Recording Flamenco/Rumba

[swoon]

Hi,

At the end of the week I will be recording a flamenco/rumba triplet in my home studio. As I have never did this kind of music before I was looking for some tips and tricks here

I will be recording: 1 acoustic flamenco guitar. 1 singer and 1 percussionist.

I will be recording them live. (With some minor perc. effects in overdub)

I have the following mics to my disposal:

3 SM57's
1 Rode NT3
1 Large D. Condesor (unknown make... sounding very muddi imo.)
1 SM58
1 AT Bassdrum Mic
2 Electrec Overhead mic (small diaphragm)

That's about it.

Should I try to close mic every instrument as in the pop tunes I normally do? I was thinking to get a nice overal live recorded sound by playing around with the positioning of the mics... Then use some close mic feeds to blend in where needed.

Any advice?

Thanks,

Swoon

 

[Santiagoacr]

Very interesting. The way in which flamenco is traditionally recorded in Spain is by using a lot of close-miking (except if you have a number of percussionists hand clapping rythmically (palmas), where you would get one or two overheard microphones for all of them, particularly as they often do spoken ad-libs such as "Olé!" during the songs).

However, in my opinion, the setup you are planning (a nice room sound supplemented with some close-miking on certain instruments) should sound much warmer than that. When watching flamenco live in small venues I have enjoyed the live "room" sound enormously and flamenco CDs sound so cold and "isolated" in comparison.

As well, the flamenco singer is also likely to do some mild hand-clapping providing occassional percussive accompaniment, and between the vocal mic and the room mics you can catch that quite well. Probably an issue will be how much to compress the vocals. Flamenco singers have an incredible dynamic range, but you also don't want to over-compress the signal.

Something else to take into account would be the fact that flamenco percussion is often provided by the cajón, a latin-american instrument Paco de Lucía introduced to flamenco in the 70s. The standard way to mic it is by putting a microphone at the back of the box, but I've never done it myself.

A good record to use as reference would be Estrella Morente's My songs and a poem, out on Real World records and available around the world.

Hope this helps,

Good luck with your project

Santiago

 

[swoon]

Wow.. Thanks a lot. Good info there

I hope my measily electret overheads can get the room sound. I plan to use the large condenser in Omni mode for the room as well. The Rode on the vocals. The SM57 on guitars and percussion. I do hope the SM57 can get the definition out of the flamenco guitar. The overheads should compensate the direct sound it gets fed...

Thx,

Swoon

 

[XLR]

The SM57 on guitars and percussion. I do hope the SM57 can get the definition out of the flamenco guitar.

Personally, I'd avoid using the 57 for that. It's not going to sound very detailed on a nylon str guitar. I'd suggest using a condenser. A ribbon would be good too if you had one. If you haven't recorded a lot of nylon str guitar, they often sound better, IME, mic'd between the bridge and soundhole rather than at the neck/body joint where steel string gtrs are more often mic'd. And watch out when you set initial levels... flamenco gtr can be wildly dynamic... with both soft lyrical lines and huge spikes in volume with rasgueados and golpe (tapping on the soundboard). A limiter can be a good idea, just in case, and if you've got a transparent compressor, like an RNC on supernice mode, that can function as somewhat of a safety limiter and keep a good take from being ruined by an over when the guitarist does something extreme, heh-heh. If it were me I wouldn't compress the guitar otherwise.

Tim

 

[giraffe]

this is just what i'd try first, the result could be whatever.

out of that, i'd try the nt3 on the git first..... it'll give it a good present snap.
the LDC on the singer if it seems to like him, if not just use a 57 or 58
perc with 57s (or whatever you can)
2 SDCs on the room if it sounds good. (if it's a good room)