Microphone Practice on Selected Songs from Bon Iver’s For Emma, Forever Ago
Amanda Lewis · MUSICultures · 2011
“Record making is a recent art form,” writes Albin Zak (2001: 26), “and many of its artistic roles belong to no prior tradition—we know what songwriters do, but what about sound engineers?” This paper attempts to answer Zak’s question, if only in part. Specifically it addresses microphone practice and the role it plays in the creation of records. The analytic model used in Towards a Model for Analyzing Microphone Practice on Rock Recordings (Lewis, 2010), provides a structure with which to outline and analyze a case study of the microphone techniques on Bon Iver’s 2007 album, For Emma, Forever Ago.