Recording WILSN
Good friend and killer Producer, Stephen Mowat, who splits his time between Melbourne, Australia and Nashville contacted me with the idea of recording several tracks for the amazing WILSN to be used along with a multi camera shoot as part of the 2022 WILSN album rollout.
Having mixed WILSN’s album preview show and knowing the material, i knew the sound Stephan was going to want to achieve and that meant character. With roughly 20 inputs required to cover the band, i chose to take a MIDAS Pro1 series console in with DL251 mic pre’s in order to be able to capture and add some color.
I set the board up in a more tradition recording studio workflow. Input channels fed direct outputs post fader in order to be able to “cook” mic pres, apply any processing that may be required while attenuating the tape feed while to achieve the greatest signal to noise ratio possible. Taking advantage of the MIDAS Pro’s astronomical mic pre and converter headroom allowed us to get some cool sounds!
Monitoring for the artist was achieved with wedges on the deck.
Mics looked a bit like this.
Drums: Shure B91, Audix D6 and KSM44 on Kick, Beyer M201 and B57 on Snare, Audix ADX51 on hats, Beyer M88’s for toms, Se Electronic Se8’s for ride while VR1 Ribbon mics were used for overheads with a vintage M69 used as a “crush mic”.
Instruments: Horns were vintage Beyer M69’s, Guitar Se VR1 Ribbon and vintage AKG C414EB, Bass vintage Beyer M69, Piano DPA4099’s
Vocals: BV’s were Telefunken M80’s with WILSN herself on an Se Electronic V7 capsule on Sennheiser G4 RF.
Control Room:
Console: MIDAS Pro1 with MIDAS DL251 mic pre’s
Monitoring: Genelec 8030A’s
Recording: Pro Tools on MacBook Pro via a Klark Technik DN9650 AES50 to MADI converter. Input to Pro Tools via Digigrid MGB
Stephan Mowat mixed the tracks at his studio and this is the first release from the session… theres more amazing content coming your way.
This was such a fun project to be involved in!
