Recording the Marzipan CD
This page contains information related to how I recorded the Marzipan: Stories with Music CD. This is not a detailed account of recording the CD, per se, but some notes on mic placement, equipment used, levels, EQ, effects, approach to recording the different tracks, etc., and may be of use to others recording hammered dulcimer with a storyteller. Please note that this is certainly not the only way to do it. There are a number of ways to accomplish this, but this is one of those ways.
Recording Equipment and Software
I did not use the same recording unit I used on Of Things To Come....
On that reocrding, I used a Roland V-Studio. For this recording, I used my MacBook
Pro running Leopard for the OS, and a Presonus Firestudio Project 8-channel Mic Interface.
The Mic I/F connected to the Laptop via FireWire, and came with it's own control software
and a copy of Cubase LE 4. This is what I used, and found it more than adequate for the
project. The Mics I used are discussed below.
Mics
For this project, I used two pairs of AKG C1000S mics. These were recommended to me by Dan Evans,
a mountain dulcimer player and recording artist from the UK. He had used some in his recording
projects, and his comment was that they weren't completely flat in response across the audio spectrum,
but were a little warm. It sounded like just what I wanted, so I bought a couple of them.
Mic Placement: Recording the Dulcimer
The mics were placed to record the
dulcimer in stereo, but not in the standard X-Y Stereo pair configuration. (This
configuration is one in which the mics are place at a 90° angle to each other with the ends
of the mics positioned one directly "over" the other, but not touching.) I
modified this standard configuration some and seemed to get a pretty good sound from it, even
though, when I initially did it, I had no idea what I was doing. I only found out what I
had done when I took a week-long recording class from Michael Atherton at Common Ground on the
Hill in July, 2004. In the class, Michael explained about mic placement, and we got some
hands-on experience doing it, as well as having ourselves recorded by the class members.
During this class, I learned about how to set up the X-Y Stereo Pair configuration, and
also learned about how to configure the mics if I was to mic in stereo, but not have them in the
standard stereo pair postition. I learned then how to set up the mics so I could avoid some
bad effects due to the physics of the placement. It wasn't until I got home and looked
at how I had the mics placed that I realized I had done it right.
To the left are some pictures of how I set up the mics. Both mics are positioned vertically just above the plane of the dulcimer soundboard, and parallel to the soundboard. The closer one is one inch (1") away from the edge of the dulcimer, pointed at roughly a 45° angle to the dulcimer, and the other mic is roughly four to five inches (4" to 5") from the dulcimer and 3 inches (3") from the other mic pointing at roughly a 90° angle with the other mic. This is the roughly same approach to micing I used on my first CD, Of Things To Come....
Mic Placement: Recording Voice
For Finn's voice, I used the standard X-Y Stereo pair configuration, which worked well.
Since it is a standard configuration, I don't show a photo of it here. We did put
a pop screen in front of the mics, and ended up lowering the mics so the mics and windscreen were
below the level of Finn's mouth, so he was talking past them, over them, not directly into
them. We did this mainly because the plosives in one story were plentiful, and recording
with plentiful plosives presenting prolific pops when he talked about placing the paper on the
pulpit just drove us to it!
Mic Placement: Relative Placement of Dulcimer and Vocal Mics
When we recorded together, we faced each other, with our mics pointing away from the other in
order to minimize bleedover between Finn and myself. Finn's mics pointed toward him and
away from the dulcimer. However, not being pointed directly away from the dulcimer
(180º), but being at a 45º angle to the dulcimer, as well as being below the level of
his mouth and angled up, they did pick up some of the dulcimer. The dulcimer mics being
pointed more away from Finn (more toward 180º), didn't pick up nearly as much bleedover,
but still picked up some.
Recording Approach
The recording approach we used varied during the project. On one story, Marzipan
I believe it was, we recorded the story together. It wasn't too hard. We did
have to redo a lot of takes because one or the other of us would mess up, and editing with
dulcimer and the bleedover wasn't easy, if possible at all. But we got a good take of
that, being able to do edits where there was no music along with the voice.
After that, though, we realized that this was a time-consuming approach, and that we were falling behind schedule using it, so we started thinking about alternatives. The alternative we decided on was to simply record Finn telling the story, mistakes and all, but backing up to do "re-dos" when necessary. If something wasn't right to one or the other of us, we would say so (recorder still rolling), and Finn would back up and do that section over. In one session, we could get a good take so I could then bring it back to my studio and edit the voice. Editing voice only is so very much easier than voice with hammered dulcimer, and the software I used proved to be amazingly powerful in that regard. After getting a good edit of the story that we agreed on, I put the music to the story in my studio. This proved to be a very good and a very time-saving approach. For the music-only tracks, I used the same method I used on my Of Things To Come... CD.
Recording Method for the Music-Only Tracks
The method I used to record the dulcimer on the music-only tracks and with two of the three stories is not
original with me. I learned about it while recording a bodhran track for Marcy Prochaska's debut CD,
No Loose Threads. The studio where she recorded NLT recorded Marcy's dulcimer differently than
I'd heard of before. The engineer would record the "A" part of a tune on one track,
letting it fade out naturally at the end. Then he would record the "B" part on a different
track, letting that also fade out naturally at its end, and so on until the tune was finished. This made
it so that no precise punching in and punching out was necessary. Since I recorded everything in stereo,
I would record part A on track 1 (Stereo Track), part B on track 2 (another Stereo Track), and so on.
Levels
The hardware input gains were set not as high as I could get them, but were set to where the signal was not
peaking out on my meters. With this Presonus Mic interface, I had no trouble getting the level I
needed from my mics. And the software afforded me a good amount of flexibility with gain and levels.
One wants the individual levels to be between -12dB and -4dB, and I had no trouble getting that.
EQ
I EQ'd only the music on the music-only tracks, and that was only to cut out some very
high frequencies. I didn't need it for the other tracks.
Effects
I used very little in the way of effects on this CD. I used reverb, but sparingly.
Without the least bit of reverb the voice sounded unnatural, so I added nearly the least I
could for the voice and most of the dulcimer tracks to make sure they sounded like they were in
the same room. With the reverb on, you couldn't really tell it was on, but when it
wasn't on, you could tell it wasn't on. I did, for effect, change the reverb on
the dulcimer in certain places, but always brought it back to the minimal setting after that
particular section in which I wanted the different effect.