Recording a Small Church Choir (Album project)

[fifty8th1]

Haven't done a church in many years. This is a small neiborhood church and the reflections are just terrific.

I've been doing sound checks and feel that recording the choir would sound best if I could reproduce what a listener hears if positioned in the best place in the church.

The 20 member choir will be positioned in the front center .... with still much room behind. (alter and statues far enough back)

I would like to use 3 mics. All an inch to 6 inches apart. and 10 to 20 feet in front of the choir.

One mic straight ahead .. dead center of choir....to get a clear center focus. Two other mics facing toward the Left and Right walls
The balance between center and sides can be mixed in Pro Tools,

I want to capture the beautiful sound just the way I hear it. Our ears hear from the left and right and that is why the 2 mics will be positioined simiar.

I may not even mic the organ as noone turns around and listens to it directly. The new electric synth organ is postioned all the way back and above where the choir normally performs. The sound of it seems to flow all through the church without any noticeable change front to back.

This would mean that the 3 mics would pick up the organ and choir all from the same position.
And also means the timing of music and choir should be right together.

I believe this will give a much wider stereo and realistic sound than using a XY setup.

OK.... that's it.......

Would anyone would care to analyze this for the pluses and minuses...

Thanks..

Jon..

58Th Street Studio

[Niels B]

If you want to capture everything, you need these:

http://www.northstarconsult.nl/sonodorehome.html

[Brian Porick]

I've done a bunch of choral recording, and I tend to have better results with a spaced stereo pair of mics (often omnis). Putting your mics that close together may collapse the stereo image a bit too much. You might want to have something pointed back at the organ, just so you have the option of sneaking a little presence in if you want. Ultimately, though, use your ears and you'll be fine.

Brian Porick

[fifty8th1]

Brian..

When you say spaced mics are you saying maybe 5 or more feet apart ?

The second thing is the organ. This is something quite different. I may mic and track it...but don't believe it will be usable. Its a much different thing from the 3 mics focused on the choir and walls.
There would be no place in the church to mic it without timing problems in the final mix. This means that there would be comb filtering. Using just the 3 mics there should be no more filtering than is normal when listening in any good postion during the perfomrance.

Thanks.
Jon

[Randy Wright]

http://www.dpamicrophones.com/eng_pub/index.html

Click that link, then select Microphone University on the left. Then click Stereo Techniques in the middle, then click on Decca Tree. I believe this might be the best set-up for you. As far as the Organ goes..if it's far enough away you might be able to mic it without comb filtering problems. If anything just try it and see what happens....you can't go wrong with trying can you?

[john1192]

if you are going to face one mic straight on and the other two at the walls ...

you might wnat to try an MS setup ...

2 mics ... one cardioid (straight on) the other in figure 8 (facing the walls) ...

you only need to record 2 channels and you can decode later ...

either a proper decode using MS decoder or ...

run cardioid mic into one channel of console and pan center ...

run the figure 8 into another channel and pan left ...

take insert out (send) (do not just y-cable that mic it will not work right) to another channel reverse phase and pan right ...

start with the cardioid and get good level in mono, then begin to add figure 8 channels (left/right) and see how phat this can sound ...

disregard this if you are familiar with MS ...

please send me an MP3 when you get it done or even raw i would love to hear it ...

[email protected]

peace and happy recording john

[davip]

Our ears hear from the left and right and that is why the 2 mics will be positioined simiar.

It's definitely more complicated than this, because our ears discriminate between sounds coming from in front and in back. Of course there has been tons of research done to try to determine how to best simulate , using mics, what the ears pick up, and people have come up with many solutions, including coincident and near coincident techniques like X-Y, ORTF, dummy heads and M-S. 2 and 3 mic spaced techniques are also common, as is the Decca tree.

Our ears also process directional input through a "psycho-acoustic filter" which affects how we perceive something like that organ positioned behind us. Since your mic setup will eliminate this factor, I think you might want to record the organ to a couple of tracks to keep your options open.

[fifty8th1]

2 things... Well ...really 3 but I am still skipping the organ discussion for now.

1. yes ..The PsychoAcoustical matter is very interesting.. and very true. I have no illusions that I could re-produce this on a recording...It just won't be there. If I had a chance to record the choir several times then all things could be possible.

2. MS also very interesting. I have given this some thought also. I have read articles for years on this ...but have never read one that said much about the end result. I know it has been used a great deal in TV studios. Yes if it really sounded great ..it could be easily done . One of the MicPre's I might use is the 8 channel True Precision box . It has built in MS on channels 7 and 8. If this is the real MS McCoy ... I would love to try it...but then again I only get one chance to record the choir.

Thinking about the True Systems now ...the MS mix is done on the fly by adjusting the fader knobs..No changing it later. Probably not the way I would want to do it. The previous post however gave me a workable way..

Would someone care to comment on MS ...would it be a valuable method..... would it give a good stereo effect.
I tend to feel MS was developed to avoid the expense of an extra mic and channel. ...a very clever method ...but is it better than acually using a Front ... Left...and..Right mic arrangement.

Jon
58th Street Studio

[Doug Ring]

It's not true that you can't adjust M&S later - if you record the two mics on seperate tracks with no M&S processing then you can tweak the balance all you want afterwards by playing them back through your M&S channels.

Another possibility might be a pair of figure-of-8 mics (such as AKG 414s) at 90 degrees (the classic Blumlein setup. This automatically gives you an element of rear pickup that might give you extra definition on the organ.

Or why not go the whole hog and rent a Soundfield microphone? You record its outputs to 4 different tracks and when you play back through its dedicated control box you can alter dozens of parameters which are equivalent to moving the mic closer or further away, altering its height, and adjusting the angle of the capsules. If you've only got one chance and don't want to spend an age getting the right mic position while the choir are there, the Soundfield allows you to do it afterwards!

[fifty8th1]

The bi directional methods I am a little skeptical about. Might be a little too much information coming in.

Just last night we finally processed the 2 track portable test recording that was
done last week.

A plain front and side mic sounded so good and clean and most of all - very church sounding. The XY was much more narrow...however we did want to hear it with our own ears back at the stuido, So we did the XY on all the tests. Didn't seem to make any difference on the organ volumn.

We will still use 3 or 4 mics and channels...but after hearing the result of the test tape...I got a feeling we might just use the 2 .... Front and just the one side. It was just fantastic. It may not give a true left to right sound of the choir...but it was truly wonderful.

Recording back at 15 to 20 feet gave the best blend of the choir...with the reverb thru out the church. The super wide sound of front and side .. and at a proper distance.
The 15 foot mark allowed a bit of clean presence with good dynamic range.....The 20 foot began to smear that sharp clear vocal sound ..but gave such a smoothing effect (with less range) that it was also very pleasant. (note to self: It might be beneficial to use both distance positions for different songs)

The organ turned out to be just the right volume. I had the player turn her control all the way to the top because the knob had no markings !!! The only level that I could be sure of on recording day .....is the full knob level.... so that's what we did...and it worked.

Thanks Doug for the tip on the Soundfield