In March I had the opportunity to do a studio recording with a young group of performers consisting of Shaun Stokes, Thian Wehmeyer and Blair MacDonald. Shaun has a background with piano, keyboards, and vocals, and completed his studies for his HND from the Music Academy. Thian is a current music student at Napier University studying Popular Music and is a Vocalist and guitarist. Blair a percussionist with a specialisation in the Cajon.

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This opportunity came about after putting a request out on Facebook. Shaun dropped me a message saying he was interested and had a couple of musician friends that would like to work on a little project. Thus came about an acoustic recording of a cover of "You’re On" by Madeon, with the instrumentation focused on the use of the cajon as percussion, along with acoustic guitar as well as piano and organ (both reproduced by a Roland Digital Piano).

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The challenge involved for this recording was in making sure an ideal mic setup could be made for the cajon. This was an instrument that had not been covered in any of the core subjects by this stage so required some research on how to set up the mics properly for the best recording. I found this online guide from this website http://playcajon.org/2014/02/12/how-to-mic-a-cajon/ Which suggested in the best case scenario of using a Neumann U87 placed around 1ft from the front of the cajon and an Audio Technica ATM25 to go into the bass end of the cajon. Also based on setup advise from http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/feb12/articles/cajon.htm it was recommended to place the cajon near a wall so as to gain extra bass energy. Something of which really did come through well in the recording.

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The guitar was recorded with a spaced pair setup using the Oktava mk 012 with the left mic placed towards the 8th fret and the right might placed towards the 12th fret, meaning that both the body of the guitar is picked up as well as the fret noises. I researched this from this following site that made the suggestion to try https://www.cakewalk.com/Support/Knowledge-Base/2007013311/10-Microphone-Placement-Techniques-for-Acoustic-Guitar which also tied into what was learnt from Sound Production Theory and Practice as it talks about mic placement and phase issues, something that was taken into account for the recording.

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Health and Safety requirements had to be considered as well before recording could start, thus safe cable routing between the mics and the portable recorder was made sure of by routing the cabling along the front edge of stage minimising the chance of any trips.