Organ again...

[Petrus]

Not a question this time, but I just have to tell about this: I have a project of recording some organ music played by a fairly young guy who has also composed it. During a test recording last year he played a part of his XI organ symphony (he was 23 at that time) twice with about 30 minute break. Those takes were about 12 minutes long and the length difference was 3 seconds. "Quite good" thought I.

Yesterday we had another session but only had a chance to record few short pieces, as there was a bobcat frontloader and fleet of trucks clearing the snow right next to the church. Lost 2 hours of recording time...

Anyway, on one take he played his 3:28 long Toccata twice with 1 minute pause. Those performances were EXACTLY the same length: only 40 millisecond difference!!!! I mean that is unreal!

Besides, music is only a hobby to him, he is a linguist and speaks 27 languages, 14 of them perfectly. He has attended Hajkim's master classes and others, though and given concerts in Notre Dame, Paris, among other places, so he is not all that bad.

For this I am experimenting a modified Decca tree with Senn 8020 AB 120 cm wide and 8040 ORTF pair in the center 50 cm ahead. Mixed 1:2 it sounds both open with good reverb and good bass, and solid in the middle.

[Audiop]

Scary! :-)


/Peter

[JonesH]

I've never experimented with anything else than decca or AB + some funky ambience mics or outriggers sometimes. Would maybe be interesting to try ORTF as C-mic; what's your experiences with this? What does it bring to the table?

I'd think that increased localization wouldn't really be a positive, I like to have the organ centered with enveloping ambience and avoid ping-pong effects from hearing the chromatical layour of the pipes too clearly. Then again, as I said, I haven't tested it

[Petrus]

After trying different mixes of the 120cm AB MKH8020 and ORTF 8040 I desided to use just the omni pair. While the center ORTF did firm up the stereo image it also mudded up the sound. AB alone is airier also in tone.

So far the taped together 8020&8040 "hypocardioid" 45 cm/110 degrees seems to work better than this bastard Decca tree approach. I did that the previous time in a similar situation and it turned out without problems, with nice image.

I think I'll stick with 60 to 120 cm AB omnis from now on with organ, or "hypocardioids" in problematic acoustics.

[Audiop]

Just some reflections..

Maybe XY would work better because of less phase problems in this "bastard" set up?

Or maybe use a greater distance (more decorrelation) between the cardioid pair and omnis..?


/Peter