Well it was a successful day. Not as long as some recording days have been in the past, but a solid day and a fair bit accomplished. It’s always been an interesting process for me, recording other people’s music. One of the first things I usually do when all the gear’s set up is ask the person to play their instrument for me. They’ll ask me where I’m going to put the microphone, and I say I’m not yet. Then I sit down in front of them and ask them to play. And I use my ears to guide me. What does this instrument really sound like? I mean before I put a mic in front of it, and they put headphones on, and I go in the other room and turn on the pre-amp and the converters and the amp for the speakers and a dozen other gizmos and then speak into my microphone so they can hear my voice in their headphones saying, “Okay, just play naturally.”
I mean really, when I’m producing a recording half my job is to make all the gear disappear so we’re just playing music.
And I think the other half of my job is to make all that gear work so that what you hear is the sound of the musician’s instrument the way that musician plays it.
So I sit down and ask them to play for me.
Once I’ve got a handle on what it sounds like I place a mic or two, plug in a pre-amp or more, and try to make it sound like what I just heard while I was sitting there listening. I know I’ll never make it exactly the same, but I can usually get close. I understand some people can ‘carry colour’ by keeping an accurate memory of it in their mind. I guess that’s what I do with sound. I get an accurate sound-picture in my memory, then I try to record what I hear.
Mind you sometimes the process is a little different. Sometimes I hear the sound in my head first. Then I try to record something that sounds like what I’ve heard. Sometimes it’s easy–I hear an oboe part so I write it out, find an oboe player and we’re in business.
Sometimes it’s not so easy. As an example here’s something I recorded a while ago. I’m completely happy with how it came out, but it’s not what I heard in my head.
the song–>Hope from the CD ‘The Long View’, 2006 (LV001)
You see I used to live across the river from a church with a carrillon, and whenever I sang this song my imagination heard those bells playing along. Sadly when I got up enough nerve to ask whether it was possible I guess I must’ve got somebody on a bad day. I suppose it’s not exactly normal that the guy who’s just asked if he can record your bells actually knows what he’s doing, fair enough. But I think it would’ve been pretty cool, and while we were set up we probably could’ve recorded a few tracks for the church, maybe for fundraising or just for posterity. Oh well.
Just record what you hear.
Sounds easy enough…