Salsa recording

A

AndrewT

I'm getting ready to do some recording with my band, and I've been researching and thinking through recording techniques lately. I've been curious about how they did it with the old Fania stuff, so I was wondering if there were any photos or video taken in the recording studio back in the 70s and 80s so I can at least see what kind of mics and what placement they use.

Also if anyone has experience recording, and have found techniques that they like or don't like, I'd love to hear about that as well!
 
AndrewT said:
I'm getting ready to do some recording with my band, and I've been researching and thinking through recording techniques lately. I've been curious about how they did it with the old Fania stuff, so I was wondering if there were any photos or video taken in the recording studio back in the 70s and 80s so I can at least see what kind of mics and what placement they use.

Also if anyone has experience recording, and have found techniques that they like or don't like, I'd love to hear about that as well!
Click to expand...

There's a book from Irv Greenbaum, one of the Fania sound engineers, with his memoirs (descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/20553.50). This might help a lot. Don't know if pictures of recording sessions are included.

Fania recordings were made in all-inclusive sessions until 1975-1976. With newer 24 track consoles they started to record in separate channels.

Personally, I think it killed the bands as a united concept. That's why most jazz and Latin Jazz bands still record in single all-together sessions. Nowdays, most pretty boy soloists record their sessions with the full band already recorded; they don't even know which musicians took part of it.

With today's technology you can record a few sessions of a single song in a smaller studio but will require to hire an engineer for extra hours.

"Afuera" was the last Bobby Valentín's studio recording made in a single all-inclusive session for each song. Compare it with the following (Musical Seduction) and you will find noticeable differences.
 
Great information and perspectives from Abayarde.

There is a very good interview with Jon Fausty. He says that Papo Lucca began the section by section recording trend. The interview is here:
www jazzconclave.com/i-room/fausty.htm

I read that the Williamsburg Salsa Orchestra recorded their recent album with everyone together in the same room.

You might get some ideas from watching this Eddie Palmieri/Brian Lynch recording session from 2005. They are all in the studio together recording live but percussion are isolated in separate rooms: www youtube.com/watch?v=XnYxRoGF6QI

I have some experience recording in studios... I recorded on this CD from 2009, samples on descarga.com:
descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/23709.10?jTAAtY6L;;194
We recorded the horn section all together in the same room after the percussion, piano and bass tracks were already laid down. The music director was in the room with us and cued in our parts. Vocals were recorded last. For better or worse, this is the standard practice in Salsa for several decades now.

I recently recorded on an album in January. I played all three trumpet parts on the songs, laying down track by track, layer by layer. That is very common now, to have one horn player record multiple parts on the same song. This technique was first started by Victor Paz and Barry Rogers when they were recording with Eddie Palmieri.

I can't really comment on mic placement except that, for a horn player, you want to find the sweet spot on the mic and try to avoid distortion or signal overload during louder parts of the song. The engineer will help determining that.

An experienced mixing engineer in so important -- someone with lots of experience mixing Salsa.

Good luck!
 
Thanks for the quick replies, just put in an order for the Greenbaum book, sounds like the kind of thing I'm looking for.

As of now, I think the instruments I have the most trouble with are trombones and timbales. Brass instruments sound so different depending on what angle and distance they are from the listener/mic that it's hard to fine tune what you need to adjust to get the right sound. Timbales are a balancing act trying to get a punchy drum head sound, clear cascara, and piercing cowbells without any of those overwhelming the others.

For now I'm going section by section, mostly because I don't have a large space or sound-proofed rooms with line of sight to isolate sections. I do love the idea of having musicians interacting with each other during recording, though.
 
AndrewT said:
Thanks for the quick replies, just put in an order for the Greenbaum book, sounds like the kind of thing I'm looking for.

As of now, I think the instruments I have the most trouble with are trombones and timbales. Brass instruments sound so different depending on what angle and distance they are from the listener/mic that it's hard to fine tune what you need to adjust to get the right sound. Timbales are a balancing act trying to get a punchy drum head sound, clear cascara, and piercing cowbells without any of those overwhelming the others.

For now I'm going section by section, mostly because I don't have a large space or sound-proofed rooms with line of sight to isolate sections. I do love the idea of having musicians interacting with each other during recording, though.
Click to expand...

Drums, Timbales and similar instruments requires to be secluded. Most studios use clear acrylic barriers to keep musicians near and avoid any overwhelming.
 
Yeah, I know from live recording that the timbales show up in just about every other microphone on stage! One thing I was thinking of doing was recording the rhythm section one instrument at a time, then do horns and vocals all at once on top of that track.
 
AndrewT said:
Yeah, I know from live recording that the timbales show up in just about every other microphone on stage!
Click to expand...
It's known as microphone bleed, or spill. Drums and percussion instruments are the worst culprits -- their sound goes in every direction.

One thing I was thinking of doing was recording the rhythm section one instrument at a time, then do horns and vocals all at once on top of that track.
Click to expand...
That will definitely eliminate solve that problem. You probably don't want the horns to bleed in with the vocals too much, though, so try to keep them apart as much as possible. You'd probably best do horns together first and then vocals together after that.
 
Abayarde said:
There's a book from Irv Greenbaum, one of the Fania sound engineers, with his memoirs (descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/20553.50). This might help a lot. Don't know if pictures of recording sessions are included.

Fania recordings were made in all-inclusive sessions until 1975-1976. With newer 24 track consoles they started to record in separate channels.

Personally, I think it killed the bands as a united concept. That's why most jazz and Latin Jazz bands still record in single all-together sessions. Nowdays, most pretty boy soloists record their sessions with the full band already recorded; they don't even know which musicians took part of it.

With today's technology you can record a few sessions of a single song in a smaller studio but will require to hire an engineer for extra hours.

"Afuera" was the last Bobby Valentín's studio recording made in a single all-inclusive session for each song. Compare it with the following (Musical Seduction) and you will find noticeable differences.
Click to expand...

Hello! I’m very interested in reading this book from Irv Greenbaum but i could not find any physical or digital copy, do you have a digital copy by any chance?
 
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