491 Blues - Live at the Coach & Horses, Stevenage

The 491 Blues project was to capture the live sound of the band so that a demo CD could be produced for the band to promte themselves to local pubs and venues to secure bookings.

The band consists of 2 Guitars; Vocals; Harmonica; Bass and Drums with backing vocals. Originally the plan was to record the band at their rehersal venue however, the oportunity arose to record the band at the Coach and Horses PH in Stevenage which would provide atomosphere and character to the recording.

The band had their own PA which feds from Vocal mics and the Harmonica which were routed into, to capture these mics they were initally linked to a DI box where the signal was split into the PA mixer and balanced output into the Recording DAW.

The Guitar Amps where mic'd by SM57 and recorded directly into the DAW and the bass was recorded via the DI output from the Bass Amp. Due to the size of the venue there was no need for any of the Guitar Amps to be routed into the PA Mixer and thus a sound source recording was only required.

For the Drums, the Kick was mic'd using a AKG D112 with AKG C418 Mics used for the Toms and floor drums. The Snare and High Hat were recorded using a AKG C1000 and SM57 mics.

The recording went well and captured the sound very well, it was then down to processing in the studio to get the rough mix of the sessionfor the Band to listen to and select appropriate songs for their Demo Master.

29 Songs were recorded on the night and once back in the studio Dynamic control, reverb and EQ was applied to get the best sounding mix for review. The 2 disk CD was sent off to the band of which and subsequently 6 songs have been selected for full production.

A sound clip of "Free West Blues" writen by the bands own Brian Amos is included on this case study. It is proposed that this track will be one of the six songs to be included in the produced CD Demo.

To find out more about the band, visit their website on http://www.491blues.co.uk/