Soup to nuts...

[hbphotoav]

Those of you who know me know that my musical interests are all over the map... "soup to nuts" hardly covers it. As I've moved toward adding location recording to the basket of things I do for a living, I have been blessed this year to work on live dates for everything from a Big Band doing swing dance at our "new" old warehouse at Rolling Hills Community Church to six venues in six days in Rome for the 2009 International Church Music Festival.

That range came into sharp focus Sunday and Monday evenings last weekend when I was privileged to record for archive the 2009 Carol-Candlelight service at First Baptist Church, Nashville (with 100+ singers, children's choir and the Nashville String Machine) followed by my monthly gig with the always entertaining Lee Roy Parnell and friends at The Basement, a tiny little bar on 8th Ave South in Nashville. Both of these events made me smile. Largely. I hope the clips following make you smile, and to realize that God loves us all... soup to nuts.

Have a Merry Christmas.

HB

Clip 1:
FBC Nashville Choir at First Baptist Church, with the Nashville String Machine, Joe Fitzpatrick conducting

Clip 2:
"Lolli Pop Mama" Lee Roy Parnell and Friends (featuring Rob Roy Parnell) at The Basement. Rob Roy Parnell (vocal and harp); James Pennebaker (L), Lee Roy Parnell (R) (guitars); Kevin McKendree (piano).


FBC recording was done with a spaced omni pair of Gefell M296 mics (8' apart; 7' up - standard boom stands at full extension - just beside the conductor's rostrum), supplemented by a pair of Sennheiser MKH-8040 cardioids between the orchestra and the choir, 14' up in ORTF, 18cm. DAV BG8 preamps fed a Mackie Onyx 1220 line inputs through the onboard converters to hard drive using Logic Pro 8. No EQ on the mix; Gefells panned hard L/R; 8040s panned 50% L/R. Gefells at -2.4dB; 8040s at 0dB in the Logic mixer for the bounce.

The Basement was house mics (D6 kick; SM58s for vocals except Rob Roy, who was on a Beta 87A; SM57/58 on guitar cabinets; Shure Green Bullet on harmonica; bass and keys direct; SM57s on trumpet and tenor; D6 on bari sax... I substituted a Rode NT4 for stereo drum overhead in place of the Sennheiser clip-on toms mics and the 57 on snare) through a passive split into a Mackie Onyx 1640 through the onboard micamps and converters to hard drive using Logic Pro 8. In the box compression on lead vocal and kick; minor EQ on OH, kick and harp. No automation on the bounce after the ITB mix was established (rough mix).

It was fun. Enjoy the tunes. Comments/criticisms are welcomed. Sorry for the 128kbps mp3s...

[Remoteness]

Season's Greetings Harry.
Thanks for sharing.
All the best to you and yours.