Studio debrief: Violin Session

I had a really awesome session in the Neve studio at SAE with a good friend of mine Jamie Fowler, who will be featuring with his violin performance in some of my upcoming projects.

In my previous post about recording string instruments, specifically the violin, I talked about miking it up with an X/Y or spaced pair of either a set of ribbon mics or small-diaphragm condensers. With the options that were available to me at the studio, I decided that I would run an X/Y pair of the Rode NT-5. It's known to be a pretty bright and sensitive mic yet has some compression of the top-end which could be used to the advantage of some of the harshness the violin can produce. I've gone through a number of forums discussing this topic as well.

Basically we ran through a bunch of demos where I had written some pretty strong lead melodies. Jamie is the kind of guy where he can just pick it up in an instant and jam out some new ideas, whether it be big leading elements, long held notes creating huge atmosphere or finger plucks, knocks and taps with the bow for those unique textures.

Overall I was stoked with the mic choice, the sensitivity to top-end really captured that attention to detail I was after. I noticed this most when Jamie was doing some rhythmic percussion elements by knocking different parts of the violin, and you could clearly hear the strings resonating behind it. The X/Y configuration also gave it a really full and natural tone, it felt and sounded great - and I think the performance and acoustics of the room helped drastically too. One of my favourite electronic artists Tycho, always makes the timbre and character of his acoustic instruments prominent in his tracks. It gives the music so much life having that rawness of the human element prevalent in an electronic composition; so I hope to achieve a similar objective by integrating a very emotional and epic violin performance.

What's next? I've got a huge bunch of samples including 20 minutes straight of just abstract sounds, so I'm keen to put everything into my Ableton sessions and start integrating it into my arrangements. The great thing about the session was that we covered a variety different roles a violin could play into my tracks, just so I've got even more choice and ideas to work with. A part of this was a lot of single long-held notes which will provide a lot of utility for sketching ideas for potential future recording sessions or sample packs. I should have 1-2 finished arrangements in the next couple weeks and we'll ascertain what other elements should/could be added, or if we have more structured ideas for the violin.

Will keep ya posted!

Jbox