Howdy,
I'd like to tell you a little bit more about my second big recording job this year. This young Augsburger band, Mandara published their second album. This one is a bit calmer, less impulsive than their previous 'Impuls' (what a surprise) LP but the story of 'Rowain' is very interesting. Rowain is the name of a stone that comes from Scotland. The owner of the stone has a magical relationship with it and he lent it to Mandara who simply let themselves inspire by the beautiful stone, that's how the bulk of the songs for this album were born. Improvisation inspired by Rowain.
It was also invited for the recording where I took some photos:
As usual we recorded Mandara all together, no overdubbing was done. This method works well with these guys and especially with this music where the atmosphere and the live dynamics are essential for a good result.
As for the microphone techniques, I tried to capture the whole room sound with a main pair of ORTF mic setup and I used stereo spot mics for each instruments. In fact I tried to record the flute with an AB stereo pair in the front and an extra single mic from the back. Later in the mixing phase I realized that one front and one back mics are enough, the two omni mics in the front captured too much room sound which we had enough anyway. So that might be a good advice for everyone who records flute: You can get a beautiful sound if you use one mic in the front (but not too close to the mouthpiece unless you want a very airy sound) and one in the back from above (you can see it on the second picture). As you can see I tried to separate the flute mics from the handpan with a blanket and I'm amazed every time I do this how effective this can be. :-)
I recorded the hang with a simple AB omni stereo pair (Rode NT55), the guitar too with a stereo setup as well as the fiddle. But with the fiddle I actually prefer a different setup, I'll tell you about this in another article.
Anyway, we needed two days for the recording in this lovely room which we were lucky to have had at our disposal.
I won't talk about the mixing and the mastering process now but if you have any questions I'll gladly answer.
You can listen to the songs and can purchase Mandara's albums from their bandcamp site:
But it's woth to have a look at their new website too:
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