Studio postmortem: the Old Town School’s Songbook Project
We were back in the studio yesterday, cutting the old Irish trad tune “South Australia” for the Old Town School of Folk Music’s acclaimed Songbook Project. John Abbey engineered the session. John was very specific that he wanted to keep things loose and spontaneous, so we did everything live. John set up in the Soccer Club annex to the old town school, and we tracked in the front room.
We did our first record live to two track with a stereo pair of mics and a ribbon mic in the center. While the goal for this recording was similar, the setup was a little more elaborate. The instruments were mic’d individually. The microphones, as best I remember were:
- banjo: an old Shure ribbon mic without a visible model number
- bass: an Audio/ Technica large diaphragm condenser
- guitar: Neumann small diaphragm condenser
- mando: can’t remember
- fiddle: an Octava MC12, a rewired and souped-up MK12
- lead voc: a Rode NTK tube condenser mic
The mics went through some very nice outboard gear (including a beautiful Manley pre), and in to ProTools 7.1. We did all the instruments and a scratch vocal in one pass, and then all the vocal tracks in a second pass. All told, everything was done in less than two hours, including setup time. Thanks to John for making everything easy for us, and the good folks at the Old Town School for making it all happen
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Hey guys…just found this. Thanks for the mention and mostly thanks for coming in and doing such a great job on the tune. BTW the mando mic was a Beyer M160, the Shure Ribbon mentioned is a 315 both were modded a few years back by Steven Sank. The AT on bass was a 4033 the Neumann was a KM84. Thanks again and maybe we can do another tune for Vol 4..?
Comment by John Abbey — 12/8/2006 @ 11:30 am