Isolation with a large tracking session

[Ambroise]

Hi Russ, thanx for your kind and detailed answers.
With 10 people playing together, do you try to isolate them or not ? So how do you deal with isolation or separation on each instruments ?

[blueman]

Hi Russ, thank you so much …

I’m very interested in this too.
Let me add a question: What do you think about Iso boths for amps & leslie in an “all together” session?. Do you use them or you prefer to avoid them and use regular rooms?.

Please, could you describe in deep your usual set up approach for an “all together” session?

Thank you very much

[Russell Elevado]

hello,

in most tracking situations with multiple players, i will try to get as much isolation as possible. so i prefer to have a booth for the drums or if there is no booth i'll try to build a booth with gobos including a ceiling. do what you have to do to isolate those drums! with roy i had almost every available gobo in the facility. every little bit counts. there are times when there's simply not enough gobos and booths so you have to make the best of it.

you should plan it out beforehand as you don't want to get stuck not having the means to isolate something that really needs it. so give yourself and your crew plenty of time to set up.
with a large ensemble, i'll start with the loudest instruments (drums, perc, horns) and find isolation for them. if there's a vocalist singing at the same time, you would want to reserve a seperate booth for him/her. on the first 2 rh factor albums i only had a booth for the drums and the rest were gobos. try to use the corners of the room to your advantage, using the 2 walls as gobos. i had everyone in their own grouping. horns were in the center, 2 percs in a corner, piano another corner with the keyboards, guitar amp and bass amp another corner in little gobo iso's. and evrything was gobo'd off as much as possible. everyone had a view of at least 2 people in the room. roy having eye contact with just about everyone. this makes for an intimate scenario for everyone.

the most important thing is capturing the performance. better to have it and have a crappy sound than not!

cheers