Can you tell me about the origins of this project?
I used to work as a recording engineer at The Hit Factory in New York City in the mid-to-late '90s. I was on my way to work one day, and I was in a subway station. As you know, there's music playing in the subway every day; but on this one day, the platform was packed with people. I looked around to see what it was, and I saw two monks, painted all in white, with robes on. One was playing a nylon [string] guitar, and the other one was singing in a language I didn't understand. Everyone was packed in; I saw people with tears in their eyes, smiling and laughing. As I got on the train and went to work in the studio, it occurred to me that some of the best music I've heard in my life was on the way to the studio, not in the studio! That was the day I realized great music and great art are moments in time. They exist everywhere and, with recording equipment technology, we can harness those moments. That was the birth of Playing for Change, [as well as the inspiration] to travel to natural environments — subways, street corners, Indian reservations, African villages, Himalayan mountains — wherever people are playing live, outside in natural environments. I wanted those moments.
What were you working with, initially?
I decided to try to simulate the high quality of a good recording studio, in the street. I put together a setup powered with golf cart batteries, and eventually car batteries. First it was domestic — recording in city streets across the U.S. and on Indian reservations. I started out with a pretty good rig — I had a Grace Design m801 preamp into an 8-channel Apogee converter. Later I switched to portable, battery pack-powered Grace mic pres and a Pro Tools system. For a while, it was Pro Tools LE with six inputs; two digital and four analog. The other important things were the microphones. When I was recording with Paul Simon in the studio, we were using Schoeps microphones. We got a pair of CMC 6 Ug matched Schoeps mic bodies that have different capsules 12 years ago, and we've used them ever since, on almost all of the recordings. So, a lot of it was born from a New York City studio and evolved into something that we could take to the street.
Did you have any experience with location recording when you started?
I had recorded music, but not outside. The first couple of years [touring] across America was the experiment. By the time I started going around the world, I'd already recorded many musicians across America. The first video was "Stand by Me" and, if you listen to the new stuff, I think there's a dramatic improvement in the sound and the video quality. But I think, from the beginning, we started getting high-end recordings in the field, and that was the point. It has gotten better since then.
One could also argue that fidelity is not the point of a project like this.
With a lot of music documentaries, whenever you would hear street musicians it was always some camera mic picking them up. I always felt like they never got a fair shake. We realized if we brought good microphones, used different windscreens, a nice clock, good mic pres, and recorded it at a higher quality, we could give these things a chance to actually be represented properly to an audience. So, that's why we wanted to bring the studio to the street, instead of using camera mics.
How did you pick the recording gear?
There's a guy named Mickey Houlihan, and he's been our audio wizard. He's helped us set up stuff from the very beginning of the project. He's friends with Michael Grace, who makes the Grace mic pres. Grace Design have been very supportive of the project, and they get what we're doing. Their Lunatec stereo mic pre has a built-in clock, and they're great-sounding mic pres. They make a specific rechargeable battery pack that can power them. We never have to plug anything in when we're out in the field. The most exciting thing about this project is the ongoing learning process. You learn how to put the microphone furthest from the loudest thing, as well as what it takes to get an inspired performance. If it feels good, it'll sound good. The project's built on the fact that these people are so comfortable. They're outside, doing what they do.
What other pieces of gear do you consider essential?
A couple of dynamic mics — [Shure SM]57s, a mic for a drummer with low-end percussion, or for upright bass. Oh, and headphones! That's all the gear that I need to do it. I bring all different kinds of mics and spend time with the placement and stuff, but for the most part it's an organic thing.
What would you not bring along, because of the hassle?
In the beginning I bought a nice DPA mic, one of those high-voltage mics that's got a line output. It was so overwhelming; you could hear cars two miles away. Nicer condenser mics that have any kind of wide- spectrum are a nightmare for us. We try to pinpoint everything and combine it with some DIs — then you can get a good track. But I've got to say — the best- sounding drums that I've ever recorded have been outside. There's something about the decay of nature that is unbelievable!
In a sense, you're probably doing much more outlandish things with the acoustic environment than anybody who's working in a studio.
They happen naturally, because you're not really controlling it. You're going along with it. So the birds are usually in tune and in time — it all seems to work out. As soon as the musicians hear it in their headphones, they feel so good. They feel like they're in a recording studio, but they're sitting on a park bench in a village, or in a ghetto in Brazil, playing congas outside.
When you're looking at mics you might use, are you generally looking for something that's as tight as possible, to minimize all the ambient noise that you run into?
Yeah, I definitely want them as tight as possible. You've got to figure that, for the songs we make, there are anywhere from 30 to 80 musicians on the track. By the time we're done, we've got all that accumulated noise, but we also have all that accumulated energy. We have to be careful about keeping out sounds, like rumble and high-end squeaks of brakes on cars. That stuff can be a drag.
How bulky is the setup?
With my backpack and a carry-on, I can carry all my audio hardware, software, the microphones, and everything like that. I have a checked bag that's very heavy and long with wheels on it. That's got all the mic cables, mic stands, and DIs; items I'm willing to check-in at the airport. We also have a bag of cameras. Now we use these new Canon cameras, like the EOS 5D and the 7D; they're much smaller, but such higher quality. You can get this cool film look with the depth-of-field, and that's helped us.
You check this gear when you're traveling? Have you run into any trouble with that?
We try to carry-on all the expensive stuff and only check the heavy, miscellaneous things. I would say that we've run into trouble at almost every airport in every third-world country — the sheer fright on their faces when I drop one of my bags on their scale. We went to film in Cairo after the bombing of the Israeli embassy, and it was a tight situation. They actually tried to take our cameras and some of our audio gear from us. Fortunately we were able to let them hold on to one of our cameras that actually wasn't working, and that gave us a chance to get through. Just making sure that none of it gets stolen, monitoring all of it, is tense. But, at the same time, karma is on our side, you know? This is a fun project that gets people excited. We have the will to make it work, and the gear always makes it with us. In the beginning we had stuff stolen on our first couple of trips outside of America — cameras and microphones. Since then, nothing's happened. We've been careful, and I guess also fortunate.
