Pipe organ recording, any ideas?

[joelpatterson]

Originally Posted by MichaelPatrick

The formal definition ... I can't help but correct the misinformation... omnis can't make an ORTF array....

What I love about this forum is the precision and erudition that posters will bring to bear to keep things official and defined correctly.

There's obviously a pressing need to originate a term for "omni's configured as though they were in what could be called ORTF."

Here's a contender... "OCATTWIWCBCO"!

[Corran]

haha, thumbsup

[Gerax]

What I love about this forum is that the original subject matter of the thread usually lasts about 4 to 5 posts...dfegad then it's off to flaming and "my dad can kick your ass" kind of thing...

Cheers

[JEGG]

Dan-I agree with your comments about organs and omnis, but wasn't it you who posted very interesting (and nice) samples of an organ recorded with two MKH800 (Blumlein) and two KM131s?

They both worked well, and were different in some interesting ways.

[d_fu]

Originally Posted by JEGG

Dan-I agree with your comments about organs and omnis, but wasn't it you who posted very interesting (and nice) samples of an organ recorded with two MKH800 (Blumlein) and two KM131s?

I remember now... But I wonder whether I might have made a mistake, maybe it was KM 130, not 131... And it was MKH 80.

Seems the 80/0 does reach a bit further down than e.g. a KM 140 or 184...

I'd still always want an omni somewhere, even if it were a "2.1" setup with single omni.

[big country]

binaural that big bitch

kids and your oxrt hyuv xy shit

like joe sugested put em high

[thingsbreak]

I know this is kind of late too, but a couple of things I regretted after my last pipe organ recording - i seemed to pick up a bit of mechanical hum from the blowers and a bit of wind noise - also if possible plan on a couple of takes of each piece in case you need to edit out traffic rumble at a bad spot etc...

[Corran]

I bet well-tuned ribbons in Blumlein on organ would make the subwoofer explode.

[joelpatterson]

Did I hear a rumour that the mp3 upload is working again?


I didn't think so....

[Musiclab]

great pipe organs are about the room they're in

[joelpatterson]

4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download 11 Sauls Camp from King David Honegger.mp3


Does this make any sense of any kind to anything? (Well by God it does! This link takes you to a page where you can click the little "play" icon and hear the song! Incredible!)

And so-- undenyably-- this would be a link to a dinner-esque theater-esque light opera with a pair of QTC-30s in ORTF-- I mean-- you know what I mean!

[Corran]

Cool...sounds good on my laptop, I'll have to check it out tomorrow with some real speakers...

The ambiance is great, is anything added reverb-wise? If so it's completely natural.

[joelpatterson]

Nothing added on this one... (although I have no qualms about adding reverb when it's called for, even though it does make me feel like a cynical, manipulative, oh... I dunno... a producer!)

Funny theater, this one... they tell me from onstage you can't hear 'anything', but the sound blooms out into the room nicely. Totally wood panelled everywhere.

[Jim vanBergen]

Lorenzo, this is a great thread and I'd like to see it's potential be realized if you could spare a few minutes.

I saw your posted pictures and what you wrote about the session, but I feel I'm missing a lot about your gig, and how you feel about it in retrospect.

What about your feelings on how the sessions went?

Are you happy with the mics, preamps, recorders you used?

I saw your notes about positioning- what would you RATHER have done? If you went back to the same venue, what would you do differently?

How were the pieces? What time of day did you record?

Are you mixing, or is the job all done?

if you have delivered the final product, what are your postmortem thoughts?

Jim

PS- My dad can't kick anyone's ass, he's a pushover. Me, on the otherhand...I'm a big frigging bully.

[Corran]

I listened to the recording again joel through real monitors and it sounds super fine . The stereo space is great. Cool music too. And the spoken word is nice and clear. Good work!

[joelpatterson]

Thanks-- that particular group of instrumentalists is the cream of the crop for this area-- it was like an orchestra with only fifteen people: one oboe, one trumpet, one French horn, one percussionist... really made the most of the music. Which is, I guess, kind of the whole point.

[MichaelPatrick]

Originally Posted by joelpatterson

Thanks-- that particular group of instrumentalists is the cream of the crop for this area-- it was like an orchestra with only fifteen people: one oboe, one trumpet, one French horn, one percussionist... really made the most of the music. Which is, I guess, kind of the whole point.

Joel,

I listed to your clip with interest and coincidentally just yesterday I met a guy that records at nearby university who uses a technique just like yours, with Earthworks QTC-30s. I listened to some of his stuff too, and was pretty amazed at the sounds you guys are getting. For some reason it works! Now I have have to try it for myself and try to understand why.

Thanks

[rwhitney]

I recently recorded five pipe organs, for the first time, for an independent video documentary, and would like to discuss and share my experiences.

In all cases, we set up a main pair of U87s in cardioid pattern either in ORTF, or spaced up to about 20', depending on the layout of the main pipes, up around 20' and about 20'-25' feet back. The U87s in omni did not sound detailed enough to us, or would have needed to be placed too close to a particular rank of pipes for the desired presence, so we miked "close" and relied on a pair of TLM170s usu. in omni for ambience. These were also up 20' from the floor, and another 20'-40' back from the main pair. In one church, we were fortunate to have a rear balcony for the ambient pair on regular mic stands.

Three of the churches had pipe divisions in the rear of the church, usually behind a balcony. In one case, we used an XY configuration of AKG 451s about 15' away, in another we used an ORTF pair of AKG C414s suspended from a catwalk, and in one we used a single C414 facing away from a pair of speakers that formed the electronic portion of a hybrid organ.

The mics went to an Apogee AD16x>Digi003>PT LE set up in the sanctuary for communication with the director. I would have preferred to set up in a separate room, such as a dressing room, bride's room, etc. to have some isolation from the direct sound of the organ, but using headphones to listen back between takes did work.

The extended bases of the large stands we rented would not allow the mics to be placed close enough for a true ORTF (7.5"). As a result, more than usual comb filtering occurs when this pair is summed to mono. I felt U87s were too weighty to place on a stereo bar at 20' up, so we exercised caution by using a separate stand for each. I can now see the clear advantage of using SDCs for this application, but we didn't have any of high enough quality on hand. Fortunately, some of the phase issue has been corrected by shifting tracks.

I found tall, heavy duty stands to be absolutely necessary for the main pair in 4 out of 5 of the churches. We rented three Mathews 20' high roller light stands, sandbags, and Norman adapters with 3/8" threaded studs from Samy's Camera in Costa Mesa, CA, and used 3/8"-to-5/8" adapters for the mic mounts. These were just tall enough for the churches I recorded in. Getting the mics up high seems to yield an expansiveness and depth to the sound that mics closer to the floor would not. Especially in carpeted churches, of which I think there was only one.

The problem of ambient noise, from organ blowers, external traffic, lawn mowers, airplanes, and creaky crackly church edifices was formidable. The organs themselves were mechanically noisy, too, which I'm told is typical. I did not know how to avoid the abundance of blower noise, other than to sacrifice detail by placing the main mics further away. In the end, I used the Izotope RX Noise plugin to reduce the unwanted commotion. This plugin worked reasonably well, though there is some low level aliasing and blur in the final product.

Because this was in many ways primarily a video shoot, we only had time for two or three takes of each piece and, due largely to the various noises, have had to splice extensively between them to achieve an acceptable result.

I'll add some samples from this recording in the next post for clarification.

[rwhitney]

This is a string of examples from four of the five organs featured in the documentary I worked on recently. The last two are from the same church. I'd really appreciate any experienced advice regarding the basic sound of these recordings, and tips for achieving a better sound in the future.

[Peter Allison]

as I am interested in making pipe organ recordings, I was surprised to come across this kmf audio - a revelation in audio technologyIt was posted on another board, and seemed a bit of a joke, but they are very serious. would it be any good sitting on a stand between 2 organ cases in a UK cathedral?
Peter

[7rojo7]

Originally Posted by cppi

I did a documentary of pipe organ recordings for the British and French Organ Society in France at the St. Sulpice Cathedral with David Roth. If this is for the Artist you might want to oddly get his/her perspective from the organ platform. I got many stereo tracks (near, far, cards, omnis, ribbons, everything imaginable) all over the cathedral to cover different room perspectives so they could have different ambience/perspective tracks. From a listeners perspective you could mix to taste, from the players perspective it always sounded to roomy for the player. The player hears the organ differently, this may or may not be the case but ask what the end result is going to be. Organ geeks are a different breed!!

If you put an xy, Soundfield or an ATMOS just behind and over his head, you'll get the key, bench wrestling and stop pull sounds too.
Almost no one gets to hear an organ like this. I went to a school (35yrs. ago) that had an organ in its church, my friend was the organist and I would go and listen to him practice, we even did some 4 hands stuff. There were also ranks in the rear of the church. I'm sure you would hear a little something of the key noise, it's not like a piano. It sounds a little backwards actually and the rear ranks are the farthest away. But, the bass is amazing, I guess because at the seat in front of the keyboard would be the longest simple excursion in the room. I wasn't an audio engineer or even interested at the time so I never wandered around to check.
I've never had the opportunity to to apply myself to this task, but thinking about it, I'd probably shoot for an OCT or better yet an xy over an omni high above the organist with a Jecklin AB with another 'disc' (or anything, panel etc..) behind it to catch the return and rear ranks there. Or mirrored ORTF with a panel between them under an omni, all from the same position (I don't have an ATMOS or a Soundfield or a Josephson 700s, but I think these might be useful for this). An Organ would be wonderful in surround, one of the only instruments that I see that would really benefit from it. As I see it the rear ranks are placed there to have an ethereal effect. So why bring it closer? In stereo they would sound futher away than the front ranks, something that was probably considered by the designers of and composers for the instrument. That's a hell of a study, research on which Organ a piece was written and how the Organist intends to perform it on the Organ in question. Nah

[rwhitney]

Yeah, surround is the way to go. We're doing a 5.1 mix for the DVD in addition to the stereo. One thing I've noticed is that, despite all the posts here about capturing the lowest pedal notes, bass is significantly rolled off in many commercial recordings. Has anyone else noticed that? Using LDCs, I captured the lows all right, but even after HPF-ing the room, the organist wanted a lot less bass.

[RickZ]

Ross,
I love your clip, that is the nicest organ sound I've heard for a long time. Very clear stereo image, imho. Many here who do pipe organ recording are in the omni camp. Personally, I can't figure out how a decent stereo image can be achieved with mics that pick up from all directions.

I also like the modest amount of room 'ambience', we hear the organ and trumpet very well.

Nice going,
Rick Z

[Peter Allison]

I also agree, what a nice sound. I am hoping that my live concert recording is half as good.
I heard some old "mono" recordings the other night, and thought thats how some of mine sound, thank god no one gets to hear them.

Peter

[sonare]

Originally Posted by RickZ

Many here who do pipe organ recording are in the omni camp. Personally, I can't figure out how a decent stereo image can be achieved with mics that pick up from all directions.

In a live acoustic your cardioids will also be getting sound from all directions. Otherwise it would have to be rather anechoic. Until you actually try a pair of omnis perhaps 18 inches apart you will not be able to understand why most organ recordings are done that way. I personally have not heard cardioids that can capture the weight of a well-equipped pedal division-- not to mention the room itself. The Schoeps Mk21 are close, tho. And yes-- I know they are subcardioids.

Another matter is to think like a musician and not like an engineer-- they generally don't think about "image" because they either listen in the car or have one speaker on top of the other!

Rich

[rumleymusic]

Many here who do pipe organ recording are in the omni camp. Personally, I can't figure out how a decent stereo image can be achieved with mics that pick up from all directions.

Directionality is only one of the many ways our ears determine location of sound. Another way is the delay from when sound reaches one ear before it reaches the other. This is the principal which makes omnis work. Personally I like the imaging better because when you factor in the directionality of speakers or headphones, cardioids are pretty much separation overkill.

[rwhitney]

I'm a proponent of spaced omnis myself, and almost always use them when recording classical music. They sound much more natural to me. I set up omnis first for three of the five organs referred to above, but preferred cardioids in the end because with all of the ambience, the sound seemed too diffuse using my particular LDCs. I'm certain that other microphones would have worked better as omnis, schoepps and DPA come to mind. I only discovered later that I had a Soundfield surround microphone available to me!

Anyway, I appreciate the encouraging remarks so far, and would also appreciate any negative criticisms from other experienced engineers. We're still editing and mixing, so there's time to make changes if necessary.

[datkinson]

Reaching back a ways to Peter the Buche's Oct 4 inquiry about KMF Audio. We haven't had a chance to use our mic in this situation, but I think with the right positioning, the results could be really spectacular. Adequate bass response certainly would not be an issue. We plan to be in the UK next spring, maybe we can work out an opportunity for a trial run with you.

[Peter Allison]

Originally Posted by datkinson

Reaching back a ways to Peter the Buche's Oct 4 inquiry about KMF Audio. We haven't had a chance to use our mic in this situation, but I think with the right positioning, the results could be really spectacular. Adequate bass response certainly would not be an issue. We plan to be in the UK next spring, maybe we can work out an opportunity for a trial run with you.

I am sure that something can be arranged, I have contacts in various cathedrals, including Durham and Liverpool Metropolitan, and that has serious reverb, google it, and have a look. I would post some samples of my mediocre recordings, but do not know how to
Peter the Butcher