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More With Less

I try to record every rehearsal or gig I’m involved in because you never know what you might capture... and I just love the technical challenge. On a few occasions I’ve brought in an engineer to mic up and sound check the band so I could get on with just playing. Most of the time, it’s just me setting up whatever I could in the time I had before we’d start playing.

Some things I’ve discovered along the way while recording and mixing under the gun: 1. Over-engineering can often get in the way of the music. 2. Being creative with what’s at hand is more valuable than expensive gear.

The Room: The Slug and Lettuce in Didsbury. Not an ideal place to record, but a fun place to play.

The vocals (Lucy Lockwood) and keyboard were run direct and purely for practical reasons at the time, the bass (David Luvin) was run direct from the bass amp. 

 

A single Yoga D727 dynamic microphone (Currently available for £5 new at Maplins) was used on the drums (Ian Bell).

 

 

 

Dynamic microphone of this type are usually used in a set to close mic all of the drums with a special mic on the kick drum and overhead mics for the cymbals. Here we have a single cheap dynamic mic sitting over the kick drum aimed at the snare.

 

 

Here’s a sample from the gig: https://soundcloud.com/keith-mcgee-...

While there may be as many preferences as there are pairs of ears, I’ve never been a fan of “isolate each instrument then inject them into the listener’s ears”. As much as I can, I try to put the listener on stage with band, or bring the band into the listener’s living room.

Special thanks to Phil Portus for the gig photos.

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