‘Pieces of a Man’ live record & video shoot with 20 audience members

Manchester based six-strong soul collective Pieces of a Man electronically manipulate and push the sonic boundaries of a conventional soul band. With an eclectic mix of raw instrumentation and real time self-sample manipulation the band create an immersive, textured sound, built with hiphop, funk, neo-soul soundscapes.

The band setup their equipment and stipulated all of the instrumentation between the live room and out isolations booths. During the setup stage we discussed with the band the position of which player and how that may affect the sound and/or visuals, we then organised the position of our microphones, monitoring distribution setup whilst the film crew organised their layout and lighting according to their required shots.

Once setup, a select audience of 20 were invited by the band to watch the live performance whilst we recorded the audio / video was being recorded. Each member of the audience were wearing closed back headphones to ensure the best sonic representation of the source material whilst also reducing any unwanted spill into the microphones.

We used the Neumann U67 for the main vocals and talkbox, Sennheiser MKH-50s for backing vocals: Beyerdynamic ribbon M260 for sax and trumpet. The microphones for the drums were recorded with our Neumann TLM 170, Royer R122, Sennheiser MD411, AKG C414 B- ULS, AKG C414 EB, Sony C48, Audix D6, Neumann U47 and Sennheiser MKH40. We used our various 500 series pre-amps housed in the WesAudio Supercarrier II, they were AML Audio 1073, AML Audio 1081, API 512c, Avedis Audio MD7, LaChapell 583E. We also used our Amek 9098s and Grace M108 portable preamps on this session. Having the preamps close to the microphone (as opposed to in the control room) lowers the noise floor ensuring the highest quality signal recorded.