Peak Recording, Bozeman, MT (2025)

08/30/2025

Richard Schiff was at Peak Recording recently reading a Philip Roth book, “The Plot Against America” (published 2015) for a BBC radio program, Book At Bedtime. The book is an alternate history novel exploring what it would have been like if Charles Lindbergh had won the 1940 presidential election, and told from the point of view of a young Philip Roth.

The book we recorded was abridged and maybe half the length of the full novel, and so took only two days to record. It's in ten parts and will air over two weeks. Fay, the BBC producer/director, was linked with us via Zoom, and due to the 7-hour time difference, when we were finishing up each day at about 4pm, it was 11pm in The UK.

You might recognize Richard as he had a pretty big role on the NBC show, “The West Wing” and even won an Emmy for it. I’ve never seen that program but I’ve seen him in many other TV programs and movies.

Anyway, he did a nice job and we finished in 11 hours, which is less than Fay had estimated.

I recorded Richard with a Neumann U87 going into a Vintech X73i preamp, my favorite voice recording setup. I didn’t use any compression and as I recorded at 48K/16-bit, it was a bit tricky when he was ACTING (getting louder), but we got through it and it all worked out. I think it’s scheduled to air sometime in September on BBC Radio 4, just in case you want to hear it!

08/24/2025

Marley Ball was in last week recording two cello pieces, covers of “Autumn Leaves” and “You Are My Sunshine”.

It’s always fun having Marley in as she’s such a positive person and nice to be around.

We not only recorded, we edited, mixed, and mastered the two tunes so they’re all done and might even be online as you read this.

I mic’d Marley’s cello with a Peluso 2247LE (a modern U47 clone), which is a large-diaphragm tube condenser, and an EV RE20, a large-diaphragm dynamic. The plan was to use whichever one sounded best, but when I had them both up with the polarity switched on one, we agreed that was the way to go. They each went through Vintech X73i preamps.

08/11/2025

Rich Hall was in a few weeks ago doing ADR for a new film, a re-make of "The Running Man." I think Rich is known more for comedy than acting, but he's pretty good in the small role he has in this film.

If you don't know, ADR (automatic dialog replacement) is where we record, after the fact, lines for a film or TV show, that for some reason weren't usable. It could be an interfering noise, or maybe just not clear.

We were linked up (via Zoom) with the director in London, and as Rich only had about five lines to do, he was done pretty quickly.

07/22/2025

Last month I had Tyson Vick in along with a bunch of singers recording vocals for the film he’s been working on for several years, a musical called, “Robin Hood: The Golden Arrow”. He told me it’s derived from an opera of the same name.

Tyson, who’s a graduate of the New York Film Academy, is directing and producing the film, and he’s been working on this project for two years.

We’re recording the vocals to really nice orchestral tracks done by Supreme Tracks, a production company in New York City.

Lizzie Webb, Tyson’s musical director, is a long-time friend of Tyson’s (they met in 2nd or 3rd grade in Cut Bank) and she’s been working in the theater and music worlds for years. While I was doing the actual recording, Lizzie was “driving the bus”, that is, she was organizing the singers, making sure they were singing the correct parts, etc. She was a dream to work with, genuinely nice, and very competent. She did a fantastic job!

I set up the studio to record four singers at a time. I created four “iso booths” using sound baffles. Although each “wall” between the singers was only four feet wide and six feet tall, it was amazing how much acoustic separation they made. Tyson will be sending the vocals back to Supreme Tracks for mixing, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate the control they have in the mix due to the separation.

I set the “booths” up so they faced into the isolation room so the singers could easily see Lizzie, who was set up with her keyboard in the iso room. She used the keyboard for rehearsing the singers, working out parts, checking notes, etc. The keyboard won't be a part of the final mixes.

I mic’d the singers with two Audio-Technica AT4050s, a Neumann TLM 103 and a Mojave Audio MA-301fet, all large-diaphragm condensers, and they each ran through Vintech X73i preamps with no compression. The mics are all good vocal mics and the preamps are modern-day Neve 1073 clones, but as usual, the main factor in getting quality vocals is to hire quality singers.

We had some songs with just a singer or two, and others where we recorded four singers, and then tracked four more for eight total. Some songs will have even more voices once we get them all recorded, and with the quality of the singers Tyson hired, they sound fantastic. A standout was Maddisen Sheedy, who is only 15 years old, but wowed us all with her performances.

You can get a little more information about Tyson and the film at robinhoodwebmusical.com.

We’ve got at least one more multi-day session coming up in September, and I’m looking forward to hearing more great music then.

06/29/2025

It's been a while since I posted anything here; I've been a little busy!

The band "Wolfbones" was in the studio a few weeks back tracking songs for an upcoming EP. They recorded the basics for six songs and are currently working on finishing one, "Black Rain".

The band was fun to work with and did a great job recording. They are: Greg Lucker (guitar, vocals), Noah Watts (lead guitar), Levi Jordan (acoustic guitar, harmony vocals), Jordan Jarosky (bass), and K Mita (drums).

The plan is to work on each song one by one and release them as they are finished.

03/15/2025

Update on the audio book production.

This is my view a few days ago; sitting on top of the Neve is the “yet-to-be-done” pile on the left and the “done” pile on the right as I’m in the editing phase of the project. So significantly more than half-way through. Yay!

There’s a ratio of the time spent recording an audio book and the time spent editing it, and it’s variable depending upon, mainly, how good the reader is. How many mistakes (and then retakes are needed) the reader makes, how many mistakes we (the reader, me, and the director, if we have one) miss, and then have to do pickups at a later date. How many noises the reader makes that require a re-take or that we miss and I have to spend time taking care of, or that can’t easily be fixed and then get marked for a pickup. Does the reader have some weird pacing problem that we want to smooth out? Things like that.

Anyway, ideally the ratio of editing to recording is usually around 4 or 5 to 1, and could easily be higher than that given the possible problems listed above. The editing phase, even in the best cases, takes a lot longer than the recording.

So when I get to the point in the editing where the “done” pile is bigger than the “yet-to-be-done” pile, I always relax a little. It’s like, “you got this”.

03/03/2025

Lynne Spriggs O’Connor was in a few weeks ago recording the audio version of her book, “Elk Love: A Montana Memoir”. The book mostly takes place in Montana, and I’d call it a love story.

While I’ve recorded quite a few audio books here at Peak, usually when I’m working for a major publisher, like Penguin Random House, I’ll record the book here, send all the files to them, and then, other than recording the inevitable pick-ups (more on that later), I’m done.

On Lynne’s project, I’m handling the editing and completion of the book as well, which is a lot more work.

When I’ve mentioned to a few people that I’m working on an audio book and that it takes a lot of time, they ask why that is. “Don’t they just read it and you record it? How can that take so long?”

To start with, reading a whole book out loud takes a while. Like hours. In Lynne’s case, she read her book in only three days, which is a little faster than usual.

If you’ve ever read much (out loud), you’ll know that it’s almost impossible to get very far without making a mistake, and having to re-start a sentence or paragraph. You’ll mispronounce words, add or omit things, or make a noise, etc. You may “swallow” a word, like just barely saying a “the”, “that”, or “a” (these are the most common swallowed words). In normal conversation, these things aren’t problems, but when you’re recording for publication, they are.

So step one is to record the book. As we go along, we try to make sure that if there are any mistakes or un-fixable noises made that we also record the material that we need to fix those things.

Step two is the initial editing. This is where I work through the recording and edit out the mistakes and noises and replace them with the correct stuff that we’ve recorded as we went along. Unfortunately, as I edit, I find mistakes that both the reader and I (and sometimes a director, maybe in New York or L.A., that the publisher has hired) have missed. This is normal and not unexpected. It’s easier than you think to miss a mistake, or to hear something a little suspect and decide on the spot that it’s OK, and then find in editing that it’s not OK. Which leads to...
..step three. Pick-ups. This is where the reader comes back to record all the things that couldn’t be fixed in editing, or to re-do the mistakes that we didn’t catch. Then it’s on to step four.

Step four is the final edit. It’s where the pick-ups are edited in. It’s also the time that any audio processing is done to enhance the sound and make sure it conforms to industry norms, and to create the final files which are what you hear when you listen to an audio book.

An audio book, like most things in life, represents the end-stage of the thought, energy, and work that goes into it’s creation. All so you can listen and (hopefully) enjoy it!

01/17/2025

Seth Palmer (right) was in recently recording vocals for an upcoming release. Kaiden Simpson (left), who did the tracks/beats for the songs, came in with Seth. Kaiden will also be mixing the project.

We had some really weird sample rate issues with more than half of the 13 tracks they brought in, but once we got all that sorted out, we were able to get Seth in the studio to lay down his parts. He did great and didn’t take very long to get the takes he was going for (practice pays off!).

We’ll need at least one more session to finish up Seth’s vocals, and then he and Kaiden can go to town mixing the vocals with the tracks.

I used my tube U47 clone, a Peluso 2247 LE, going into a Vintech X-73i preamp and then into the compressor section of a UA LA-610 for Seth’s vocals.

01/01/2025

#5 Specialty mics

Measurement mics are made to measure sound, not to record or amplify sounds for your enjoyment. They’re generally omni-directional condensers, and the makers of these mics often mount the mic element or capsule at the end of the narrowest tube possible, to minimize any acoustic effect of the mic body itself. They’re also made to have a very flat frequency response, both on- and off-axis.

These mics come in really handy to measure the output of loudspeakers and how the room that they’re in, like a studio control room, affects that sound. Of course, they’re used for many other things, like measuring noise levels or in loudspeaker design, but it’s that first one that recording engineers are most interested in. It’s why I’ve got a few of these mics, and I used them when I did the last acoustic remodel of my control room a few years back, both to help me figure out what I needed to do, and to gauge the effectiveness of what I’d done.

There’s nothing saying you can’t use a measurement mic to record a guitar or an oboe, though. And while I’ve never used a measurement mic to record music (yet), some do.

Hydrophones are microphones made for recording sound underwater. I’ve never actually seen one, or had any reason to use one, as it’s just not something I do, but there are people who use them. If you’re recording whale songs, you’re using a hydrophone to do it. Water is much denser than air, so sound travels very well in it. That whale might be a long way away!

I imagine some of the most sensitive hydrophones are used on navy submarines. There aren’t many (or any) windows on a military sub, so listening to your surroundings with a sensitive hydrophone is very important so you might know when someone is sneaking up on you.

Contact microphones. As the name implies, these things are designed to be placed directly on whatever you’re trying to pick up. In a very simple form, they are piezo-electric discs which produce a signal when they are vibrated. Years ago, before digital reverbs, I had a plate reverb, which used contact mics to pick up the “reverbed” signal from the plate. The ones that came with it quit working after a few years so I replaced them with some home-made contact mics I’d put together, which looked pretty much just like the one in the photo. Other than them falling off the plate when the double-sided tape I used to attach them failed, they sounded fine. Commercial contact mics are prettier, of course.

You can get contact mics that are optimized for particular instruments, and just like regular microphones, proper placement is important. Some of these contact mics sound really good, and they can be a real asset when playing live, as they’re much less prone to feedback than a conventional mic.

The last mic I’ll mention is the noise-canceling mic. A noise-canceling mic is really just an extreme uni-directional mic. They’re used by people in noisy environments, like airplane cockpits. They’re engineered so the ambient noise, which is all around the mic, is drastically reduced, while sound coming from just one direction, like from the pilot’s mouth, is picked up. It’s hard to make a mic like this “sound good”, but luckily, that’s not the point. Intelligibility is.

It’s entirely possible I’ve left out some obscure kind of microphone, but the ones I’ve talked about in this series are the main ones people use on a day-to-day basis (except maybe the hydrophones). It can be fun and /or frustrating in the studio to find the right mic for a particular sound source, and then spend the time to place it in just the right position to get the sound that you’re hearing in your head, but when it all comes together, it can be very rewarding.

12/17/2024

Lisa Carman brought the girls in her Recording Intensive Workshop into the studio recently to record five of their original songs.

Lisa is super-cool and a great teacher. She teaches various instruments, voice, and songwriting. She also passes on her considerable knowledge of how the music business works.

While Lisa does have recording capabilities at her place, she brought her students into Peak so they could all record together, which they can’t do at Lisa’s.

This was a fun project and I got to hear some great songs and heartfelt performances; I was very impressed with these young women! Bonus, I was able to show the girls some modern recording techniques that I’m sure will come in handy for them in the future.

Pictured are: Caylin Poole, Lilah Karro, Francie LaFoley, Lisa, and Lucy Davidson.

11/29/2024

Mark Logan was in recently recording some of his original works for classical guitar. Mark’s a great player and it’s a lot of fun working with him and hearing these pieces for the first time.

While Mark also plays electric guitar and, I imagine, steel-string acoustic guitar, I’ve only ever recorded him playing the classical guitar, which is different from the others in the way it’s played and the usual repertoire that’s preformed.

I’m no expert on classical guitar compositions, but I really like Mark’s original pieces, and being in on the production side of things, I can also really appreciate the difficulty in what he’s doing.

I recorded Mark’s guitar using a pair of Neumann KM 84’s in an ORTF stereo configuration, about 8 inches or so in front of the guitar. I did try the same set-up about 2 feet in front, but in the “not-super-live” studio it sounded very similar to the closer position. We both agreed that we preferred the stereo effect, more pronounced (but not overly so) in close.

The mics go through a stereo Grace pre-amp on their way to being recorded. When I eventually do the mixes, I’ll add a little nice reverb, and other than the mastering we’ll be done.

11/21/2024

#4 Large-diaphragm condenser mics

Generally, mics with a diaphragm greater than 1” are considered “large-diaphragm mics”, but there are some with a diameter a little less than a full inch that are still put in this category.

The bigger diameter diaphragm brings greater sensitivity, all other things being equal. Often it also brings a hard-to-describe “depth” or “certain something” to the sound, too. The classic vocal microphones we recording nerds lust after are almost always large-diaphragm condensers, such as the AKG C-12, the Neumann U-47 or 67, or the Telefunken ELAM 251.

Large-diaphragm condenser mics usually have a large body as well. This contains the capsule (the diaphragm and it’s mounting) and the mic amp, which boosts the signal up to where the average preamp can function well. The older vintage mics will generally have a tube mic amp onboard, as do their modern recreations. My Peluso 2247 LE is a good example. It’s a modern “clone” of the Neumann U47, and it has a real Telefunken tube in it. Any tube mic, since high-voltage is needed to operate tubes, will also have an external power supply to power it.

Many large-diaphragm condenser mics are constructed with two capsules back-to-back under the grill. This allows them to have multiple patterns. In this case, you’ll find, at the very least, the mic is capable of cardioid, omni, and figure-8 patterns. The tube mics that utilize an external power supply will usually have up to nine polar patterns, selectable at the power supply.

Large-diaphragm condensers are more often used in the studio than on the stage, and they can be used to record anything of course, vocals being a favorite, but I’ll use them for acoustic guitars and kick drums on occasion, too. A possible limitation can be the size of the mic, they can be too big to get in where you’d like to place them.

Most large-diaphragm mics don’t have a flat frequency response off-axis. The truth is, many small-diaphragm mics don’t either, but with careful design and engineering, it’s easier to get a small-diaphragm mic to have a flat off-axis response than a large-diaphragm one. The Neumann KM 84 is a great example of this. A friend recently bought a brand-new pair of small-diaphragm mics for $40! Any guesses on whether these mics are flat off-axis? Or will stand up to the rigors of studio use? A point of comparison, Neumann doesn’t make the ‘84 anymore, and used ones go for around $800-1200 last time I checked. Great engineering, like Neumann typifies, isn’t cheap.

I should have talked about large-diaphragm dynamics in my earlier “Dynamic Mics” post, but I didn’t. They exist, and they can be very handy, not to mention great sounding. My favorite at this time is the Electro-Voice RE20. The Shure SM 7 and the Sennheiser MD-421 are great mics, too. I like to use one of these for a singer who plays the acoustic guitar or piano, as they sound good on vocals and when used properly, don’t pick up much bleed from the instrument.

Next time I’ll finish up this series with a short post about specialty mics. Stay tuned!

Peak Recording

08/30/2025

08/24/2025

08/11/2025

07/22/2025

06/29/2025

03/15/2025

03/03/2025

01/17/2025

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