Irene explains about field recording
Locations and Process
Most of the songs were recorded in the synagogues of the communities. The Magen David synagogue in Mumbai, India provided excellent reverb. A few songs were recorded at home or in a guesthouse room.
Before starting recording, I spent plenty of time listening to the songs of the communities, always in relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and then choosing the best one to fit the recording project. Then I had to create a simple beat and a pad, so that the musicians could follow the rhythm and the tune. The next step was to explain the participants about the recording process. Most of the participants never did any professional recordings. My goal was to reassure them and achieve the best results.
Before starting recording, I spent plenty of time listening to the songs of the communities, always in relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and then choosing the best one to fit the recording project. Then I had to create a simple beat and a pad, so that the musicians could follow the rhythm and the tune. The next step was to explain the participants about the recording process. Most of the participants never did any professional recordings. My goal was to reassure them and achieve the best results.
Mobile Studio Equipment
My mobile recording studio includes a PC, a RME Babyface interface, AKG C3000 condenser studio microphone for recording vocals, Zoom nh4 handy recorder for recording instruments and surroundings. The RME Babyface sound card is truly miraculous. Being a pocket size, it provides quality of performance and features similar to those of famous studio RME soundcards, a real finding for world trotters like me. For monitoring I was using Xone XD-53, DT 231 Pro and Panasonic RP-DJS200 headphones..The latter on is another finding. Extremely lightweight , small-sized and affordable, they provide a good frequency range and isolate the background noise sufficiently. Since stands are too heavy for traveling with them, we were using a small desk tripod microphone stand, placing it on piles of books (usually prayer books or even a set of Zohar.)
Challenges of field recording
Doing field recordings, one definitely encounters numerous challenges. The first one, right at the airport, when traveling with this small-sized, but numerous equipment. Another challenge is external noise. In India, it is the noise of the car honks. from which one cannot hide, in Africa it is never stopping singing of birds and insects. Of course, using a multi-pattern switch on the microphone to stream the sound helps a lot. Still sometimes it was impossible to eliminate external sounds completely, then I simply used them as a background. The crickets made a wonderful background on the song recorded in Africa. Electricity outages is another problem while recording at many places in Africa in India. Sometimes you have to wait a few hours or even days till the power is back. Then it is a good idea to find a generator to charge your laptop. At the village in Kenya where we were recording, there is no any power supply at all, therefore we had to travel to the nearest village that has an electricity post to charge the laptop, thus interrupting the recording process every few hours. Having an extra laptop battery can be of a great help in such situations.
Editing and Mixing
After completing the recording on the field, I arranged and edited them at my home in Tel Aviv, added beats, the Stick, other instruments and vocals. Some of the guest artists recorded at my home, while others at their recording studios in the USA . For one of the tracks I used the bass line of my late friend and collaborator Virginia Splendore from Italy. Later the tracks were given a final touch and mixed at Music Brothers Records in Moscow with the great sound engineer, friend and collaborator Kirill Malahov. The CD was mastered at Mastering World in Wales by Donal Whelan.
