I have had a habit of recording some sort of a cover song in the summertime if I don't have other projects going on at the same time. Now that I have finished with Synkissä Väleissä, I decided to do something fun. At least fun for me, I'm not sure about you.
I bought an used Line6 Helix LT lately and sold my SansAmp, so that was something I wanted to try out. To do something else than what I've been used to do. I also wanted to experiment with minimalist style of recording drums. So what could be better than doing something from Hendrix? So, Little Wing it is! Maybe not the most original idea, but something I had not tried out before.
So, I started the project by recording the drums alone (as usual). This time, however, with only a single small diaphragm condenser microphone placed two drum sticks from the snare. So, the classic Bonham setup without the bass drum mic. I used all three toms in my Genista kin, Mapex Black Panther 14x5 snare, and very thin Amedia cymbals (23" and 19") with Istanbul Mehmet Turk hats.
After that I dialled in a very raspy guitar tone (Hiwatt DR-103 model with some booster pedal + Ownhammer Mesa 4x12 IR if I remember right) and played the backing tracks with my Warmoth "Les Paul" using SD p-rails in P90 position. For the bass, I used some Helix cab and amp with minor modifications, and for the vocals I used the same mic I used for recording the drums. Very simple.
I am very pleased with the results. One single mic captured essentially everything I needed from the kit, and to my ears Helix sounds very pleasing and lively without any high-end fizz that I have associated with digital modelling amps. So, here is the final result:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/z9mx7qtegxq8j1g/Little%20Wing%20master.wav?dl=0
