Recording bluegrass

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fiddlin'jon

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Does anyone have info on how the Del McCoury Band did their recent recordings? Or, does anyone know a good way to record a 4 piece bluegrass band in general?

We just picked up two nice large diaphragm mics (AT CAD's I think) and are thinking about doing the recording "ensemble style" since we perform that way.
 
Don't know how Del did it but I've recorded Bluegrass both tight mic'ed and with a single mic and do the "mix" by positioning players. I knid of like the single mic technique.
 
Just started doing this myself...have recently begun playing bass with a bluegrass combo. We're usually four (bass, mando, guitar and banjo), but sometimes we have two banjos.

We recorded a practice session a few weeks back using four mics through my Mackie 1202 board, with a stereo mix into my Boss BR-8 (I'm limited because the BR-8 can only record two tracks at a time). It came out good, but...

I think next time I'm going to try the one-mic technique, with the "position mix." The only thing I worry about with that is that the guitar won't cut through, especially on his "solos."
 
It'll take some experimentation to get it right but what I did was put tape on the floor to mark where players stand and another spot marked on the floor where soloists would step up to to do there solos.
 
Recording Bluegrass

I only have limited experiance in recording Bluegrass, but I have discussed the topic with local engineers.

Although number of mics and placement varied, the overwelming consensus was a tight grouping around a single mic large diaphragm (basically a live recoring scenario). Some engineers liked to use 2 mics to achieve some stereo effect.

The best recorded sound (just tracking, no effects, etc.) I've heard was using one AT4033. Some argue the 4033 isn't a good vocal mic, but a bluegrass band isn't eating the mic - and the 4033 jsut seemed to pick up the stringed instruments very accurately.
 
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