Recording a childrens choir

[b3beater]

This problem just fell into my lap...

A local school wants to record their childrens choir at my studio consisting of mainly younger children. They want do record all 40+ kids at once...

What is the bast way to feed the music to these kids without it interfering with the recording... obviously 40+ sets of headphones are not going to be an option....

Also feel free to suggest any miking tips for this little project.

Thanks everyone.

[Blackwater]

I did this last year for a school in the area and had the same dilema. 12 pairs of phones and 48 kids.

I set up the kids in sections in the main room. Sopranos over here, Altos over there, etc. I miced the sections seperately.Then I tracked only 2-3 of all sections live. So I was getting the whole choir and all it's sections live--just in small sections. When one group of the choir was done I excused them and brought in the next group of 10 or 12.

Obviously not the best, but a work around that worked really well and the Choir instructor was thrilled with the result.

I'm sure others will have different or better suggestions but this worked for me.

Chris

[b3beater]

That was my original thought but the director seems hell bent on doing everyone at once... since the junior high/elem. choir director obviously has a better grasp on whats neends to happen in the studio then the engineers..... imagine that

I may try to do this anyway but I am still curious to see what other solutions you slutz have here... It was suggested to just lightly bleed the music through the speakers in that room but I feel that I wont be able to get it loud enough for them to hear and pull them in pitch without it being more of a hinderance than a helper.... again, all opinions welcome..

[Blackwater]

Well, I would explain the options to the director and give your opinion as to what you think would work best and sound best.
Sounds like the music director is jumping into a production role and as producer the director needs to take responsibility for his/her decision. Takes the pressure off you a bit as the engineer.

Chris

[Rick Sutton]

I've recorded choirs and other large groups in the studio using the speakers as the only source of cues and music many times. especially when your talking school groups, this is the best solution. If your room sounds decent and you've got good speakers and the mics are placed properly the amount of bleed isn't going to kill the project. The biggest problem is usually having enough physical space and solid air conditioning for all the bodies involved. Don't sweat the bleed, just make the director happy and do it the way that was requested. Oh, and contrary to other opinions offered here, the director probably does know better than the engineer when it comes to recording large groups of kids....it ain't all about the technical end of things.

[joeq]

I recorded a 60 piece student choir in my studio in two shifts of 30 each. I used speaker playback and also handed out 10 pairs of headphones to those students that the teacher identified as the better singers. Keeping them in tune helped keep the others in tune.

To keep the bleed down, I set the speakers in the null of the mics. The speakers were set equidistant from the XY pair and had a mono feed. then I reversed the leads on one speaker to put it out of phase. There was still some bleed but really not so bad.

While the choir director may not understand the techinical requirements for making the best possible recording, you should consider that making the best possible recording may not be his only goal. They're kids, after all. In the case of the choir I recorded, it was not so much about the Product as it was about the Experience of going into the studio. Once I understood that fact and relaxed a bit, life was easier.

I doubt if anyone who listened to that CD ever thought, "hey there's monitor bleed on the choir"

My other challenge was doing 6 tours of the control room 10 students at a time.


On a more gear-oriented note, there was a recent discussion on Lynn Fuston's forum about a little gizmo (cheap!) that is a tunable FM transmitter. The idea is you instruct the choir that everyone must bring (buy) an FM walkman style receiver- ask all the moms and dads to lay out $10 each- then you just "broadcast" the monitor to them.

FM Transmitter for Choir