Recording duo cello and piano/classical music

[Yar]

Hello.

I´m completely new to the audio recording and I am asking for some advice.
I´m planning to record classical piano with cello (Schubert Arpeggione Sonata).
I have tree mics: Rode NT55 matched pair and Audio Technica AT2050.
Everything goes to my laptop via Fast Track Ultra.

I thought about using NT55 on piano with omni capsules in A/B technique
(with couple meters distance from the piano and above the lid - it gave me good results previously)
For the cellist i could use AT2050 (it has 3 different patterns: cardoid, omni and 8)with some distance too - I´ve heard about unwanted bow noise with the close miking. But where to place the cellist and the AT microphone to get a good balance between the instruments and - the most improtant - avoid phase difference problems. Does the 3:1 rule somehow applies here?


The room is a medium-large size concert hall with Steinway D Grand.

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Teddy Ray]

wrong forum..

ask in the "remote" section.

[John Willett]

Although the NT55 with the omni heads is good for solo piano, you will get multi-path distortion when you add another mic. for the cello.

I think I would do this with a single pair further back to pick up the ensemble as a whole.

Maybe omnis with a Jecklin or Schneider disk, or just spaced omnis.

Or an ORTF pair with the cardioid heads.

But the ORTF set-up will lose the bottom octave compared to the omnis.

[Remoteness]

Originally Posted by Teddy Ray

wrong forum..

ask in the "remote" section.

It is now in the correct forum; thanks Teddy!

You know something? October 2010 will mark the seventh year anniversary of this forum and folks still don't know it exists...

Pretty wild, if I do say so myself.

[John Willett]

Originally Posted by Remoteness

You know something? October 2010 will mark the seventh year anniversary of this forum and folks still don't know it exists...

You are joking!

The Remote Forum is the only one on Gearslutz really worth looking at - I could live with all the rest going, so long as we don't lose this one.

Thanks Steve.

[joelpatterson]

A special cake, just for the occasion...

-___stike_stike_stike_stike_stike_stike_stike___-
(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)
(~~~~~~~Happy~~~~~~~~)
(~~~~~Anniversary!~~~~~~)
(~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~)

[rumleymusic]

For this I would stick with the NT55 omni pair for main pickup and spot the piano with another omni if needed. You can delay that mic to the mains if you think it is causing a problem. A popular spot to do that is on the butt end.

[rumleymusic]

PS if you want to hear that setup, go here:

Camarada / Foote, Mozart, Larson, Bloch, Saint-Saëns - InstantEncore

[Yar]

Wow. Great forum. Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I´ll try all the techniques listed. My recording skills are really elementary right now.

For this I would stick with the NT55 omni pair for main pickup and spot the piano with another omni if needed. You can delay that mic to the mains if you think it is causing a problem. A popular spot to do that is on the butt end.

Thanks Daniel. How do you actually delay the 3rd mic to the mains? I´m a Mixcraft 5 and Audacity user. Do I need more advanced programs to do that?

[rumleymusic]

I wouldn't worry to much about delay. It is just a balancing trick you can do when multitracking. If you are using this setup and mixing to stereo into audacity, I would just suggest listening to the main pair first, and slowly bring up the spot until the piano just comes into focus. You don't want it to mess with the stereo image.

[Ozpeter]

Daniel, thank you for saving me the trouble of posting that method!

One thing I'd add though is to consider - in postproduction - having the piano spot mic panned extreme right. Bring it up till just audible in the mix, and to the point where it slightly separates the piano and cello in the stereo image. Very much a matter of personal taste and local circumstances though.

[Yar]

Thanks for all guys. You rock!thumbsup

[Teddy Ray]

Originally Posted by Yar

Wow. Great forum. Thanks for all the suggestions guys. I´ll try all the techniques listed. My recording skills are really elementary right now.

Thanks Daniel. How do you actually delay the 3rd mic to the mains? I´m a Mixcraft 5 and Audacity user. Do I need more advanced programs to do that?

Mr. Faulkner had this wonderful bit of info to give to me some time ago via email wrt delay.

The speed of sound in air at sea level is nominally 340 meters per second or slightly higher. Consequently each meter corresponds to about 3milliseconds (2.94mS on my calculator). The speed of sound in solids is faster (e.g. floors, walls, etc.).

Please be aware that there are other factors beyond the simple obvious one of time-shifting the wavefront of the direct sound to line everything up in time.

(i) First of all the wavefront of the direct sound from the spot mic(s) may well be offset in time, but the indirect sound (all the ambience and all the other instruments being picked up off-axis) are displaced quite differently. So changing one component will affect the others in a more random way, possibly negatively.

(ii) If your main mics are omni (pressure) and the mics you are 'correcting' are directional (pressure-gradient), then you are potentially confusing apples and oranges - i.e. one factor defines the equivalent of position and the other the velocity, if you remember your High School Mathematics and Physics. Heisenberg uncertainty principle states by precise inequalities that certain pairs of physical properties, such as position and momentum, cannot be simultaneously known to arbitrarily high precision. Sounds like a discussion to silence any dinner party, but the point I want to make is that the concept of time-shift to compensate for microphone positioning ends up being a bit of a wild goose chase sometimes, because it is not as simple as it seems. If your mix does not sound right it could be all sorts of things, and for me time-offset is likely to be several items down the list.

(ii) Haas Effect means that in some circumstances the time advance of the direct sound on closer spot mic(s) can be helpful rather than destructive, because you end up using less of the spot mic to achieve the extra presence you want.

(iii) In my experience the sonic improvement from using time-delay offsets is limited except in a few instances. The first observation is that it is more effective if you offset a stereo system of say an orchestral section (i.e. woodwind, or percussion, or a stereo set-up on the soloists). Secondly (for me) I have only ever been impressed with time-offsets when recording opera where you have the singers and chorus behind the orchestra a and a long way from the conductor where the main mics are placed. In some venues which are a bit narrow, by the time you have put all the chairs out for a big string section the woodwind are already a long way from the conductor. Then behind the woodwind you have the percussion and behind them the singers. If you do not use time-offsets sometimes the vocal mics (soloists, choir) sound less than great if they do not dominate over the main mics enough to mask the advance/delay.

(iv) In symphony orchestras (I don't know if you have ever played in one) time-offsets for individual players are a way of life. They compensate in concert every day of their lives otherwise the musicians furthest from the conductor would all sound progressively later in the hall. They start their notes intentionally 'early' if they are further away from the conductor and that is done by watching the conductor's beat. If you are doing orchestral sessions and individual musicians come into the control-room to hear whether they and their section sound together or not, if you keep messing with time-offset compensation you may well confuse them.

(v) One final more cynical observation is that time-offset management of spot mics is one of the last resorts of engineers who finally cotton on to the fact that using too many microphones scattered all over the place sounds a mess. Their conclusion is correct, but their solution of time-meddling is missing the point - they should use fewer microphones and it would be less of a mess.

Best,
Tony

[rumleymusic]

Have to save that, thanks.

Though I will clarify that the speed of sound depends mostly on temperature and not as much on altitude. If you guess that in a normal concert hall temperature, sound travels about 1.13 feet per ms, you can calculate delay rather easily.

One of the points that Mr Faulkner made was about playing habits of orchestral musicians, specifically winds and brass who instinctively play ahead of the beat. Sometimes with spots on these sections the delay really helps put the orchestra back into its correct three dimensional place, that is you actually have to delay it past the main pair a few feet to compensate for the distance and the "front-of-beat" playing style.

Of course none of this is really necessary. Think of all the great recordings made before the technology was there to actually do this. And avoiding all these problems is another big argument in favor of the "less is more" strategy.