Joan Baez Diamonds and Rust, covered by Judith Jones Band

[MDV]

Judith Jones singing and one of her guitarists, Jonathan Cullen (who is 16, if you want to have something to be sick over today) covering Diamonds and Rust, as per title. Recorded and mixed by me. Went for an old school raw and intimate vibe.

http://soundcloud.com/mdv/diamonds-and-rust-judith-jones-band

For some reason I cant seem to embed a sound cloud player; I hope its ok just clicking on the link, its not like it has to be downloaded or anything

Edit: Judith jones myspace, if youre interested. http://www.myspace.com/judithjonesband

[danieldesete]

Tell Judith she can sing ! What a cover. I'm sure J Baez would apopreciate. And of course a really mastered guitar playing. Nice collab.

[dasilvasings]

I have difficult relation with folk, but once i sit to listen I enjoy it. And I like this! A wonderful singer and great guitar playing (yes I'm sick!)

[Bluesberry]

That guitar sounds wonderful.  I would like to know more about how the guitars were recorded, all the gory details, what mic, what set-up, what effects applied after (compression, eq, reverb, etc), if you don't mind.  Please.  It is the best sounding acoustic guitar I have heard in a while, it just pops and shimmers, no boominess, clear as a bell.  WHat a singer hu?  I truly am speechless here, her voice is one in a million.  She is going places.  I really love this song.  Thank you for posting this beauty.

[MDV]

I'll be sure to pass on your comments fellas. In the mean time, thanks on their behalf.

Bluesberry - thank you (from me, since its about the sonics of it).

The guitar was recorded with one mic on the fretting hand and one on the bridge, aimed where Jonny was picking. They were phase aligned carefully. The mics were an MD421 and an i5, but I dont recommend you use those exact ones since I had trouble with too much low mid and low signal level from the dynamics. A mic doesnt know what its micing, and placement is more important than the exact mic, but as a rule you want condensers of some sort on an acoustic to capture the transients better and deal with the relatively low volume more easily. That said, work with what you've got. I didnt like the sound of the only condenser I had at the time this was tracked (Rode NT1A; really metallic top end) so I used these.

The logic to using the two mics is this: you get the definition from the picking hand and a nice clear chime from the fretting hand mic, and you get good phase alignement between the two and you get a nice full sound out of that.

I also tracked a room mic and a DI, but I never used them in the end. ALWAYS better to have too many inputs rather than too few, so you have options later. Better to discard tracks you dont need than wish you had tracks you never tracked.

All this was into my fireface 800, but dont worry too much about that unit; anything with OK pres and dacs will get you there.

The guitars were panned hard left and right. This increases the apparent stereo spread of what is essentially a mono guitar. The signals are not the same because they arent picking up quite the same thing and because they are different mics, so they dont collapse into mono (I swear the number of people I see just C&P one track left and right - thats just mono but twice as loud). This allows your two mics off one performance to create a much more involving sound thats both deeper and more detailed than a solo mic can be, and this method of micing is the single biggest factor in the creation of the sound you hear here. The rest is gravy.

Treatment of the tracks, in order on the signal FX chain. This might look like a lot, but its all in name of taking a  raw recording that doesnt sound much like a guitar in the room with you and turning it back into a sound that is like a guitar in the room with you (in this particular case). Some of the things that I did were very specific to the guitar sound and performace, so dont treat this list as a hard and fast set or rules - use this as a guide by all means, but trust your ears. Numbered because the order is important.

1: Compress. Something fairly gentle just to bring out the chime and the softer played sections. I used about 5:1, I forget the level, but it doesnt matter anyway, its dependent on the signal level to begin with.
2: EQ out some wool and boom round the 150-300Hz range. This goes after the compressor because the comp would bring up the reduced EQ again.
3: Multiband comp set to kill (as in limiter settings, about 50:1) above 4khz, level set so that it didnt impact any of the actual playing at all. This was to keep (for natural feel, guitar in the room sound) finger scrape along the strings, but to hammer the level of them down so they were listenable, and just added to the imtimate involvment of the track, rather than made you go 'wft was that?'
4: EQ down about 3k and up by about 3db, because between a bright guitar, light playing and the compression it was sounding pretty glassy, and I wanted chimey, not glassy.
5: Reverb, about 30% mix, medium size room, quite bright.

That on both mics of the main guitars.

Chord guitars I went through a similar process, but with much more severe compression to give the illusion of greater sustain, more aggressive elimination of the 150-300Hz boom and a larger room reverb set to more like 60% mix, so that they mesh with the main guitars but sit in a different space. I did the main guitars first and very much tuned the chords to fit with and fill out that sound, rather than have them sound good on their own.  

Hope this helps.

Edit: spelling/grammar

[Bluesberry]

Thank you very much for this dynamite info, fantastic tips here.  I thank you very much for this!  You really know what you are doing.

[MDV]

Quite welcome  

And thanks!

[Groundy]

Well played, well recorded, well done.............Alex

[MDV]

Thanks!

[Rolow]

What a lovely voice.

Thanks for the post.