February 12th, 2003
In Fall of 2002, my friend Eric was kind enough to invite me to play a concert at the church where he was music director. I set up some basic recording equipment and was able to capture the concert live. I’d tried to read up on recording technique as much as I could on the internet, but in 2002 there still wasn’t the wealth of cool info available there is today. There are probably probably smarter people out there with better ideas about recording, but here’s what I came up with at the time:
Equipment Details:
- HHB MDP500 Portable Minidisc Recorder
- (2) Audio Technica AT-4041 Microphones
- Mics setup as a 90° coincident pair
- Mics set approximately 12′ from the guitar
Recording (involving managing electronic gear, buttons, wires, etc.) and performing (involving communicating complex musicals idea through subtle and complex physical motion) are not exactly compatible processes in my head. I’d discovered that it’s really good to give myself extra time to switch gears between the two. As a first step for the day, I made sure I’d done a dry run of both the recording process and of the performance program at home the week before. This gave me a chance to practice setting up the equipment, get rough estimates for program times, practice my patter, and make any notes I needed so I wouldn’t have to think very hard the day of the performance.
Pre-Concert
The afternoon of the actual performance, I arrived about 90 minutes before the concert to get equipment set up, do a sound check, warm up, and leave some time to relax before the audience arrived. Although the recorder can run on rechargeable batteries, I chose to use the AC adapter so I wouldn’t have to worry about batteries running out partway through the performance. I brought a number of extra blank mini-discs with me so I wouldn’t have to worry about erasing tracks to make enough room for the actual concert. I planned to capture the concert on two minidiscs: one for each half of the program, which were about 25 minutes each. I also planned to use one disc for the soundcheck which I could be erased and re-used back home afterwards. (I follow a similar strategy using solid state recording media in my more recent Boss MicroBR).
I set up the recording equipment; this went relatively smoothly since I’d worked out all the connection and configuration issues during my dry-run. I put a disc in the recorder, made a guess about levels, and hit record. I then went through program piece by piece giving any introduction I planned to say and playing the first phrase or two. In addition to checking levels, this gave me a chance to get used to the sound of the church. It also made me practice talking out loud, which is something I don’t think to practice nearly as I could.
After spending about 15 minutes going through the program this way, I stopped the recorder and spot checked the recorded levels at various points. I’d set the initial levels a little high and had clipping on loud passages, so I dialed the levels down. I set them a little lower than absolutely required: it’s easier to increase the output levels later than to remove clipping if you’ve recorded with levels set too high – this is especially true of digital recording where clipping is usually obvious and unpleasant. Through this process I also realized that my spoken introductions were much quieter than the guitar; I wasn’t planning on needing these in the final recording, but it was a good reminder that I’d need to speak up for the audience to hear me.
With the new levels set, I started recording again, went back to my seat and played through a piece that I’d slected earlier for having the greatest dynamic range of the pieces I was planning to play. After listening through this piece on the recorder and validating that I had reasonable levels set, I felt ready to go. I put a blank disc in the recorder, hit record and stopped thinking about equipment until intermission. Since each MD could hold 74 minutes of audio, I was comfortable that I would have enough room that I could just edit out this lead-in later and still capture the entire 25 minute first half.
During the Concert
With everything set and ready, I went offstage, waited for the audience to arrive, took some deep breaths and did my best to switch gears and center myself for the performance itself. This is a whole other topic for some other post, but suffice it to say that I find centering myself and dealing with nerves that can come before a performance to be an even more complex process than setting up recording gear.
When the time arrived, I played the first half of my concert. During intermission, I quietly snuck over to the recorder, stopped the recording, swapped in a blank disc and hit record. (In retrospect, having slightly longer XLR cables would have allowed me to put the recorder itself in a location I could access less conspicuously from off-stage.) I finished the second half, took my bows, and joined everyone at a very nice reception that had been set up for me. I just let the recorder run out since the digital recorder would just stop when the disc filled. After most folks had left, I packed my guitar and recording equipment and headed home after an exhausting but positive experience.
Afterwards
A few days later I transferred the recordings to my computer at home and edited them down into individual tracks. This was a cool way to get to re-live the experience without the nerves and pressure that come with live performance. Overall, I was very happy with how things turned out. There were small performance glitches here and there, to be improved on the next time, whenever that would come. Overall though, I’d managed to communicate a sense of musical flow and present the pieces at a level that honsetly reflected my musical development at the time.
In an ideal world, I’d ask a knowledgeable friend or hire a recording engineer to handle all of the recording part of the process. Neither of these were options at the time and I’m pretty happy with the final tracks, so here’s a few samples:
Prelude XXIV by Manuel Ponce
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Prelude No. 4 by Heitor Villa-Lobos
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The Star of the County Down arranged by Phillip de Fremery
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Ana Maria Dali from Music After Lorca by Phillip de Fremery
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You’ll probably find this same advice in a number of places, but here’s a summary of what I learned:
- Learn to play the music as well as you can
- Do a dry run ahead of time of the entire program
- Do a dry run ahead of time of the recording process
- Make notes about recorder settings, cabling connections, and anything else that you had to think about or decide – you won’t be as smart the day of a performance as your are the rest of the time!
- Be sure to have plenty of blank recording media
- Be sure to have extra charged batteries and/or access to AC power
- Arrive early with plenty of time to set up and check your gear
- Plan ahead for any media or battery changes during the performance
- Set levels to leave headroom for the loudest part of your set
- Finish setup and shift your focus to centering for the performance
- If at all possible, get someone else to handle recording process
- Relax and enjoy performing – remember that folks are there to enjoy hearing you and your music – capturing a good recording is just gravy…