Mariachi Monaco

 

This was the project where I had the most fun. I met the kids from the Mariachi at a school concert and I immediately knew they had talent beyond their years. I then booked them for the studio the very next week. There were 19 performers from which 3 were trumpets, 2 guitars, 2 guitarron, 2 vihuela, 2 harps and 8 violins.

Stage Plot

 

For the equipment I closed miced the Shure Beta 52A for one Guitarron and the ElectroVoice RE20 for the other one. Two MD421s for the trumpets as an ORTF setup. Two Rhode NT2As for the Guitars as an MS setup. Two NT5s for the Vihuelas as an ORTF setup. Two KSM 141s for the Violins as an spaced pair set up. Two SM57s for the low end of the Harps as well as a Royer R122 bidirectional microphone for the high end right in between the Harps. I also used the Neumann U87 for vocals setting it up in between the Guitars and Vihuelas or the Violins depending on the song and the lead vocals for that piece. 

This was the very first time the kids recorded in an studio setting so we strayed from the click track and just captured their performance. Their professors gave them their cues as needed and the performance went smooth. We recorded 4 songs in 2 hours that we had them available. We took 2 hours to set up the studio and the monitor room, setting up absorption panels and blankets in the live room to separate the instruments. Inside the monitor room we set up the Pro Tools session and patched it to the SSL Duality Console with no external gear included, only with the board's EQ and soft compression.