This is CRAZY, and I am putting it under this heading due to the unbelievable sound quality.
There are lessons for all of us hidden in these videos. What a treasure!
I only came across the first one of these yesterday, and there doesn’t seem to be a channel for the sessions, but they are scattered all over the net… going more treasure-hunting now…
Here’s Rumer…
Sven
This is why I was never actually able to become a professional musician. These guys are all actually really good at what they do. I just sit here splicing together takes until I can hopefully come up with a full song that doesn’t make me question my life’s pursuit.
I think I had asked on a thread some time back how they get such a good sound in that room. It doesn’t look like it is acoustically treated to a large degree. I think I saw a large rug hanging down somewhere. There’s a lot of wood for sure, a little brick. Maybe it just naturally works well, or he had it designed in such a way that the room just sounds good?
There aren’t really any flat walls, and it’s a decent size. Just looking at the room, I would assume it’s a pretty good sounding room.
Combine that with the fact that most of those instruments have the mic about 1 inch away, you aren’t going to hear the room all that much anyway. The drums are the only exception. You can hear the room in the drums, and the room sounds pretty good to me.
You can also hear the room when he backs off the mic. Still sounds fine there.
There’s a glimpse of the ceiling at 40:45 in the O’Jay’s video that I’ve never seen before. It makes the room look a bit bigger than I’d remembered, though it’s painted black so it’s hard to tell the depth. It may not even be the same room I remember from some years ago, that room had a balcony IIRC, but was very similar to this one. It may be the same one, not sure. They have a lot of stage monitors in the room too. It just seems like a feat of technical wizardry to make it sound that good.
Love that show. Been a fan for quite some time.
Regarding the sound though, this is an excellent example of the fact that you can get great sound even out of “live” gear. A lot of dynamic mics and direct to board being used, and yet, it sounds great.
My favorite performance from Daryl’s House was with KT Tunstall when they did Out Of Touch. Fantastic stuff.
Thanks for sharing the O’Jay’s video. Really good stuff.