The Wailin' Jennys on Folk Scene - Recordings Made With One SF-24

In September 2004, the Canadian trio The Wailin' Jennys appe ared on "Folk Scene" with Roz and Howard Larman ", a Los Angeles radio show broadcast on KPFK 90.7 FM. We hear a lot of music at Royer, but this performance was exceptional in its simplicity, beauty, and gorgeous sound. The trio is excellent and the recording of their performance into one microphone, live, with no overdubs (they weren't even wearing headphones!) is an eye-opener. Kind thanks to Roz and Howard Larman of Folk Scene for allowing us to share these audio excerpts with you.

The engineers, Steve Barker and Peter Cutler, used one SF-24 phantom powered stereo ribbon microphone to capture the group by positioning the trio around the microphone - two performers on one side of the mic and one on the other (see graphic for positioning). The stereo imaging is simply a matter of how the musicians were positioned - there was no panning or mixing after the recording. In addition to the SF-24, the engineers used an R-122 on the bodhran for one song, "Saucy Sailor"  (See technical notes below). The Wailin' Jennys' beautiful high voices, guitars, accordions, percussion instruments and organic feel could prove difficult for many of us to capture faithfully, which is why we share these tracks with you - they're great examples of what a good ribbon microphone can help you accomplish. The SF-24 is commonly used for drum overheads, orchestral recordings, ensembles, etc., but these recordings put the mic in a whole new light for us. We hope you enjoy the music.

There aren't any photographs of the session, but Steve Barker supplied us with a graphic showing how the group was arranged, where he placed the SF-24 (and R-122 for Saucy Sailor), mic height, etc.

The recording chain was:
One SF-24 and one R-122 fed into three channels of VacRack tube mic preamplifiers. The SF-24 was fed into a set of VacRack electro-optical limiters linked for stereo and set for 3 dB of limiting "to be safe." Signals were then fed into line level inputs of a Mackie 1604 VLV Pro mixer, where 1.5 dB of top end on the Mackie's EQ's (somewhere between 10 kHz & 12 kHz) was added and the Mackies 75 Hz high pass filter was also kicked in. A touch of Lexicon reverb was added, then the Mackies analog outputs were fed into the analog inputs (balanced) of an HHB CD recorder.