In my 2nd of these posts on mic position questions to the wonderful experts here, I am astonished by the stunning clarity, and the stereo field where cello and piano occupy a real-space, not just left and right channels! Diana Krall + piano + cello + double-bass:
I guess every instrument is being recorded in stereo? What mics are being used and what positions? How is it so clean-sounding for a live recording, also not a hint of "digital-artefact from plug-ins" that I can hear? Is that just room ambience only, or have they added digital ambience?
I searched for who engineered this track but couldn't find any info.
To my ears it has a bit too much (artifical, I presume) reverb, to the point it was a bit distracting in some places. I would have preferred a drier sound, but that’s just taste.
It does sound quite nice, but it’s not a natural sound to my ears. It sounds like close mics given cohesion by artificial reverb. Not saying that’s a bad thing, just an observation on how I hear it.
Also… the double bassist is seen playing arco at the end yet you can hear a pizzicato part… so all may not be as it seems in terms of it all being ‘live’!
According to the credits, this was recorded by Richard King who has done a lot of other work with Yo-Yo Ma.
The odd thing about the video is that it does actually look like a live recording until the very end, when as Aled says, the bass is obviously wrong. I wonder if they filmed several takes and used the video from a different take for that section.
Sam Inglis wrote: ↑Sun Apr 17, 2022 9:16 am
According to the credits, this was recorded by Richard King who has done a lot of other work with Yo-Yo Ma.
The odd thing about the video is that it does actually look like a live recording until the very end, when as Aled says, the bass is obviously wrong. I wonder if they filmed several takes and used the video from a different take for that section.
Oh crikey, I criticised something by Richard King! I think his work is fabulous, and his book on recording is also exceptional.
His work with Yo-Yo Ma on the Goat Rodeo Sessions is absolutely phenomenal, and is one of my favourite sounding records. They were filmed live recordings that made the final album, so this could well be something similar.
This is a similar sort of sound, in that it’s a quite ‘larger than life’ presentation of a live acoustic ensemble. It’s just that in this case I find the reverb to be a tiny bit too much!
