When practicing instruments by myself, I tend to record my jam sessions to review them afterwards. During the pandemic, I leveled up and started experimenting with recording full baterias by myself, recording each instrument separately and mixing them together. Doing so, I made three “lockdown bateria” videos where I assembled baterias by myself and with the help of remote friends. I didn’t know the first thing about music production, but I found it quite fun to just jam and at the same time experiment with different setups.

I now took it a small step further by investing in a proper instrument microphone, a mic stand, an audio interface and a DAW (which came included with the audio interface). I still don’t know anything about recording and mixing music, but I immediately got better results with my new gear. So I’m very happy about it! For those interested, here’s a quick breakdown of my mini setup:

• Microphone: Shure SM57, the standard instrument mic
• Audio interface: Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen
• DAW: Ableton Live Lite
• + Mic stand, XLR cable, USB cable of course.

Mic placement

I had to experiment a bit with the position of the mic to get the best possible results in the raw recordings. Finding the correct placement was the hardest for the berimbaus. Eventually I decided to place the mic in front of me, more or less between the cabaça and my striking hand. The trick was to make sure the sound of the caxixi didn’t overtake the berimbau itself, while still capturing the lower sounds of the berimbau. I also learned that when recording multiple berimbaus, it’s sometimes better to only use a caxixi with one of the berimbaus. The sound of a caxixi on all 3 berimbau tracks was too much when putting all recordings together.

For the atabaque, I chose to place the mic as close as possible to the drum’s surface, positioned horizontally and right above the skin. With the pandeiro I did the opposite and placed the mic underneath the pandeiro, with the mic facing up. At first I held the pandeiro very close to the mic, but then I had a bit too much bass. When I lowered the mic (and increased the distance between the pandeiro and the mic), I got a more balanced sound. When recording the agogô, I aimed the mic towards the opening of the castanhas.

Recording on the go

The sweet thing about this little setup is that you can simply use your smartphone to record music, you don’t necessarily need a computer. When your smartphone supports USB OTG (“On The Go”), then you can just connect the audio interface to your phone though a USB cable. When you turn on the interface and open the default voice recording app, you’ll get a notification that you’re using an external mic. And off you go, ready to record some capoeira tunes! This makes it very easy to take my gear to class and record the jam sessions we hold after our weekly trainings.

First experiments

Here are the first four tracks that were the result of an afternoon of fiddling around with my setup. They’re far from perfect and you can even hear some berimbau variations failing. But, in my defence, these are all single take recordings 😉. I’m quite happy about it (for now) and when I have the time I’m going to experiment with more with berimbau tunings and toque configurations in a bateria.

— Vinho