I recently had the opportunity to record a series of Arias performed by Daniel Goddard and Charlotte Dunn, Music Performance Students at Riverside Music College. I did this in partnership with Kevin O’Brien, a fellow audio engineering student, and we are very happy with the recordings and proud of the work we’ve created.
I borrowed a pair of Shure KSM27s from my college, and a few extra cables to help me complete this recording. I used a Behringer XR18 for its high channel count to record with, as my aging TASCAM US-16×08 has recently been unreliable. Kevin also contributed his AT2020 to match my own.
The two KSM27s were our primary microphones in a spaced pair on the piano, with an ORTF pair of Line Audio CM4s a few feet out. An AT2020 was used to track the vocal, with the second AT2020 and an AKG P420 in mid-side configuration at the end of the room for ambience.
Of all the multitudes of equipment that I did remember to bring, I forgot the very essential component of the USB-B connection between interface and laptop. This caused us to start a little later than intended as we sourced one, but not enough that we felt time pressured. It did give the musicians the opportunity to further rehearse the song, and get familiar with the space.
