Power Station’s Paul Kronk and Rob Roy engineer Deborah Silver’s amazing production with the legendary Charles Calello and his amazing arrangements and production style!
On Thursday, June 9th, renowned artist, Deborah Silver commissioned some of the best in the business to perform on her upcoming recording project produced and arranged by the legendary Charles Calello.
Proud to be a part of this amazing group of people to engineer the production were Power Station Studio’s own Paul Kronk and Rob Roy. Deborah Silver, who is a regular Power Station client and a warm part of our studio family asked if we would be the engineering team to come to Criteria Recording Studios in Miami to make this record the best-in-class sounding production ever!
Somce our Power Station Studios is so busy with our productions, we don’t typically do outside sessions. However, Criteria Studio’s extra-large Studio A live room gave this production the ability to record the entire production of trombones, trumpets, saxes, piano, upright bass, guitar, and drums all “Live” at the same time. There’s is something special when an entire big band orchestra is all performing together in the same room to record the tracks.
Being that Deborah is one of our great friends and having the legendary Charles Calello who also is a dear part of the Power Station family, no engineer in their right mind would pass on an opportunity to work on a project of this nature.
From setup to the downbeat, to the final note, this was a recording session straight out of a book of fairytales. Modern audio engineers only dream to be on studio dates such as this one. This dream begins with an amazing artist. Deborah Silver is not only an amazing singer and performer, she is a seasoned pro at the highest levels of the business. Not to mention, she is such a great artist to work with. Her positivity and energy keep the momentum moving in the most positive of ways.
Next, the sonic dream continues with amazing arrangements. Charles Calello’s discography includes more than 100 “Billboard Chart” records and more “Top 10” hits than any other arranger. With Charles as the producer, arranger, and conductor on this project, our Power Station engineering staff was honored to be chosen to be a part of the production team on this date.
(Drums and guitars behind the camera.)
“This has got one of the best sounding recordings I have ever done”
Charlie Calello listening to the tracks back the following day at Power Station Studios.
The setup went as smooth as silk. The funny part was that almost the entire Criteria staff found their way into the session to help. They had said that “These types of sessions don’t come into the studio very often and we had to just come to lend a hand just to see it all come together!” We were happy to include them in our fun!
The fun began at setup. This included making way for the 4 Trombones, 1 Tuba, 4 Trumpets, and 5 Saxes (with a quick cameo of a clarinet and a banjo)! We had a blast setting up the live brass section.
(For our techie followers:) We had actually brought a couple Coles 4038 ribbons from Power Station for the Trumpets. We prefer ribbons on trumpets and wanted to be sure that we had enough. Actually, the Criteria staff surprised us with a couple of vintage RCA 77s and 44s with we excitedly used.
For the Trombones, we used Neumann U47s and on the Saxes we used Neumann U87s. However, on the Bari Sax, we used one of our Coles 4038s with a little blast of 100Hz to make it punch!
For the piano, we used a spaced pair of Schoeps small diaphragm tube mics with the piano lid on the short stick. Along with a couple of blankets over the top, this would give us the amazing sound of the precisionaly tuned grand piano and minimize bleed into the brass section.
For the upright, we used a Neumann M149 tube along with a D/I through an Avalon U5 direct box.
Drums and acoustic guitar were set up using our typical Power Station mic layouts.
All these lines ran directly through Criteria’s SSL 9000J console and then direct to ProTools.
The final result was pure magic! Not just from the tech notes above, but because of all the people involved. Not just Deborah, Charles, and our Power Station team, but because of “ALL” the people involved and who added their time to make this session so great!
On that note, Paul and Rob want to give a special shout-out and thank you to Simon, Dominick, Cameron, and the rest of the Criteria staff for making this production one of the best sessions any of us have done in a long time.
Great music, Great process, and most importantly, GREAT PEOPLE! That was the secret of this date’s success.
Thank you Deborah for bringing such an amazing team of people together for such an awesome session!!!!
For the next stop on this awesome production, we take the tracks back to Power Station Studios and do some instrument overdubs. This will include some electric guitar, Hammond B3 organ, and some other sonic accouterments. Then we will record Deborah’s vocals (on our original Telefunken ELA M251).
Once this is all complete, we will mix this amazing creation on our Rupert Neve 9098i console. See Deborah’s links below to follow her and get an update on this release!!!
For more on Deborah Silver, visit her online:
The Deborah Silver Website
Facebook
Instagram
Twitter
YouTube
Spotify
For more AMAZING music from Deborah Silver, CLICK HERE!
For more information on Power Station Studios and how we can help you with your project, visit us at the links below:
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