KILLER JOE
Killer Joe was recorded as part of an album for Emily Davies’s Jazz Colloquy project. It took place on Saturday, December 18th, during the fall semester of 2021. Besides Killer Joe, there were seven more songs recorded on that Saturday. The names of these seven songs were, the way you look tonight, house mouse, cast your fate to the wind, no onions no tomatoes, little sunflower, Stella by Starlet, and Nigerian marketplace. The instrumentation for the recording session that took place was piano, tenor saxophone, trumpet, trombone, flute, electric bass, and drums. The recording took place at the James Dolan studio located in the Steinhardt education building.
Mic Set up
For the piano, I placed a pair of DPA 4011s inside in an ORTF configuration, at an angle of 110 degrees with the middle C of the piano placed in-between/centered of the two microphones. Outside, on the tail of the piano, I placed a pair of Sennheiser MKH800 as an AB pair at a distance of one foot from each other. The Bass was placed across and to the right from the brass trio, since it was using its own passive DI there was no reason to separate them from the rest of the band. The tenor saxophone was placed in the middle of the brass trio facing the door to the control room. To its right took place the trombone and to its right the trumpet. In front and bit to the right of the tenor saxophone, I placed a U87 microphone and next to it a Sennheiser 421 dynamic microphone so can capture a bigger spectrum of the sound emitted from the saxophone. For the trombone I chose a Coles 4038 and for the trumpet an EV RE-20, trying a dynamic microphone instead of having another ribbon similar to the trombone.
Drums
Finally for the drum set I had a quite simple setup since the drummer wanted his drums and cymbals closer than a usual jazz drum set. For the kick, I placed two microphones, both dynamic, a Sennheiser e602ii and an AKG D112. For the snare top, I had an AKG 414 in a cardioid polar pattern because of the drummer’s preference not only to hit the drum but its edges as well. Moreover and SM7B was placed underneath the snare drum and two SM57 on both rack and floor toms. For overhead, I had a set of AKG 414 in figure polar pattern because of how close the drum set was.