Recording February 2022 - 48

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L Session
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Setup
This was a dead easy session from a
technical standpoint-piano mics and a
vocal mic, all in the same room along
with the audience. I set up headphones
for the guests but I don't think anyone
used them-they just listened in the
room with the singer right next to the piano.
The headphone mix was the same
thing they would hear in the room, plus
some tasteful reverb on the vocals.
The mics
One of my favorite vocal microphones
is the JZ BlackHole BH-1S large diaphragm
condenser. I used that one for
Becca, and I set up a pair of Swedish
Ehrlund EHR-M large diaphragm condensers,
which are my favorite mics
to record piano with. They are quite
unique and feature a triangular capsule.
The session/concert went very smoothly.
Initially, the plan was to do only a few
songs, but these musicians were so in
sync with each other and enjoying it so
much that they just kept playing beautiful
songs one after the next, and I kept
rolling. We ended up with an album's
worth of material in less than an hour!
Behind the glass
While they were playing, I put together
a nice mix in the control room with
just a tad of compression on the vocals
(I believe I used an 1176 or an LA-2A)
and a beautiful sounding reverb (I think
it was the Master Room II analog spring
reverb). I ran off some mixes for Elan
thinking nothing else would ever come
from these beyond reliving the moment.
Fast forward
It would be a few years before Elan revisited
this material and (thankfully) realized
he was sitting on a gold mine of gorgeous
music that the world deserved to hear.
And therein lies the first (or second?)
very important lesson I want to convey
here: always do things the proper way.
Do not ever cut corners, do not ever underestimate
the importance of what you
might be documenting and always do
your best work. And most importantly,
48 RECORDING February 2022
do this regardless of the target medium,
format or audience.
Imagine if I had nonchalantly decided
to not mic up the piano because it was
loud enough in the room-after all, this
wasn't intended to be an actual record.
Or, what if I went with just a single mic
for archival purposes, since, again, this
was not really intended to be a proper
recording? Imagine if I'd recorded it at
16/44.1 to save hard drive space. Or
worse yet, imagine that, to save hard
drive space, I had not kept the session
at all, or failed to archive it on multiple
hard drives to make sure everything was
backed up...
Always do your best work!
The subject of doing your best work,
at all times and in every case, is one I
often discuss in my workshops and seminars,
and it often comes up with clients
in the studio. We have all heard cynical,
disenchanted comments such as, " Why
even bother with all this quality, expensive
equipment, or high sample rates,
when people are just gonna listen to
MP3s on Apple earbuds? "
My answer to that argument is always
the same: do your best work and do it
for those who care about quality and for
the generations to come!
Documenting now for then
As engineers, we are documenting
moments for posterity; you'll never know
how important the work will turn out
to be years down the line. We are the
archivists of the future, and we should
always
believe (whether
it
happens
Recording February 2022

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