When the sound is already there

Our new One-Mic Recordings collection brings together ten performances from different recording sessions over the years.

But behind every track is a story.

For the opening track, Lotus Blossom, that story begins with clarinetist David Lukács and guitarist Alexander Brott.
I first met clarinetist David Lukács during a recording session for a film score. David had written the music especially for the film, and what struck me immediately was his dedication, not only to the music, but to the project as a whole. He was completely involved. And then there was his playing: the craftsmanship, the ease, and above all that beautiful, warm tone on the clarinet. It stayed with me.

So when David and I got in touch again a few years later and the possibility of recording an album came up, Peter and I didn't need much time to think about it. We invited him for a One-Mic recording session at Sound Liaison.

For several years David had been playing as a duo with Swedish-Canadian guitarist Alexander Brott, who had been living in the Netherlands for quite some time. Alexander was about to move to Sweden, which suddenly gave the recording a sense of urgency. If there was ever a moment to document this duo, this was it.
We booked two days, deliberately giving ourselves plenty of time. With a conventional multi-microphone recording, there is always the possibility of thinking: "we can deal with that later in the mix." With a One-Mic recording, that option is largely gone. The balance, perspective and sound have to be right before you start recording.

And that takes time. The first question was simple: where do we want to hear the clarinet and guitar in the stereo image? We moved the musicians around the microphone, listened, moved them again and listened again. Sometimes a relatively small change in position makes a surprisingly large difference.

Height also matters. With David, this meant comparing the sound of him playing seated and standing. We listened carefully together and chose the position that gave us the perspective and tone we were looking for.

Alexander's guitar presented a different challenge. He plays a semi-acoustic guitar through an amplifier. The instrument itself produces an acoustic sound, while the amplifier adds another source whose level can be adjusted. Those two had to become one convincing guitar sound in the room, and that sound then had to sit naturally alongside David's clarinet.

We spent several hours on the soundcheck. That may sound excessive for a recording with only two musicians and one microphone, but for me this is where a large part of the recording is actually made. Once everyone was happy, there was very little left to do except listen.

And that is exactly how I like it.

From that point on, my attention shifted away from sound and towards the performances. We listened to the different takes not only for technical accuracy, but for something much more difficult to define: intention, interaction and emotion.

David has a wonderful ease in his playing. His solos develop naturally and keep drawing you in without ever sounding forced. Alexander is an attentive and inventive accompanist, but equally compelling when he steps forward for a solo. In his playing you can hear an awareness of the great guitarists who came before him—not as imitation, but as part of a musical language he clearly understands.

That connection with the past also influenced one of the decisions we made afterwards. We kept the recording relatively dry. It would have been very easy to add more artificial reverberation and create a larger, perhaps more immediately impressive sound. But every time we listened, it felt unnecessary. The directness suited the music. It allowed the character of the instruments and the interplay between David and Alexander to remain at the centre.

To me, there is something almost timeless about the result. At moments it feels like travelling back through the history of traditional jazz and swing of the 1930s and 1940s, not as a reconstruction of the past, but as two musicians carrying that musical tradition naturally into the present.

The album was captured in DSD256 with our Josephson C700S microphone. But ultimately, the technology is not what I hope you will think about when listening. I hope you hear two musicians in a room, listening to each other.

I'm very happy we captured this duo before Alexander left the Netherlands. And I sincerely hope it won't be the last time I have David and Alexander together in front of the microphone.

Warm regards,
Frans