A couple of weeks ago at work I had the pleasure of recording Adam & Kidd, well, it wasn’t pleasure at first, more of a frenzy. When the group arrived, to record a gospel version of Pharrell’s Happy, we discovered they were a five piece. For camera angles, that’s one headache for Phil. For me, recording the audio, I had to make sure that the final product was going to be good for broadcast.

So, firstly, I had to figure out if I had enough mics and mic leads. This is when I wished I had my own ‘tool box’ from home with me. I always have a couple of extra dynamic mics and a condenser, just in case and of course XLRs, tons of XLRs. Do you think I could find any at work? No. Look out for the gorgeous yellow XLR running along the floor in the video.

Normally if we’re recording anything, it’s a two or three mic job, which is fine. This session was a 4 mic job. I used two SM58s for vocals and then I basically had two shotguns that are normally used as video/speech mics. The band had brought a tiny amp to play electric guitar and bass through, so I mic’ed up the amp with one of the shotguns and basically had to trust them. The other mic is always an overhead so I maneuvered the overhead to over the djembe player. The djembe was LOUD! and also quite sharp so I had to take some top of that.

As with the all the little set ups I do at work, we record it straight down to two tracks on a Zoom H4N. Simples, so I have to bring my A Game. On this track by Adam & Kidd though, I just added a tad of reverb afterwards to round out the sound.

What do you think? I’m happy with it. Ok, sorry, I’ll get my coat.