The challenge many people now face is how do we make amazing recordings on a limited budget? There’s a minefield of gear out there!
I decided I would ask two companies who make affordable equipment to lend us some gear. Focusrite gave us a Clarett 8PreX, an Interface with 8 built in mic pres and Shure a PGA Drum Kit 7 plus a pair of PGA 181 condenser Mics!
With these Mics I placed them alongside some of the greatest Mics in the world, Neumann’s, AKG and Sennheiser! The Focusrite was up against one of my favourite consoles, the Sunset Sound custom built console in Studio Three, the studio where Prince recorded three of his best albums! The constants were the Drums, the Drummer and the room.
What results would we get? After all one vintage Neumann U67 might go for $10,000! The Focusrite and Shure Drum Mics were total less that $1,700!
The results were amazing! It lets us know that for a fraction of the cost you can get incredible recordings! But in your heart you knew that! Well, watch the video and check it out for yourself!
You get to download all multitracks of this song, including the amazing Sunset Sound Drum recordings with multiple additional microphones, and the drum recordings of the Focusrite & Shure miking setup:
I hope you enjoyed this video, I had a lot of fun making it! Thank you so much to Focusrite, Shure, Sunset Sound, Jon Button, Blair Sinta, Jonah Smith and everyone else involved. Please share this video to encourage artists, musicans and producers around the world and let know that we can make great music on affordable equipment! YOUR creativity is what really matters!
Have a marvellous time recording and mixing,
Warren
@Warren Love this track. Great tune. So soulfully sung. Love it. And of course, as noted, the instrumentation is totally top notch. Couldn’t be better.
Question: Did you use the Air on the Clarett 8PreX? Did you track through any plugins? I scanned back through the video a couple of times and didn’t catch any references.
Cheers!
Johna, thank you for such a beautiful song, comes down to Phenomenal talent of the musicians and the engineers, could have gone direct to 2 track or in the old days direct to disk, I still love that special moment when a group of very good musician perform together to leave a
moment of magical legacy. (When they make your hair stand, you know they found your musical G spot) Wazza you just keep spoiling us with such wonderful people Thank you.
Hey Warren, great video! I have a question. When you are mono micing the piano body, what pickup pattern are you using? I am planning to try it out with a 414 and just want to get it right! Thanks!
BBC jazz guys once gave me a tip to use two 58s face down into the 2nd and 2nd last sound holes in the sound board … for live mic’ing a jazz piano… they said that way the balance is “okay” (not perfect), but it gives much better rejection of other noises than spaced condensers… so there are lots of variations of this technique… a single mic on one mid sound hole… experiment! I have a Yamaha stage piano which is DId… to that I add an XY pair to add super definition to the hammers (good for a single note melody line). So, the technique depends on the part you’re recording.
Amazing video, thanks Warren!
Wow, the modern gear captured that session beautifully. Great players and great instruments on a soulful song. Just loved it. I got chills on my arms watching that take. Thanks for this Warren.
Wow that’s a great comparison! To get that result from the first take is just amazing, a real credit to the musos.
Okay, and one more question: What’s the name of this song? I can’t find it anywhere. Still unpublished?