Your ability to help convey the ideas of so many different types of artists is inspirational and a demonstration of your talent. Thank you.

From a lonely mandolin to a full-blown, in your face rock band, there’s always an existent space that feels common, full, sweet and cohesive. Your ability to create space is one that truly boggles my mind. Personally, I struggle to do this for acoustic instruments the most.

1) Can you speak to the space you created on the Punch Brothers record? Do you recall specific delays, reverbs, the room and how you placed the musicians in the room, room mics and room micing techniques?

2) Is it fair to assume that your general approach to this record was similar to others you’ve discussed in this forum – track the songs as close to mixed as possible, making bing moves on EQ etc., all to tape, then mix in your smaller space (with gear/tools you’ve identified as essential to your sound) and the conservative use of plugins? Any Quad Eight touch that record?

Thank you for your time.
Jon

I set the Punch Brothers up all in the same room with them facing each other in a large circle... The vocal was live in some cases... I did use some gobos to have better control over the leakage but no one was in isolation... Each instrument was mic'ed with three microphones, each chosen to be flattering to the instrument but different sounding to yield a flexible combination to have the recorded sound be malleable... I then took one of the microphone signals for each instrument and reamped it live into an amp placed in isolation for each player, mic'ing the amp separately and adding pedals into the signal chain into the amp with bold but suitable effects... The chamber was available to be used on a desk send to be printed live... I had a couple monitor wedges out in the room with the band that I occasionally sent signal from the desk of the band, an instrument, or an effect back into the room to excite the sound of the room more around the instruments... There was a Leslie speaker cabinet available on a send as well for effect... I relied mainly on leakage for room tones but did have a omni situation in the middle of the circle to use as desired... & yes my approach is to record the sound of the record I'm going for and make it feel right as it goes down and then accentuate and mold it in mix, that's not to say I don't at times do radical things in the mix but they are the exception not the rule... Just go for it and yes the Quad 8 was used as the gain makeup and mix buss EQ on the Folcrum passive summing box for the mix stems... Thanks