Today I had the opportunity to get into the studio and record a great band who I have the pleasure of working with quite regularly – Hartwood.
Hartwood are an acoustic folk-pop act, focusing their sound on close vocal harmonies with a guitar and accordion backing. As such, and due to the fact that they are very much a performance act rather than experienced recording artists, I decided to record everything live, with the potential for some vocal overdubs. I also decided to try out a slightly new technique which I had picked up on a recording seminar in Switzerland earlier in the year with Jazz engineer Daniel Dettwiler. This revolves around embracing the bleed between sound sources and microphones, and trying to record the band as a whole rather than as a set of individuals.
I had set up the studio the evening before (as pictured) to allow some acoustic separation between each performer but without interrupting the visual connection between them. In the end they decided that they preferred to do the vocals after the instrumentals, so each song was recorded in two passes – not quite the Dettwiler method, but an interesting mix between his ideal and a more traditional overdub-based session. I also used some microphone techniques that I had picked up whilst reading Modern Recording Techniques by Huber (2017), although sadly he does not mention the accordion.
I didn’t get any photos of the band recording, as we were busy trying to get five tracks done in a day, but the session went really well and I am very much looking forward to mixing it!
