Recording - October 2021 - 36

Log
L Session
og
L Session
By Marc Urselli
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Adam Clayton (U2) electric
bass setup at Piety Studio
All photos by Marc Urselli
Tony Scherr upright
bass setup at
Brooklyn Recording
TheAngelHeaded Hipster
Part 10: Bass and Percussion
Y
ou are in for a treat this month as we look at
recording the very instrument I sometimes play
myself-the bass. I will walk you through the players
who provided the foundation on AngelHeaded Hipster:
The Songs of Marc Bolan and T. Rex, produced by the
late great Hal Willner. I will also cover the percussionists
who sprinkled beautiful ear candy on top of it all.
Let's talk bass!
The album features over ten bass players. As we have previously
covered, our first session (Nick Cave recording 'Cosmic
Dancer') was an interesting mashup of people from different
walks of life. Hal invited the legendary Tom Fowler (Zappa,
Ray Charles, Steve Hackett) to play bass, so we truly started
with bass royalty. Fowler was utterly humble and made himself
transparent yet indispensable. He drove in from Las Vegas
for the session, was eager to play, and held down the tonics
while Nick and the arrangers worked out the details of the song.
Village Recorders Studio A has very few isolation options.
I chose to use their one booth for the drums and an iso closet
for the electric guitar amp. As such, I recorded the bass direct
with a Radial DI. Then I used the IK Multimedia Ampeg SVX
2 plugin to dial in an amp simulation to work within the tune.
Upright
Hal also brought in an upright bass player (David Piltch) to
complement the string section on the song, and he played in
the same room behind a baffle next to the cello. On double
bass, I always try to use a large diaphragm condenser pointed
at the f-hole and a small diaphragm condenser suspended
36 RECORDING October 2021
with rubber bands in the middle of the bridge (see picture). If the
bass player has objections to me putting rubber bands on his
instrument, I'll use a mic stand. At my home base studio, EastSide
Studio in New York, I usually use a Neumann U 47 fet or a
Braingasm Ferro microphone on the f-hole, and a Neumann KM
184 or an Oktava MC-012 in or on the bridge.
At Village Recorders, I used a very rare vintage Neumann KM
54a tube microphone on the bridge, and a Neumann U 47 on
the f-hole. Sometimes I will augment this setup with a third mic,
a ReMic DB5401, which is a cleverly designed dual-element
omni/cardioid condenser mic surrounded by foam that goes between
the wood and the tailpiece of the bass and points both at
the body (as a contact mic would) and at the bridge; this works
almost as well as a DI for getting a clean and usable bass track
if the bass is in a room with a lot of leakage.
If the instrument has a DI output, I will record that too, with
a Reflector Audio or Radial DI. In situations like this, where
everyone is in the same room, this is a great backup to lean on
Danny Frankel percussion
setup at Sunset Sound
Recording - October 2021

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