bluegrass / country session

D

Digital Reason

New member
Hello all, today I turn to all of you for a little help.
Although I have done many sessions in the past this is the first time that I am recording a bluegrass / country project and I am having some troubles with the recording of the fiddle. I spent quite a while in pre production trying to get a good sound out of the fiddle but no matter what I did it still came out sounding realy harsh and "sharp". If anyone has done fiddle recording before I could realy use some guidance. Below is a list of the mics that I have left After the rest of the group are setup and ready to go.


Sony ECM99 (stereo mic)
APEX 420
Sennheiser 421
AT 4033
AT 4060
AKG C3000

Any help would be good (Thank goodness for pre-production)
Thanx a bunch:
Jeff
 
A ribbon mic comes to mind but you don't have one. I'd try the 421. Being a dynamic mic it might round off the top a bit. The closer you get to a violin with a condensor the harsher it's going to get. If it's Bluegrass why not try the old time method of haveing the band set up around a single mic and mix the individual instruments by their relative distance to the mic?
 
The couple of times I've recorded violin (more in a classical/jazz context than country/bluegrass) I also had problems with too harsh a sound.

First off, (and this is based only on my limited experiance)what ever mic you use - make sure to focus on a room sound (if possible at least 7 - 10 feet from the source

Although all instruments (in particular accoustic) depend on a certain amount of room sound - I think with a violin the room sound is very critical. Since the violin generates a lot of high end tones to start with (and country/bluegrass seems to demand more of that "tone" than classical) - the room reflections can make or break the sound (assuming the instrument and player are able to produce a decent tone to start with)

I had to work very hard on my room (hanging curtains, etc. etc. ) to create as warm of a room sound (reduce harsh reflections) as I possibly could (borderline "dry" sound). My room is not "good sounding" to start with (I mostly do MIDI production, with a very dry sounding "vocal booth"), so it was a challenge to get a ggod tone.

In my case, it was a very nice 100 year old instrument played by a very skilled player - so the signal was not lacking - which made it painfully clear that any problems with the sound were on my end. This made me work very hard correct the shortcomings of my room.

I wish you good luck.
 
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