by Attila Tapolczai
The idea of a dedicated
Ceili (Irish Set Dance) album first came into our minds last year,
after we began playing for Irish Set Dance groups. The need for such
a recording, with which the dancers can also practice in their
regular workshops, seemed to be big enough to motivate us to do an
own one.
However, I
underestimated the time we needed for making such an album,
especially because we recorded each instrument separately, i. e. by
'overdubbing'. I usually like to work by this method, especially if
the beat needs to be exact (like for the Ceili).
Now, almost a year
after we began the recording, I'm not sure if I would do this again,
instead of organizing a nice live recording session with all the
musicians.
With our method the
biggest challenge for me was to find a healthy and natural balance
among these, not exactly traditional Ceili, instruments:
- mandolin
- fiddle
- viola (!)
- acoustic piano
- acoustic guitar
- bodhrán
From these the very
last one (bodhrán) has been the most challenging of all. The problem
is the following:
The bodhrán doesn't
count as a very loud and detailed instrument in a traditional
setting, especially if it's played in a large group of different
instruments. It has a special role, that is a solid, driving,
percussive sound, but it's usually rather dull compared to fiddle or
banjo, and it's more in the background than the other two.
To demonstrate it best,
here's a sample of one of my Irish-American co-production album from
The Chieftains 'Down the Old Plank Road' Vol 1 and 2 from 2002 and
2003.
It was recorded in the
famous Sound Emporium Studio in Nashville, Tennessee.
For me this recording
represents a kind of sound sound what usually hear at a good trad
session. It's a bit chaotic, no doubt but it's as natural and live as
you can get.
On the other side of the
scale there's a more contemporary bodhrán sound, although the
recording I'd like to show you is from the same year, 2002. This is
for me a much more stylized bodhrán sound, like what we often do
with a typical rock bass drum.
But it has all the
details (except maybe for the low bass), it's clear, vivid and it has
power. And as I said it's not even really modern. But listeners of
modern Irish & Scottish music expect something like this:
There's another advantage
of a clean, detailed percussion sound: It's good for the dancers to
have a solid drive from a percussion instrument.
Honestly, I'm inclined
to a more natural (less stylized, very little EQ) sound in almost any
genres. But this time I had to find a good balance to get more
details out of the bodhrán (well, we had a bodhrán player who likes
to hear those details) still keeping the sound as traditional or
natural as I can. I let you decide if it was successful:
As for the other
instruments, the only challenge was how to pan them most efficiently.
Here I had to make a
compromise as well. I usually like a pretty wide stereo image. (My
favorite part of mastering is when I can finally insert an imager
module into the chain, thus 'opening' the raw mix :-)) But I like to
do some serious and well thought-out panning during mixing, too. This
time I had to take my ambitions back a little bit in order to keep a
coherence among these many instruments that were recorded separately,
i. e. in a more 'sterile' way.
So we finally stayed a
relatively narrow stereo image, that means more blending of the
instruments, thus creating a feeling similar to a live recording
session (where usually a lot of blending / leakage happens)
These were main main
dilemmas during the mixing of our first Ceili album. I hope I can
help you a little bit with this information, in case you find
yourself in a similar situation. But to prevent such problems, you'd
better do a live tracking session in the first place. ;-)
Then you'll have a tons
of other issues. I might write about those later in another article.
