Jazz quartet

This is a recording of a Jazz quartet consisting of a Vibraphone, Upright Bass, Piano and Drum set. This recording was not done with players isolated, but everyone was in the same room in a circle instead. There were no headphones required for this recording and the musicians were good enough to balance pretty well on their own. In the center of the group was a Blumlein-Z system created with Sennheiser MKH 800 Twins for maximum flexibility in post. In this session we experimented with putting ambisonic spot mics on each player. Due to the ambisonic microphone capsules being directional, the bass response was not as clear as we would’ve liked. To combat this, each ambisonic microphone was coincidentally paired with an omnidirectional microphone. A lo-pass filter was applied to each omni mic in post. This experimental technique seemed to help smooth out the low end response of each spot microphone.

For this session, I mixed two songs. Both were mixed with regular spot micing first. Then, I re-mixed Particle Charge two more times, each time using the Sennheiser ambisonic microphones as spot mics. The difference between the two is the addition of lo-passed omnidirectional microphones paired with each ambisonic to give the mix a more clear and even bass response.