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paulhurt · 12th February 2005

As far as I can see, the only bleed you have to worry about especially is the brass section into the drum overheads and vocal mic (latter not a giant problem, depending on the singer - have them face the brass section so null rejects section a bit, use distance, absorber?), and drums into the brass mics.

I would tend to use a stereo pair of some description (maybe ORTF, maybe ORTF hypers!, maybe M-S) aimed specfically to pick up the brass as a section. Then you can close mic drums, guitar, and DI the rest.

Much will depend on the sound of the room of course. Playing with the position of that pair will be critical to your overall sound.

If it's classic big band you're after, drums aren't normally very upfront in the mix. So, assuming your nicest drum sound is in the close mics and overheads, your limiting factor to getting a good drum sound at mix time will be how much spill makes it into the main pair covering the horns. Experiment with limiting the amount of HF trash from the cymbals that gets into the main brass pair by suspending some kind of absorber (dare I suggest a duvet?) between the drums and the brass mics. You can HPF the brass pair a little which should clean things up (e.g. bass, kick drum spill).

I wouldn't bother trying to mic horns individually and then attempt to mix for an ensemble sound - that can easily turn into a nightmare of off-axis spill and is very dependent on players keeping consistently on-mic. Instead, just position close mics for solos. Identify who has solos on which tunes and reposition your two or three best LD mics for each tune accordingly. C414s in hyper seem to work well for me, isolates player better than your average cardiod. Good on trumpet for some reason.

The other spill concern is monitoring. In an ideal world you use cans and isolation booths, but I imagine that's not an option. Are you having to use a PA so the singer & keyboard player can hear themselves? Pick carefully where you place monitors/PA cabs/backline - you want to try to avoid having them blasting into your main brass pair. Generally, the player needs to hear themselves louder than anyone else does, so the bass player for instance should be right on top of their amp so that it's loud enough for them, quiet for everyone else. Keep monitor levels as quiet as you can get away with.

The singer would likely appreciate cans so they can hear themselves as loud as they like, in which case you can have them very low in any foldback monitors, just so players can make them out for reference.

Hope that helps. Still, a bit of a struggle to get this into 10 tracks. I'd suggest:

1+2 horns overall
3 solo spot mics mixed to one track (unlikely to all be soloing simultaneously!)
4 BD
5 Snare
6 mono SDC overhead
7 Electric Bass - DI
8 Keys - DI and submixed if necessary
9 Gtr - miked up
10 vox

Hope this gives you food for thought. At the end of the day, I'm just guessing at what you're likely to encounter, so YMMV. It sounds like a challenge, but done carefully it could turn out very respectable. Let us know how it goes (hope you've got lots of time in there!)

12th February 2005	#2
paulhurt Gear interested Joined: Mar 2004 Location: London, UK Posts: 25	As far as I can see, the only bleed you have to worry about especially is the brass section into the drum overheads and vocal mic (latter not a giant problem, depending on the singer - have them face the brass section so null rejects section a bit, use distance, absorber?), and drums into the brass mics. I would tend to use a stereo pair of some description (maybe ORTF, maybe ORTF hypers!, maybe M-S) aimed specfically to pick up the brass as a section. Then you can close mic drums, guitar, and DI the rest. Much will depend on the sound of the room of course. Playing with the position of that pair will be critical to your overall sound. If it's classic big band you're after, drums aren't normally very upfront in the mix. So, assuming your nicest drum sound is in the close mics and overheads, your limiting factor to getting a good drum sound at mix time will be how much spill makes it into the main pair covering the horns. Experiment with limiting the amount of HF trash from the cymbals that gets into the main brass pair by suspending some kind of absorber (dare I suggest a duvet?) between the drums and the brass mics. You can HPF the brass pair a little which should clean things up (e.g. bass, kick drum spill). I wouldn't bother trying to mic horns individually and then attempt to mix for an ensemble sound - that can easily turn into a nightmare of off-axis spill and is very dependent on players keeping consistently on-mic. Instead, just position close mics for solos. Identify who has solos on which tunes and reposition your two or three best LD mics for each tune accordingly. C414s in hyper seem to work well for me, isolates player better than your average cardiod. Good on trumpet for some reason. The other spill concern is monitoring. In an ideal world you use cans and isolation booths, but I imagine that's not an option. Are you having to use a PA so the singer & keyboard player can hear themselves? Pick carefully where you place monitors/PA cabs/backline - you want to try to avoid having them blasting into your main brass pair. Generally, the player needs to hear themselves louder than anyone else does, so the bass player for instance should be right on top of their amp so that it's loud enough for them, quiet for everyone else. Keep monitor levels as quiet as you can get away with. The singer would likely appreciate cans so they can hear themselves as loud as they like, in which case you can have them very low in any foldback monitors, just so players can make them out for reference. Hope that helps. Still, a bit of a struggle to get this into 10 tracks. I'd suggest: 1+2 horns overall 3 solo spot mics mixed to one track (unlikely to all be soloing simultaneously!) 4 BD 5 Snare 6 mono SDC overhead 7 Electric Bass - DI 8 Keys - DI and submixed if necessary 9 Gtr - miked up 10 vox Hope this gives you food for thought. At the end of the day, I'm just guessing at what you're likely to encounter, so YMMV. It sounds like a challenge, but done carefully it could turn out very respectable. Let us know how it goes (hope you've got lots of time in there!)