String recording question

[amanitas]

So if you were going to record a string trio that you were stacking to sound like a string orchestra, and you were going to use one mic to do it (ie positioning the three players around one omni , probably hanging in the middle) and you had the following gear list what would you use?

Mics:

Sahiaman's Little Blondie
Cascade Fathead
B.L.U.E. Cactus
B.L.U.E. Blueberry
B.L.U.E Kickball
Royer R121
Neumann TLM103
AKG C414B-ULS
AKG C451B
Beyerdynamic M160
Sennheiser MD421
Sennheiser E602
Sennheiser E 609
ElectroVoice RE-20
Audix D1
Audix D2
Audix D4
Shure SM81
Shure SM7B
Shure SM57

Pres:

Chandler Germ
Avalon 737SP
Neve 33421 Preamp
Trident S100 Channel Preamp/Eq
Trident Flexmix Channel Strip
Focusrite RED 8 Channel Preamp
Focusrite ISA428 Channel Preamp

Comps:

Empirical Labs Distressor
Summit TLA100
Crane Song Trakker
Anthony DeMaria Labs CL1000
UREI LA4
DBX 160A

Remember, due to the amount of track stacking required here we are probably going to only use 1 mic per track, 1 pre and 0-? comps. What would you do going in? We have a nice sounding live room that is huge and mostly wood, and the players are top flight session pros who should require little to no part fixing.

My instinct tells me to use the little blondie and the avalon with little to no compression but perhaps run through the ADL anyway. Then again 414 might sound mighty nice too. What would you do?

(FWIW knowing myself and the other engineer, we are probably going to end up throwing 5 or 6 mics anyway, but I think this is most likely what will get used for the core of the sound. I'd like to avoid any sort of close micing otherwise and kind of let the players balance themselves in the room as much as possible and then capture that. Possible we might add one more violinst, but not sure yet.)

Thanks!

D

[amanitas]

Oh yes, the song, by the way, is a 60-s soul type thing. Male singer but going for an Aretha kind of vibe musically, 6/8 swing feel, vintage-y sounds. But want the strings to be love unlimited orch. style - mostly simple but some really ornate flourishes thrown in and very sweet sounding for lack of a more descriptive term.

Thanks in advance!

[samwinston123]

If you're going for vintage and full then I would definitely choose a ribbon and probably wait to compress all of the tracks together. If the room is large and sounds good, it might be cool to try and create the feeling of an orchestra being in that space. You could leave the mic positioned at one end of the room, and have the players move to different locations for each take, so you get the full range of sounds from close up to far away. If you want it to be stereo, you could rotate the mic as they move from left to right and then pan accordingly in the mix.

[Darth Preamp]

I've actually done this quite successfully using both one and two players. It can be a little bit drawn out but can yield GREAT results.

PM me if you're interested, as it might take some explaining back and forth

DP

I added a small, non mixed, example of what I've done in the past

[amanitas]

Sample sounds great Darth. Thanks for the reply and suggestion...

At this point I'm leaning towards setting up a few mics around the room and then just having the players move around, which is something I've done as a horn player before that yielded nice results. Anyone have signal chain suggestions for those?

D

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by samwinston123

If you're going for vintage and full then I would definitely choose a ribbon and probably wait to compress all of the tracks together. If the room is large and sounds good, it might be cool to try and create the feeling of an orchestra being in that space. You could leave the mic positioned at one end of the room, and have the players move to different locations for each take, so you get the full range of sounds from close up to far away. If you want it to be stereo, you could rotate the mic as they move from left to right and then pan accordingly in the mix.

+1 I like this one- plus do move the players AND mics around for more lifelike mixing possibilities back at the console..

[jcatena]

Mics:
Sahiaman's Little Blondie
AKG C451B

Preamps:
I wouldn't use so colorful preamps for this app.
Earthworks, SSL, Millenium... Any good clean one.
If I have to pick one of yours, the Focusrite RED 8.

Compressors:
None. Why would you want a compressor for tracking if good ADCs are used? Leave compression for mixing.

Just my opinion.

[Darth Preamp]

I would say that you want to try to recreate the string section. I made diagrams, calculated angles and distances from the mic for each section, and then adjusted the players and/or mic in order to simulate the given setup of a section of the orch. If the string players are violin viola and cello, you'd be better off tracking each individual type of instrument in a series of overdubs first, ie violin I first, then violin II, then viola, cello, bass. This will make it easier to mix, and get a stereo spread that really mimics the traditional spread of the string orchestra.

Also, the pres I used were actually pretty colored and not so transparent, if I remember correctly I used some sort of API copy. However, the mic I used was very transparent. It was an old Neumann m9 omni. I chose the omni, as omnis are mostly used to mic sections in orchestral recording. From your set up I would probably use the 414 in omni setting, in conjunction with the Neve or Chandler pre.

DP

[kosi]

We did the same here with 4 players:

2 Royer 121 about 1 meter away (80% in mix)
2 U67 3 meters away (20 %) room wasn't too good

all thru NPNG QMP 4
we recorded every part about 3 times regular and 3 times "con sordino" which made the sound much nicer !

[bonnybilly]

Originally Posted by Darth Preamp

I've actually done this quite successfully using both one and two players. It can be a little bit drawn out but can yield GREAT results.

PM me if you're interested, as it might take some explaining back and forth

DP

I added a small, non mixed, example of what I've done in the past

Sounds cool....a bit like Arvo Part.

Nice.

[Darth Preamp]

Originally Posted by bonnybilly

Sounds cool....a bit like Arvo Part.

Nice.

Thanks!!
Its from my , hopefully, upcoming CD, which I had hoped to finish by the end of the summer, but alas . . . I've really , and completely run out of do re mi, . . . maybe I'll finish by the end of the winter.


DP



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[7rojo7]

Cascade, Royer, M160 as spots, 3 ft should do. Best omni where they sound the best. RED pre's>mix to mono>Distressor>trident EQ>ADL C1000.
I'd mix each take to mono then spread out the parts for the mix
Have them split the parts and play them in unison first then do doubles or triples with them playing in harmony, helps keep any shiftiness under control, you can duck or not use the unison parts, but they can come in handy
You might want to print the omni to another track to control unwanted build up of the ambience, but this can work nicely also in the right amount

[amanitas]

So this is what we ended up doing:

We had a trio of very very good players (Daphne Chen, Miguel Atwood Ferguson and Matt Fish on violin, viola and cello respectively - I would recommend them highly to anyone who needs strings in LA. Matt also wrote the arrangement) set up in a triangle, roughly 3-4 feet apart from one another.

In the center of the triangle we put the Cactus in Omni.

We put 414s close micd on the cello and viola and then put a 451 on the violin.

Then we hung the two little blondies in between the cello and the violin and between the cello and the viola. We put a Royer 121 between the violin and the viola, on axis with both.

Then we put two TLM 103s as room mics on the far ends of the room (it's a big room) about 10-15 feet off on each side. We ran the TLMs through a Neve pre, the blondies through a Focusrite red and the rest through an 8 channel Trident sidecar thing.

Probably used some compression here and there, mainly as a second gain stage for any of the mics that weren't getting enough signal - distressor, TLA and Cranesong I think ended up somewhere in the mix.

The sound ended up being amazing! I thought we would be doubling and retracking and layering all day, but we ended up only needing 2 passes of the trio plus a few violin overdubs for the violin II part (plus a few things doubled up an octave) and the end result sounds to me like we were rolling with a much higher budget than we actually were.

Here is a link to an unmixed bounce of all the string tracks together. It's only on the second half of the song, so there is about 3 minutes of silence before they come in...

http://www.mushroomstamp.com/music/i...is_strings.mp3

[Darth Preamp]

That sounds Great!!!!

DP

[amanitas]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention that having a big awesome tracking room was a huge part of the sound... We did this at Crown City Recording in Pasadena, which has one of the biggest most awesome vibe-infused tracking rooms I've come across in LA...Highly recommended.