Orchestral alternative Rock Mixing

[Kevin Killen]

Originally Posted by ron florentine

Hi Kevin........You are one of the few lucky mixer/producers that gets to record and mix alt Rock records(Tori Amos, Duncan Shiek) that have a live orchestra.............What are some guidelines you tend to lean towards in fittng a orchestra within a contempoary arrangement.......Is your placement with violins/Viola ,cellos,Dbl Bass fairly traditional from left to right ........is your panning for a stereo mix for the Orch generally panned hard left -right,do you tend to compress the strings on a buss.....and do you ever augment smaller orchestras with orchestral sample libraries to create the illusion of a much bigger orchestra than the budget allow............and what Orchestral libraries do you perfer to work with.Any insights on this subject would be wonderful.Thanks again for all your time and great insight you are much appreciated here at GS!!!!


Ron Florentine
Soundswest Studio

Ron,

My approach is respectful of the typical orchestral panning that one would find. I start there and if its too dense then i will start moving the sections around. This can be tricky as good orchestral scoring and arranging relies so much on the interplay betwee the various sections and if the parts wriiten hand off the melody to another instrument , you may want to be cognisant of that. I will use very little compression as good orchestras have their own dynamic balance and I want to integrate that into my mix.

In terms of libraries, I do not have any myself but i have heard both good and bed. I truly was not paying too much attention to that aspect because it was used for thickening but I do remember the gigasampler have a wonderful selection. It all boils down to who is using it, if its the arranger him or herself then I suspect it will be done tastefully.

Kevin