Recording - May 2015 - 65

the beat, so Beat Detective brought all the
kick hits accurately into line. I decided to
use Beat Detective on the kicks so they
would be solid-sounding, but not use it on
any of the other percussion so it could sway
a bit with the performance. We recorded
closed hi-hats next, with the mic perhaps a
bit further back than what you'd do with a
drum set hi-hat, so that it would sound more
natural and roomy.
I wasn't sure at first what to do about the
piano, since I usually use two mics to capture
the instrument just due to its size. After further
investigation, it turned out that the parts he
was going to play were all around the middle C area of the piano. Aside from one solo
piano piece, for most songs they were just
chords to back up the guitar parts. So we
decided to take a chance... since everything
was being recorded to a metronome, we
decided to treat the piano like a doubled guitar. We recorded the piano with one mic
aiming down toward the area he was playing, and then immediately doubled the
piano part with a second take. The result

and choir-like sections, so we did spend
some time making sure we were happy
with everything going on vocally. One element that was somewhat painful to capture
was a good handclap sound, which was
used on a few of the tunes. Essentially I
opened up 24 tracks in Pro Tools and had
Ryan clap the parts 24 different times (on
the 24 tracks) to simulate a room full of people clapping. (No, you can't just duplicate
a few tracks to get the same effect. Sorry.)
Last was bass, which was performed on
a nice Music Man instrument. We went
through the instrument input on the Focusrite
preamp and got a very clear sound, with
even-sounding highs, mids and lows-the
entire range of the bass. I like to record
bass parts last because you have a chance
to do some arrangement or part sculpting,
where the bass can catch and double or
complement some of the melodic parts
going on with the other tracks.
This was the basic format for how we
worked; some tracks were re-recorded
because we didn't like the arrangements

also bounced down the multiple handclap
tracks to one stereo track. So with the number of faders condensed down, we were
ready to go.
Mixing went relatively easily, since
acoustic guitar tracks tend to complement
vocals (as opposed to big rock guitars
that can cover up vocals). Also the minimal drum idea paid off in the mix-the
more natural-sounding kick drums blended well with the piano and guitars, and
we had the high-frequency content covered with hi-hats and shakers.
I used EQ to bring out brightness on guitars and vocals, as well as reverb on the
voice, but just a touch. Occasionally I added
reverb to the percussion elements if they
were very exposed and seemed too dry.
Other than that, mixing was all about getting
the right balance and making cohesive
tracks that ebbed and flowed dynamically

By John Fishell

with each song. In some ways the tracks
were naturally cohesive; since we used the
same mic for everything, this helped to make
elements fit smoothly together. You really put
a microphone through its paces by recording this way!

was really nice-pushing up the tracks and
panning them to opposite sides, we got a
really big-sounding stereo piano.
Once we had the songs far enough
along with guitar work, piano work, and
percussion, we thought it would be a good
idea to record vocals. Not a lot of work to
prepare here-just put the mic in vocal
position, check gains, and fire away! The
nice thing about the M 149 Tube is that it
was particularly well suited for Ryan's
voice, so vocals went down easily.
Many of the tunes had backing vocal
stacks, call and response kinds of things,

or just thought we could do better. Once
we got each tune recorded to our satisfaction, it was almost time to mix.
The mix
Before mixing, I went though each Pro
Tools session and prepared it for mixing.
This means that all doubled tracks (vocals,
guitars, pianos) were put into stereo tracks
to cut down the number of faders for mixing, and also because you can use just
one signal processing plug-in for the
stereo track rather than two separate plugins that you must adjust individually. We

Thoughts for next time
I think if the CD does well and there is
a next time, I'd like to try doing this kind
of recording with a ribbon mic-the nicest
one I can get my hands on-and see if I
can get a similarly cohesive and nicely
blended recording. If possible and appropriate, it would be great to record other
instruments such as mandolin, orchestral
strings (maybe a quartet), and perhaps
woodwinds, one overdub at a time, and
see if the one-mic-for-all idea still works
out. Give it a try for yourself; it won't work
for every genre or song, but when it does,
the results are beautiful!
John Fishell (fishell@recordingmag.com)
is the Director of Music Technology for
Indiana University-Purdue University
Fort Wayne.
RECORDING May 2015

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