VIDEO. String quartet. OMNI Schopes over head ?

[Kees de Visser]

Originally Posted by Teddy Ray

those schoeps must be lacking if both polyhymnia and Mr Seetoo see fit to mod them.

Even in the best restaurants you'll find salt and pepper on the table. That doesn't mean the chef is no good.

[dseetoo]

Hello guys,

It seemed to me that there is some interest in how and what I do with Schoeps microphones in conjunction with the Mendelssohn Octet recording. I figure I might as well spill the beans myself and hope in doing so I could clear some confusion for some inquisitive minds.

When I did the Mendelssohn Octet back in 2004 with Emerson String Quartet, I did use 14 microphones for each of the two passes. The recording was made with 28 tracks in total. The details later.

The Mendelssohn String Octet was written for 8 string players, or two string quartets as it often was implied. Emerson String Quartet, of course is made up with 4 players, therefore, the recording had to be over dubbed, which was very unconventional in classical music recording world. The Octet was never recorded with same quartet before our attempt and I would venture to say it might not be done that way again for a long while. Most of classical music is recorded in real time regardless how big or small of an assemble the piece was written for. A very simple reason for this is that classical music is performed and recorded without using any “click track”, so it is very difficult to record the consequent tracks (or the 2nd pass in the Octet recording) and getting the music perfectly synchronized. Using headphone for the 2nd pass of course is a must in this case since quartet playing does not involve using a conductor, either. The player has to listen to the 1st pass while playing the 2nd pass all at the same time. All the music ideas or dialogs between the instruments were designed, prepared and carried out in the 1st pass and it is very difficult if not totally impossible to change any of it once the 1st pass is recorded and edited. The challenge in making this recording was not to just make another good Octet recording, which we must have 100’s of them already, but to make a recording that offers something new, something fresh, something wonderful that everybody knows this piece has never heard before, something the quartet and I can be very proud of, both musically and technologically. Before we actually committed to this project, we did a quick test, playing a page of the music and immediately recorded the 2nd pass using headphones just to see how the musicians can cope with overdubbing process. What we heard at the test surprised all of us which convinced us to go ahead with the project. The biggest enlightenment we discovered was that since there is no professional octet existed, this piece is always played or recorded by two professional string quartets at the best, but more commonly 8 pickup musicians, therefore, you never hear the same articulation, musical ideas, timing, bow arms, sound production or just simple group playing that one only hears from a professional quartet that takes years of playing together to master. The unified general musicality that a professional quartet, like the Emerson quartet can bring to this Octet by overdubbing makes this piece sounded so much more powerful that one never hears that in any concerts or recordings.

The recording was done in 2 passes. Before the first session ever took place, the quartet and I sat down and we spent a lot of time looking at the score figuring out how to split the octet score into 2-quartets scores. You might ask why; although the music is more or less written for two quartets, it cannot be simply played as static quartet 1 and then quartet 2 because there are so much musical dialogs going on between the instruments that the music at the times would come to a complete stop if the quartet tries to play only the 1st quartet music. (or 2nd quartet music.) So, the 8 parts of the score has to be divided intelligently as to make sure that the music makes sense when we record the 1st half of the piece. What happened was when we recorded the 1st pass we would have certain player switch his part to a different one at the different time in order to keep the music continuously going. Remember, there is no click track involved in this recording as this is classical music. All 4 players ended up switching parts at different places of the music in the 1st pass. To keep the hall sound and correct stereo image, when one switches the part he has to switch his physical location as well since the 1st quartet is sitting in the left side and 2nd quartet is sitting in the right side of the hall. To make things even more interesting, we decided to use two different sets of instruments as well for the 2 passes; when a player is switching to a different part, he has to move to a different chair that is already setup on the stage and he also has to change to a different instrument. The prepared scores looked very complicated and busy with different color coding, highlights and markings. A lot of notes were written on the score as well in order to keep track of all the switching. I ended up using three sets of scores, two for each of the two passes of recording and the third one for combined editing. After the 1st pass of recording was completed, I edited it like the way I usually do but with as much of anticipation as I could for how the 2nd pass would later merge nicely and musically on top of it. Doing the editing of 1st pass tuned out to be the most critical and difficult part of my jab as a producer. After all, the 2nd pass of recording is completely based on how I edit the 1st pass, all the musical ideas are baked into the 1st pass. We found out It is really difficult to carry on a conversation while your conversation partner is totally imaginary. I guess it is a bit like shooting a movie of a set of twins with only one actor in front of green screen. Once the 1st pass was edited, we went back again into the hall and recorded the 2nd pass of the music. This time around, all the players were using headphones to listen to the 1st pass while playing the 2nd. All the missing music has to be filled in during 2nd pass. Again, whenever there was switch, the player changed the seating as well as his instrument, only in reverse.

Because the need to keep the sonic presentation of the hall intact, I had to setup the microphones for the both passes as if it was for an real octet. 14 microphones were used in each pass; one on each seat, that brings the number to 8. Two sets of stereo overhead, that brings the count to 12, and finally, 2 hall microphones for surround tracks, that brings the total to 14. After the combined passes were edited together, the project was merged and reduced down to 14 tracks with each track carries its own correct part of the music from begining to end.

The microphones used were Schoeps MK2H heads with modified bodies. The modification gave me a bit more than 10dBs of signal to noise ratio improvment over the original body and much wider frequency response, reaching down to 0.1Hz and up to couple of MHz. The interfaces were two modified Motu 896 with rebuilt microphone amplifiers on all the tracks with the goal of opening up the bandwidth, reducing the noise floor and eliminate unnecessary active circuits. The software was Sequoia, either version 7 or 8, I don’t remember. Recording format was 96/24. In 2004, recording 28 tracks in 96/24 format was barely possible on a notebook but none of them allowed me to playback 14 tracks and record another 14 at the same time. It was simply not fast enough for any notebook. I built a desktop for that project using double Intel Xeon CPUs and RAID 0. I don’t quite remember the specs of that computer since I no longer own it, but it was pretty fast for its days.

This pretty much summed up how we recorded the Mendelssohn Octet, a piece Mendelssohn wrote when he was only 16 years old! I hope you guys find some time to give the recording a listen. If anything at all, I guaranty that you will be moved by the beauty of the music. It is wonderful.




Best regards,


Da-Hong Seetoo

[GIACOMO-_]

NO WORDS.

Thank you Seetoo!

[Remoteness]

Thank you for taking the time to explain the process.

[Teddy Ray]

Always great when a master shares tips with us here!

thumbsup

Thank you Sir~!

[David Spearritt]

Da-Hong, this is quite simply the most logistically, musically and technically outstanding classical recording project I have ever read or heard about. Enormous contribution to what can be possible in recording projects. You have serious courage and ability and know how to use it.

Many thanks.

[phil.]

Chiming in for a warm Thank You as well. Outstanding! thumbsup

[rumleymusic]

those schoeps must be lacking if both polyhymnia and Mr Seetoo see fit to mod them.

Ha!

The modification gave me a bit more than 10dBs of signal to noise ratio improvment over the original body and much wider frequency response, reaching down to 0.1Hz and up to couple of MHz

Interesting. Far beyond the capabilities of the capsule, (and the instruments, converters, and human ear for that matter). I'm wondering if the modification actually changed to the characteristics of the microphone's sound, or just added to the SNR and bandwidth of the body. Or if you just did it for the fun of it.

[mathieujm]

It's the first time I see such an ensemble playing with headphones....
How can they control the sound ? and WHY these headphones ?

JMM

EDIT
Ho... I just saw post 32 of Dseetoo and it's a great answer to my questions. Really surprising !

[GIACOMO-_]

Originally Posted by dseetoo

Because the need to keep the sonic presentation of the hall intact, I had to setup the microphones for the both passes as if it was for an real octet. 14 microphones were used in each pass; one on each seat, that brings the number to 8. Two sets of stereo overhead, that brings the count to 12, and finally, 2 hall microphones for surround tracks, that brings the total to 14. After the combined passes were edited together, the project was merged and reduced down to 14 tracks with each track carries its own correct part of the music from begining to end.

This is fantastic thing. Video show 3 stands. The central stand have 2 mic. Is a M/S configuration ? (bi-directional + omni)

[gsbe]

wow, that's quite a session and really makes me want to hear the final mixes! Thanks for taking the time to explain your process...very interesting.