgence of experimenting a bit. For starters there is a pair of 414s- not my fave mics but very useful, set on figure-of-8 with the blind side pointing a Andrea’s mouth, then the main vocal mic, a Lawson LM47, also figure-of-8, with its blind side pointing to the guitar. It’s a practical way to avoid phasing problems when recording live vocals. In addition, there is a Neumann CMV563 with an M55K capsule right up at the bridge of the guitar. This particular capsule is not good for much else, but it has SO much sparkle that it brings acoustic guitars right forward in a mix; I love it for that. And setting off the vintage 563 vibe is a Gefell MV692 in there somewhere, around the fingerboard. Plus, I’ve got Uncle Joe in there as an alternate vocal mic; he’s an RFT 7151, with a Neumann M7 capsule (and my famous thread adapter made out of an old piece of water pipe). Enough mics already!
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