R. Gorksie Madeira and his company SA Backline have supplied Howard Audio with an awesome Yamaha C3 grand piano - and we are very excited to be able to offer our clients this amazing instrument to record. Why? Well, apart from Gorksie being one of the nicest guys in our business - when the pianos are not being used on the biggest gigs in South Africa - they can be housed in temperature controlled room - but more importantly - can be rented out at a special musicians rate - for recording songs and albums... And this instrument sounds great!
A few weeks back - we had Marc Duby and his jazz quartet in studio. After a marathon eight-hour session day - we asked jazz pianist John Fresk if he wouldn’t mind playing an improvisation for 30 secs - seeing we had all the mics and outboard gear set up. This is what came out of John’s head - and this is what the instrument sounds like :)
P.S. - For the audio geeks out there - on the piano we have a pair of Earthworks PM40 mics close, and a pair of Telefunken M60s in an XY config capturing some of the beautiful live room. The Earthworks are using Metric Halo pre’s/Maag EQ4/Neve 543 Comp (just a touch) - The Telefunkens are using original Neve 1073 pres/Warm EQP WA eq/Warm WA76 comp. Plus a little bit of Logic Space Designer hall reverb :)
