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Meeting held March 21, 2007 at the University of Washington Ethnic Cultural Theater, Seattle, WA.
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Meeting held March 21, 2007 at the University of Washington Ethnic Cultural Theater, Seattle, WA.
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The PNW Section's March 2007 meeting featured a presentation on producing a commercial "newgrass" music album using only two spaced omnidirectional microphones. The presenter was Matthew Gephart, a staff engineer at Sage Arts recording studio in Arlington, WA. This project concerned mandolinist Chris Thile (also known from the group, Nickel Creek) and other musicians collectively known as "the How to Grow a Band" recording the album, "How to Grow a Woman from the Ground" at Sear Sound in New York City.
About 35 attended (of which 11 or so were AES members) the meeting at the University of Washington Ethnic Cultural Theater in Seattle, WA. A special Meyer Sound Labs stereo playback system was installed for this event courtesy of Dansound, Inc. and Uneeda Audio. PNW vice-chair Steve Turnidge opened the meeting with business and audience introductions. Matthew Gephart has done a lot of multi-track recording on material like jazz, blues, bluegrass, and Celtic at Sage Arts. With some time to experiment at the studio and a renewed interest in stereo recording after reading the book, "The New Stereo Soundbook" by Streicher and Everest, the opportunity arose to work on a commercial project with some of his favorite artists in a technique he has come to embrace - spaced omnis, sometimes known as A-B stereo. Matt told of meeting Chris Thile several years ago and his previous work with him. Eventually, mandolin prodigy Thile decided he wanted to do a solo project non-multitrack, and asked Matt. Matt decided on using the A-B technique. He played a cut from a previous Thile CD made with a single AKG C24 coincident stereo mic for 3 musicians. It was decided, since Thile lived in NYC, to record at Sear Sound studio C in NYC, using 2 vintage Telefunken ELAM-251 mikes, and a Studer 1 inch-2 track analog recorder. Matt had several slides of the sessions. An entire day was spent testing musician positions. Headphone monitoring helped set the mic positions. He mentioned he was in the studio with the musicians during recording, and that the satisfaction of working as a group was more fulfilling than multitrack projects. Of course, it helps to have seriously fine, intensely rehearsed musicians that could produce easily editable material. Typically 5 complete takes of each song were available for editing. Matt said he auditioned audiophile cables and is now a believer. This project used Transparent brand cables and Forssell Technologies mic preamps. Some tracking went to the 1-inch Studer J37, some went direct to Lavry Gold A to D converters and into ProTools at 24bit/96kHz. Sadly, the 40+ year old Studer proved too unreliable so the end product used the digital recordings. Broadcast WAV files were edited in Cubase. He played material done by different mastering engineers that were not released for comparison to the released version. Matt noted that the obvious disadvantage of this method is loss of post production control. The advantage is much better musician interaction. He doesn't feel the A-B stereo technique's lesser mono compatibility is much of a drawback - certainly it's worse, but few will listen to it critically in mono. A snack break was held, and door prizes were awarded:
Reported by Gary Louie, PNW Section Secretary |
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