colleen

After my 2007 album Les ondes silencieuses, my mastering engineer Emiliano Flores sold me the mike and preamp we had used for a lot of the takes, a Beyerdynamic MC834 and a Symetrix preamp, and ever since then it’s been my go-to mike for vocals and a ton of other instruments too (on Captain of none, the melodica, percussion and floor tom were also recorded with it). I also systematically use a popshield (SP Studio Projects) as I sing real close to the mike.

At the time of recording The weighing of the heart in 2012 I was still using a really old soundcard, so had to go through the Symetrix preamp, but since upgrading to my Scarlett Focusrite 18i20 soundcard, the MC834 goes straight into the soundcard and I’m very happy with the results.

On The Weighing of the Heart and Captain of None albums, I almost systematically doubletracked my vocals – a trick the nervous beginning vocalist I was found very handy to both have a richer sound and mask slight imperfections in pìtch. I of course had to overdub too when singing harmony.

I abandoned this on 2017’s A flame my love, a frequency, and instead found another way to add width and texture to my vocals in a way that made sense for that album.

More on my specific production choices in the next and last two posts of this series 😊

Pic is from my former studio in San Sebastián, Spain, circa Captain of None, 2015.

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