Clifford Henricksen / New Kind of Recording
The Cliff Henricksen Band
Recorded June 27, 2008 at the Bose Corporate Center auditorium.
Each member of the band is using a Bose L1® system.
Two microphones located over the audience captured the audio you are about to hear.
There is no overdubbing. No equalization. No processing of any kind.
The Cliff Henricksen Band "Just a Heartbeat Away"
We have three versions of the recordings. Please use the highest bit rate that will work with your internet connection.
Listen with great speakers or headphones.
Cliff Henricksen Introduces the Video
This is a sort-of preamble for this topic. It's a description of events leading to what I think is a new kind of recording technique for amplified L1-powered ensembles.
Our band (Cliff Henricksen Band) was invited to play one of the "Cornucopia" concerts our company presents on random Friday afternoons, depending on who is available when. The "who" part is basically high-quality acts, many of them local, that can put on a good show. They are all done in our own Corporate Center Auditorium, known for its excellent acoustics and comfy red seats. The L1 is used a lot for these shows. I played one of these shows about a year ago with the Linemen and it was a real treat, including a crew to help out and a pretty full house of music lovers. "rjw" and "oldghm" on the forum did a lovely duet/concert here also.
Our band did a free show this spring in our live music theater, just as a means to get us playingj in front of an audience and basically r&d for our live show. This theater is in a different building from the Auditorium, where the L1 was born and where we have done many great shows of all kinds and even had "band camp" in the L1-launch days. The band really played well here and so we were invited to do a Cornucopia concert, to our great pleasure.
So we did the show this summer and, sort of as a "by the way" request, I asked if they could turn on the camera (located up at the top of the theater seating) and make a video. They did, framed the band as you will see, and fed a pair of good house mics hanging down from the ceiling. The four L1's we used were tilted up to reach the sloped seating area and I thought the mics would pick it all up. You can see this clearly on the video.
When I heard the first playback of the show, transferred to DVD, my jaw hit the floor. It just sounded so unexpectedly great, and it took as long to make this recording as it did to play the tune. All my lights went on. See, we just finished our first CD "Fourteen4You" using pretty standard multitrack-mixing studio methods and, to be honest, it leaves me cold, seeing as there is all this overdubbing forever and diddling with tracks. Almost because you can. But all this, in my opinion, really takes you away from the music. You all know what I'm talking about. When I heard the audio from what I thought would be a less-than-ideal mic setup, I was stunned. Not only did it sound amazing, but there was this "organic" quality to the mix that you really can't create using dry tracks, reverb and mixing. It was sort-of molecular air-mixing of the music. Also, we had been experimenting with 2-mic recording of live shows using the L1 for some time now and I posted some of this earlier ("Who sez musicians can't mix themselves?"). MikeZ-at-Bose also has been experimenting with this with his own band and we have been steadily comparing notes.
All this was the real inspiration for how to record our next series of songs, which we have been vibrating strongly about recently. I wanted to forget the multitrack method and record using the same basic thing. I thought it might really sound great and I thought we are good enough players together that we could achieve a "perfect" mix by simply playing right. What a concept. Talking about it with the band, we decided we really wanted to do the recording in steps: First concentrate on recording the music tracks only, where we could all concentrate on our ensemble blend only and not be distracted by vocal responsibilities. Then we would do the rest in a small series of overdubs (chorus, lead vocals and lead instrument solos). A description of all this and recordings of the results is what's coming. But first, check out this video. Listen in stereo on something you trust. The song itself is one of the new songs we are working on and the video is actually of its first public performance ever, fresh out of rehearsal.
The Fantastic ST set all this video wiki posting up. Ken Jacob put the whole video together, took the stills you will see and did all the titles and editing. Alan Bruss in our AV department and on staff for the show did the recording. He had a compressor in line with the mic signals just to catch the odd peak. Not sure what the mics are but I'm sure "high quality" is a safe category to put them in. Go to this part of the wiki, enjoy yourself and stay tuned for a series of posts on this subject as the project evolves and approaches completion:
Part 2: Muzik trax
Continuing on with "Just A Heartbeat Away", we decided to record the music tracks as a separate stereo track, just so we could concentrate on making this really right. I know we could do the vocals at the same time, but this is a compromise in recording this new way.
1. If you record vocals at the same time, you lose control of vocal balance. If you record lead vocal and lead instruments too, you get the music-of-the-moment mojo but you lose the chance to do a really good solo that you can concentrate on.]
2. If you record vocals (like the "ensemble" vocal harmonies, heretofore "background vocals", which is a real misnomer as these are as important and as in-your-face as the instrument and the lead vocal solos, in our band anyway) at the same time, you might instinctively make more room for the other parts as a natural part of good ensemble playing. We talked about this and decided that, at this point, we know where everything is to take place and that we would be confident in simply doing the instrumental part of the recording by itself.
So here's how we did it:
We set our L1's up the normal way we would do a show. From the audience this is, starting at the left and working to the right, guitar, drums, bass and keys. This is done in a mild semicircle, with guitar and keys coming forward a bit. Drums are miked-up normally using the cancelling-pair (we use a pair of AT clip-on condensers, below the cymbals and above the top heads) and an Audix D6 in the kick and using the kick gate. I put the keys in the center facing the drums and Tom Yates sat to my left facing the whole rig, GW to my left playing his Synapse bass. Tom uses a Digitech RP50 pedal/processor (uses 2 models, period) and a Seymour Duncan "Twin Tube" tube preamp ahead of this direct into a flat input on the T1 (electric guitar tone is all in the fingers anyway, right?). So essentially what we did is set up normally and turn around 180 degrees and "play" the big soundstage face-to-face. Only Tom Beier played the same way, but it, of course, sounded "normal" to him. This setup also gave us a great sense of eye contact and, to tell the truth, it was a unique and highly empowering setup. All I can say is that you simply have to try it yourself to get a sense of what it is.
We set up two Shure KSM series uni condenser mics, $150 each or so according to MikeZ, about 12 feet each from the snare and about +/- 45 degrees, both pointing at the drums. MikeZ did some experimenting with this, bringing the mics closer in than we did at our first recorded show ("Life of Crime" elsewhere in this forum). It's like this: Bring them too close and you get too much drums, too far and you get too much room. I simply used Mike's results and was happy.
Here's a sketch I did (Google "Sketchup") of our setup. Keys are still coming out of the far right system:
Listen to our results (coming soon on this post). This is the recording as it came off the mics, no EQ. I know we'll eq it later in the final mix, but here it is, pure amplified ensemble music tracks for the eventual finished production of "Just A Heartbeat Away" (C)2008 Clifford Henricksen
Tracks
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