Alanis Morissette

"But [songwriter and producer Glen] Ballard’s latest project, an acoustic re-recording of Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill required techniques a bit more delicate. Ballard’s collaboration with Ms. Ironic on the original was both artists’ biggest commercial success, and they commemorated the albums’ 10th anniversary by revisiting the songs unplugged.

The acoustic instruments were captured at Westlake Audio Studios (where Ballard once jammed on the synth of Michael Jackson’s Bad) with his cherished standbys — a vintage [AKG] D12, and a trio of Neumann mics — a 49, 47, and 67. These went through outboard Neve 1073 preamp, a classic Neve BCM-10 'sidecar' console."

"Though Pearson uses the XL4 mic pre's for most of the microphones onstage, for Alanis' vocal channel, he uses an Avalon VT737SP tube compressor/mic pre for more accuracy. 'I route that into a BSS DPR-901 II selectable-frequency compressor. Then I have a Klark-Teknik DN410 Parametric EQ that I assign to the vocal group on the Midas, so I can EQ specifically for her voice. Alanis writes all of her lyrics, and I think people come to the show to hear those lyrics, so I try to mix so that [the lyrics] are on top and out front and intelligible. She is a wonderful singer and really carries the show with her voice. However, she doesn't sing very loudly, and because of that, her vocal mic has a lot of gain, and she moves all over the stage, so you pick up stage volume through the vocal mic, which is the biggest challenge in mixing the show.'"