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Winner No. 2 Odeum Guitar Duo, Concert Hall Classics Robert Wetzel and Fred Benedetti complement each other musically and creatively. Photograph by Ken Jacques.
The second winner of our Homegrown CD contest is Concert Hall Classics, by the classical guitar duo Odeum. These two classically trained guitarists—Robert Wetzel and Fred Benedetti—have been playing together since 1991, but this is their first recorded collaboration. Wetzel and Benedetti's talents are complementary in more ways than one. Their musical tastes and playing styles are a perfect match, and their individual interests and talents also complement each other beautifully. Wetzel is the driving force on the creative side, deciding which pieces work best on record and arranging all the compositions for two guitars, while Benedetti is the technical guru who handles the recording, mixing, and mastering. Their ability to succeed in both realms is what caught our attention. The material on the CD—pieces by Torelli, Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov, Schumann, Chopin, Vivaldi, and Boccherini—is beautifully played, and the warm, balanced sound belies their home studio environment and relative inexperience behind the mics. The CD's simple, elegant cover and liner notes round out the package, with well-written program notes and player biographies and a clean design that's well suited to the classical guitar genre. Robert Wetzel began studying guitar as a teenager and spent years under the tutelage of the famed Romero family: Pepe, Angel, and Celedonio. He spent his high school summers living with the Romeros and helping out with household chores, such as gardening and driving, in exchange for lessons. "When they went on tour, we used to load up my VW van with their guitars, and I'd drive for them," he recalls. "I feel very fortunate to have had that unique experience." Wetzel received a BA in musical performance from Southern Methodist University and a master's from San Diego State University, and he is now on the music faculty at the University of San Diego. Fred Benedetti began playing the guitar at age nine. He took master classes with Andrés Segovia, Pepe Romero, Christopher Parkening, Federico Moreno-Torroba, and other renowned artists. Benedetti has performed with the San Diego Symphony, the San Diego Opera, and the American Ballet Company, among many others, and he is presently chair of guitar studies at Grossmont College and a member of the guitar faculty at San Diego State University. When Benedetti and Wetzel began preparing to record together, they considered courting existing labels, but they both felt strongly about putting out a collection of purely classical duets. They feared that a major label would attempt to push them in the direction of world music—demanding that they incorporate Latin rhythms or percussion, for example—so they decided to maintain creative control of their project by releasing it themselves. Their next step was to listen to recordings by some of their favorite classical guitarists in order to get a sense of what sound they were aiming for. "We really liked the recordings of Manuel Barrueco and John Williams and the Romeros," says Benedetti. "A lot of classical CDs are recorded really quiet, but I wanted to get the signal hotter. I also wanted to make sure the sound wasn't too dry. The Drawmer 1960 tube preamp gives it a warmer sound than direct digital." All the pieces were recorded live in an upstairs bedroom in Benedetti's house over the course of about two months. He did very little to studio-ize the room and says that they were really lucky that the room was naturally suited for recording. "It has a very thick rug on the floor, and it has an unusual shape, which is conducive to good sound—it's not square or rectangular," Benedetti explains. Wetzel played a 1976 Miguel Rodriguez classical on all the tracks, strung with hard-tension D'Addario Pro Arté basses and Savarez Cristal trebles. Benedetti used his 1982 Rodriguez strung with hard-tension Augustine Regals for all the compositions but one. When the duo was ready to record Vivaldi's Concerto in E Major, Op. 3, No. 12, the dry Santa Ana winds were blowing, and he couldn't get a good sound from his Rodriquez, so he used a 1997 Paul Jacobsen strung with hard-tension Savarez Alliance trebles and Augustine Blue basses. "The Jacobsen did just great," says Benedetti. "I was really happy with it. I used it for the Baroque piece, and the Jacobsen is brighter than the Rodriquez, so it ended up being very appropriate. It wouldn't have worked as well for the Spanish pieces." All the compositions were recorded with one microphone on each guitar—an AKG 414 and an Audio-Technica AT 4033—three to four feet away from the soundhole and parallel to the floor. "We were going to go with stereo on both instruments," Benedetti explains, "but the problem was that it was too big of a sound. So we both went in mono and just panned slightly one way or the other. We backed the mics off quite a bit, so they were just picking up what someone would pick up with their ear. That's how we simulated the more natural sound of the guitars. We wanted to make sure that it sounded like chamber music." The panning was basically fixed at 70/70, with 70 percent of Wetzer's guitar appearing in the right channel, and 30 percent in the left, and 70 percent of Benedetti's guitar left and 30 percent right. The signals were fed through a Drawmer 1960 tube compressor/preamp and recorded onto an Alesis ADAT. From there, Benedetti transferred the tracks to a 24-track Pro Tools setup on his Macintosh computer for mixing, utilizing Pro Tools' built-in EQ, reverb, and panning capabilities. The system also allows for the use of outboard effects, and Benedetti used a Lexicon LXP-1 reverb and a T.C. Electronic Finalizer Plus. For final editing, the file was converted to a Digidesign Soundtools II file that allowed Benedetti to splice out buzzes and other imperfections. "We did some splicing," Wetzel recalls, "but not much." "I really used it just to fix mistakes," says Benedetti. As far as lessons learned during the recording process, Benedetti bemoans the fact that a few of the tracks were recorded with reverb."That was a mistake," he says. "Now we record everything flat and add the reverb later in case we want to change it." The duo's other discovery was the importance of completing all the takes for a particular piece in one session, so that the tempo, the tone of the guitars, and the sound of the room are consistent from take to take in case something needs to be spliced in. "For some reason, we recorded one track of the Vivaldi on two separate occasions," Benedetti says, "and on one of the days the tempo was a little bit faster. I had to go in there and slow it down using the software and then splice it together." When the recording was completed, Benedetti used PageMaker 6.5 and Photoshop to create the liner notes, had color separations made at a local service bureau, and sent them to Sanyo Verbatim for duplication. So far they've pressed 5,000 copies of Concert Hall Classics, and the majority of the sales are the result of a deal that Wetzel struck up with Bayside Entertainment Distribution. "I originally set it up with the consignment person at the local Tower Records shops in San Diego," he says. "The buyer at the La Jolla store gave me the name of a person at Bayside, so I sent our CD to him, and they eventually took it on. They handle everything now." The Odeum Guitar Duo is now working on its second CD, Forgotten Romance, using basically the same process used for Concert Hall Classics. The new gear Wetzel and Benedetti receive from Sweetwater Sound (the $1,000 prize for winning this contest) ought to help them along the way.
Excerpted from Acoustic Guitar magazine, June 2000, No.90. WANT TO ENTER YOUR CD in our Homegrown CD contest? We’re accepting submissions until September 1, 2000. Get the details and the official entry form at www.acousticguitar.com/Homegrown/Homegrown.html. |
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