Recording a singer/songwriter
Posted on 18. Sep, 2012 by Tim Bushong in News
I’m usually a ‘band’ guy, but I do record any and all artists and styles, so when Matt Geczy called and said he was going to be in the area (and wanted to record a few tunes) I immediately concurred- yes!
Simply excited!
Matt is an old family friend (his family and ours were very close back in the 90′s), and he had recorded some songs here way back in 2001. I really wanted to capture Matt “as is”- as live as possible- and this means there is going to be ‘bleed’ from guitar to vocal and vice-versa. So I tried this setup:
Action Matt
Matt is a strong singer, and the amount of guitar bleed in the vocal was minimal because of his big voice (I didn’t have to turn the vocal gain up as much as with some singers) . I used an ADK 51 through the Aphex 207 mic preamp for the vocals, and a Rode NT-1 through a Joe Meek VC3Q for the guitar. I also took a direct line from the guitar’s output, and ended up mixing in a little of the dry guitar signal as well.
Live in the studio
As you can see, the mics are at an almost 45 degree angle, which helped cancel some of the bleed from one to the other. One other mix note- as we were using a minimal track count, I decided to mix it ‘in-the-box’- that is, only using the mixer in Logic. Since in this case everything is running through the same buss output, I decided to try out a new freeware plug I had just downloaded- the Ferric TDS tape emulator.
When I inserted this into the buss channel and tweaked the settings, this was one of those “Huh- am I just hearing things?” moments- the mix honestly got fatter, wider, and ‘juicier’! I A/B’d the mix with and without it, and even had Matt close his eyes for a blind listening test, and it was just astounding. I thank the “Harmony Central” or “Gearslutz” sites (since I can’t remember which one I was reading when I found this thing) for turning me on to yet another great plug. Here’s a little taste of Matt’s music:
It was a fun few hours of recording, and I learned, yet again, not to be afraid to try new and different things when you’re in the trenches…
Matt is the good-looking guy on the left...
Pro AudioUnit and VST plugins
Sounds awesome! Great voice and great mix!
I would like one of those CD’s man … that guy is great!
I’ll see what I can do in getting his stuff- maybe a digital download?