I’ve had the delight to work alongside guitarist Johannes Möller and producer Gerald Garcia to record Johannes’ new album. The album is a collection of Johannes’ transcriptions and arrangements of traditional Chinese music alongside his own compositions. There is one track in particular that I have truly fallen in love with – it is the longest track on the album and when I heard the final edit I got goosebumps, which I always take as a sign that things are sounding good!

The recording was done in a lovely hall in Wantage at Challow Park Studios (Will, the resident engineer, was very helpful with the initial setup). The sound on the final recording is primarily from my trusty Neumann TLM193 as a mono centre mic, with a spaced pair of Neumann M50’s. There is a dash of a Gefell (UM70 I think) figure of 8 microphone as a side mic with the TLM193, and also a very low level from KM184’s in XY. The KM184’s were setup as an alternate pair of mics and I didn’t expect to use them in the final mix, but I felt blending them softly did add something good (other than just volume!). The resultant guitar sound is very focused, unlike many Classical Guitar recordings I have heard that have a somewhat blurry image (spaced omnis… still sound great though) or exaggerated stereo field.