The second day of the surround recording sessions at Swansea Metropolitan University with the final year students of the BSc Music Technology course produced this fine version of The Devil’s Dream/Mason’s Apron, as performed by Roots & Galoots:
[As usual, just recorded straight to my N70].
Around this time every year I organize a set of recording sessions for the final year students on the BSc Music Technology course at Swansea Metropolitan University. The idea behind these sessions is to record a band ‘live in the studio’ in full 24-bit/96kHz surround. The past couple of years I’ve booked Gypsy Jazz but they weren’t available this year, and so on the advice of my colleague Pete Williams I booked Roots & Galoots, a Bluegrass band based in South-West Wales.
I have to say that initially I was a little dubious because, with three vocalists, I felt that it might be difficult to achieve any decent recordings in the time allotted—each group of 3 or 4 students gets 3 hours to do the recording—without recourse to setting up a PA etc.. The whole idea of it is that it’s basically an acoustic session. Anyway, it turned out very well. Roots & Galoots were highly skilled musicians and very professional in their approach, and you can see from the following video how they managed to balance themselves up:
Brilliant! Like a ‘real’ recording session from the 1950s (or earlier). No overdubbing, no drop-ins, no MIDI, no samplers, no editing, and no place to hide for either musicians or engineers. Just good musicians recorded straight with good equipment. Deep, deep, joy.
[Note: the video was recorded with my Nokia N70. No post-production apart from trimming the start and finish.]
© 2012 Paul Hazel. All Rights Reserved.