Dave Grissman and Friends Bring Django Reinhardt Back To Life

The YouTube description says that this recording session took place  in someone’s living room.

Sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

Well, this is proof that you don’t need to have a great room to make a great recording as the musicians which include Dave Grissman, Robin Nolan, Frank Vignola and  Michael Papillo make all the magic happen.

Now it certainly helps to have a guy like David Grisman along, as he’s one of the greats that knows how to record. I’ve personally learned a lot from him.

So, you will notice that they are not far away from each other and those microphones are picking up other sound sources.. This means that Frank Vignola’s mic is also picking up Grisman’s mandolin and visa versa. Now is that a good thing?

Well, while in a recording session with David Grisman, we sat the same way.  I asked him about the “bleed” and he said … “Bleed is a good thing.”

But bleed for all you recording dudes generally is a bad thing if you are planning to do overdubs, fix mistakes etc. That is why you will see recording sessions with the musicians isolated. This way, if someone makes a mistake, the engineer will have no bleed issues and be able to repair the track. 

Now in regard to Grisman’s statement, the bleed is a “good thing” due to the fact that it makes a recording a lot larger sounding since  each instrument will have more than one sound source.

In a setup like this, there are no plans for overdubs and the recording can’t easily be altered..

Hey wait a minute, that means that these guys are not making mistakes and are great players!  Wow, playing good in the studio… what a concept!

I’d like to thank my friend and guitar extraordinaire Betsy Rome for finding this video. Awesome!

Here’s an Amazon link to the session- check it out.