Live Vibes Recording, owned and operated by Ken Schumacher, is located in the beautiful Sierra Nevada foothills of Nevada County, between Sacramento and Reno.

I am passionately committed to capturing live musical performances so that people other than those lucky enough to be in the audience can also experience the magic. It takes skill, perseverance, and a bit of luck to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment.

I have sought out creative musical performances to record. Over the years, my technical toolset has grown significantly, and I have acquired considerable experience in the art and science of recording music on location.

Recording Chronology

(Redlands, California)

– John Fahey, The Barn, UC Riverside, November 6, 1976

(Fullerton, California)

– Steamers Cafe

(Grass Valley/Nevada City, California)

• Alasdair Fraser

• Buck Love and the Humperheads

• Dakota Sid and the Bandland Serenaders

• Sierra Jazz Society

• Gold Country Piano Institute

• Nevada County Composers Cooperative

• Young Composers Project

• Terry Riley

• Ludi Hinrichs

• Bill Douglass

• Binns Melander

• And dozens of other local performers

  I’ve progressed from recording two dynamic mics feeding an analog reel-to-reel recorder, jazz club sound board mixes to DAT tape, through 16 channel location recording to two ADAT machines, and finally 24 track digital recording to computer. All on location. I mix in my living room, which sounds great with its Genelec speakers.

  I met David Royer when he was custom building mics in his Fullerton garage, and still own a pair of his “pipe-bomb” handmade tube condenser mics that sound fantastic. I now own dozens of recording and stage mics, with an emphasis on ribbons, where I can exploit the nulls in their figure-eight pickup patterns to isolate individual musicians on crowded stages.