recording a brass band

[draguuu]

my church has a brass band and the director would like to make an official cd of the brass band.

my church has a nice, big gym where the youth plays ball and stuff and its also used to hold big services that dont fit in the sanctuary due to seating. our sanctuary will hold about 300 to 500 people (around there lol). the gym has its own natural verb which isnt bad for live. but i want to process my own verb in the mixing stage. because the sanctuary is padded very nicely, its built almost like a studio.

my plan is to mic up each group of instruments, not every single instrument, but mic up small groups. the band isnt too big, maybe 30 to 50 people. so like a mic on the first trumpets, another on the second trumpets, another one or two on the flutes, etc....

im doing it like that because i want to have control of just about every section so that when i go back into pro tools, i can control almost exactly how it will turn out.

though, another guy i work with (i help with the av team at church, audio) wanted to do it in the gym (thats why i mentioned the gym), and he wanted to take two condenser mics and record them like that.

ive seen some people take like 4 or 5 mics and mic their brass band in general. but then again that was live.

heres the question i have for you guys: for an official cd that will undergo mixing, and mastering, would you mic up a brass band with afew mics in general, or use more mics to record most to every section of the band? and why? do you have any advice you could give?

we will be recording for afew saturdays each saturday starting in may. so i'll definitely post how its going if you guys would like to know

thanks
--dragu

[0VU]

Originally Posted by draguuu

my church has a brass band and the director would like to make an official cd of the brass band.

...

my plan is to mic up each group of instruments, not every single instrument, but mic up small groups. the band isnt too big, maybe 30 to 50 people. so like a mic on the first trumpets, another on the second trumpets, another one or two on the flutes, etc....

Just a thought - if it has flutes in it then it's a wind band, not a brass band


And I'd definitely go with the all playing at once, in the best acoustic you can find, with the minimum number of mics needed to get the best result. With an amateur band in a less than ideal acoustic that's likely to be more than just a single pair of mics but hopefully not more than one or two per section and a bit of overall ambient cover. It's often a case of treading a line between hearing absolutely everything in great detail (warts and all) but with total control over every single note, and hearing enough to convey the music and atmosphere of the performance whilst glossing over the less desirable aspects. So some kind of micing which allows an overall 'favourable impression' plus the ability to 'tilt' the balance a little in different directions to help with room/layout problems or playing issues without putting specific people/parts too much in the spotlight.

Also, recording is always a slightly unnatural process for musicians unused to it and ime they always perform far better when on familiar ground so the 'record a performance' approach is almost always the way to go. Overdubbing to click tracks on headphones or other 'studio' practices are liley to lead to more problems and a less enjoyable result with people who don't normally play like that.

As for the room, if the dead space is comfortable for them to play in (another aspect of getting the 'performance') it might be a better option than an over live and not good sounding gym. If the gym has a decent sound (I've rarely found one that does) then it'd be ok, if not, the ability to control things and replace or augment a non acoustic with something better from a box often is better than trying to work around and/or superimpose a desirable synthetic acoustic on a recorded poor but very obvious acoustic.

And other things.