![]() I hear some of my earlier records and I can hear not necessarily the panic, but that there are other people in the room, saying, ‘Okay, Mr Carroll. There are some people that are brilliant at it I’ve had to learn. “Actually, I don’t think it ever goes away. You get overly worried about technique, then the recording can sound clinical and sterile. It’s very hard to deliver a gig to a chest of drawers in your bedroom. “And it’s quite hard, I find, because I’m a live performer in terms of delivering an interpretation and so I play differently. But it means nothing without the delivery. As long as you can capture that somehow, all the hardware is a bonus. “It’s great to have some high-end gear the actual hi-fi quality sounds expensive, but at the end of the day, it’s all down to the performance. How was the whole recording experience for you? I used a stereo Neve 1073 preamp and that’s it. It was basically a bunch of Neumanns into a Apollo x8 audio interface recorded at 24-bit 48kHz into Logic. “Renbourn liked a little chorus from time to time, so I used DI for the chorus – that kind of rich bottom-end that you could never achieve with a microphone. There are a couple of pieces that have DI on them, but I think they’re the ones that I needed some chorus effects on. “For the most part, they were large diaphragm mics and then maybe a small condenser for a bit of room sound. Then I might use a Royer, or a Neumann KM 184 or something like that. “I think when you’re mixing a guitar within a track that has three, four, five or more players, you really need to place your guitar so it can’t take over the whole speaker system. There’s a bit more ‘air’ to the overall sound for fingerstyle guitar. So for the most part, I favour the large diaphragm sound, like a pair of U 87s, and I have an SE Electronics large diaphragm mic. Though I do use the pickup sound from time to time for a specific colour, I don’t rely on it. “I like the natural sound of the acoustic guitar, as opposed to a processed pickup sound. ![]() Which microphones did you use to record the guitar on The Abbott? ![]() He’d arranged some parts, which tells me that he’d intended to record it at some point but hadn’t found the right album yet.” “I found the pieces in the same folder as Estampie, which is a great piece of his from the album Traveller’s Prayer. They are for medieval ensemble, two guitars and electric bass and called Intrada, which is an introduction, and Danse Royale. It also includes two pieces that have never been recorded. “Half of the album is on solo guitar, and the other half is either duos, groups or larger ensembles. But after learning a few classics, curiosity got the better of me and I ended up with a double-album’s worth of material that I thought might be fun to record. “So I thought it’d be fun to learn a whole bunch of these pieces and perhaps perform them live. “A few years ago, in 2021, about six years after John died, I wanted to learn a few of his solo guitar pieces like The Lady And The Unicorn, Another Monday, Faro’s Rag and all the classics that have done the rounds in the acoustic guitar world that Renbourn didn’t play live. Further on down the line we hosted a few workshops, and we also wrote a film soundtrack together.” “For me, it was the perfect introduction to that world of playing in front of Renbourn fans and acoustic music fans. I would open the shows, he would play the main gig, and then we’d play a few duos to finish the night. So I went straight from music college to touring with John in Europe, the UK and the US. “I was really fortunate that John took an interest in what I was up to and invited me on the road. Tell us more what happened after that first gig where you met John Renbourn. There was a performance goal in sight, so you had to get it done.” Then you had to perform either at an end-of-year recital or a lunchtime recital. It was basically a suite a month and I learned them all because we had to. “And I’m thinking specifically of JS Bach. An interesting thing I’ve noticed in recent years is that when I was at music college, I was given a huge list of repertoires to learn on classical guitar that included a wide variety of genres. “When you start studying the inner workings of melody, harmony and rhythm you can’t listen to music the same way, and it shapes the way you write, as well.
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