Singer + String Quartet

[pkautzsch]

...singing his own arrangements of traditional German folk songs.
And he wants to do that in a bigger village church (ugh!). I'll try to convince him that a smaller room is better.

As to position and miking: Most probably I'll use SD condensers (Neumann and Schoeps) into neutral pres.
Either the strings behind the singer (concert-like) with ONE main mic system which I tend to set up in ORTF, plus spot mics where necessary.
Or the singer facing the strings, thus being able to communicate better with them, and giving me more isolation between strings and voice. Maybe a main spaced omni pair in the middle, pointing at the singer and thus pushing the strings a little to the background.

What do you think about these approaches?

[pkautzsch]

After a night full of sleep also thinking of two separate main systems: one for the singer, one for the strings...?
Anybody?

[celticrogues]

You could have the singer face the strings for communication and put up a Blumlein pair between them (probably LDC or ribbon), then just move the singer forward or backward to get a good balance. Just a thought...
Cheers,
Mike

[alessio]

I've done thinghs like that in the past several times... My set up was a condenser on each piece of string say 1 mt away, plus a condenser for the singer (not facing the quartet) plus two condenser stereo far away for the ambience. Every mic sholuld be cardioid, and the mic pre as transparent as you can. Don't interfere with the balancing of the quintet, let them do theyr own interplay. Generally when you have found the right balance you even can go straight on two track 24 bit...
Alessio

[tINY]

If the church has good acoustics, I'd go ORTF or XY. I assume they are rehearsed.



-tINY

[pkautzsch]

Thanks so far, some interesting thoughts in here. Hadn't thought about Blumlein so far, but why not. Better than just a pair of omnis.
@tINY: I *hope* they are rehearsed...