Recording a Choir..need some tips

[topslakr]

Ok, this will be my first and it needs to work... well. I have a pair of 414s that I'm going to record the choir with but it will be at two venues and two different PA setups.This coming thursday I have a chance to test my setup and I'll be honest I'm not sure what it's going to be.

I'll be recording soloists, the accomp and the 414s into Protools through my 002r and that aspect should be fine. The system is stable and I'm all set in PT. (Fingers Crossed)

My Question is this: Where the hell do I put the mics? Two mics, I assume on booms? Should I try to hang them over the choir on giant booms? On the floor in front of them? How close? Do I try a spaced pair? ORTF? The choir will need montiors and my thought is to setup the monitors somewhat close to the mics so that they can play facing towards the singers and away from the mics. I'm going to try and keep the monitors as quiet as possible but they need to hear it. I have access to a light pole infront of and above the singers at one venue horizontal to the ceiling.. should I try to fly the mics off of that?


HELP!!!!!

Thx

Robert

[Clueless]

I cannot imagine why your choir would need monitors, unless they are singing in a different room than the paino/organ/whatever. That said, I think you want to get the mics up and in front of the choir. What I've found is that at eye level, the singers in the back get trimmed out by the heads of the singers in front.

Also, as far as stereo imaging is concerned, I have yet to find a case where I'm happier with a true X-Y pair setup compared to putting two cardiods on a boom facing away from each other. That's not to say it cannot be done, but I haven't done it. Most of the choirs I record are in straight rows--maybe that's why a boom setup (or even two mics spaced at the 1/3rd 2/3rd position straight ahead) works for me. If my choirs made a semi-circle, then perhaps X/Y would be the only way to go.

What I also found is that a Royer SF-12 (stereo coincident figure 8) worked magic for a chamber choir. The posting I read on these lists a year or so ago really nailed it: if you want the choir to sound like a bunch of clear voices, use a small diaphragm stereo condenser; if you want it to sound like a choir, nicely blended, use a pair of Royers. I put a Rode NT-4 and an SF-12 on the same stand and heard that coming through exactly.

With the 414, you might be able to use the figure 8 position to good effect. If your room is nice, you want some room in the mix. If you use the Cardiod position, you'll likely hear individual voices...

[topslakr]

This is great, let me add in a few more details though. I assumed so many things in the first post so let me clear a couple up.

Monitors will be needed because the accomp is on a CD. This is a cantata where the choir sings and they have a full band behind them. The choir will need to be able to hear this.

The rooms I'll be recording in are churchs and will be filled with people during the recordings. I'm sure I'll have lots of noise to try and work out but I'll have three shows and a two dress rehersals to pull from.

A lot of great tips here to work with. The distance from choir to audience is rather short and I'm going to need to place the microphones pretty close to the group. I was either going to place them low facing up or place them high facing down. Either way I can't have any stands blocking the view of the audience. Perhaps long booms I can fly over the choir from behind them?

Thank you for your post, Excellent info.

Robert

[Clueless]

Your welcome!

As to mic placement, my advice is: HIGH FACING DOWN! No other choice! For mic stands, may I recommend the Latch Lake (at $750/ea). Here's that thread: Who makes the best mic stands?
and search for Lynn Funston's slutty pix.

But seriously, I think you need to fly them in, either from the side, the back, or the front. Record in cardiod during the dress and if you like it, then go that way for the show. Also, you might want to look at the book "Professional Microphone Techniques" (which is available from Amazon.com as http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087...Fencoding=UTF8 ). What you want to look for are the ratios of mic separation to signal separation. I.e., how close do you want the mics to the source vs. close to each other vs. the room vs. the crowd to get the effect you want. Having time in the dress is great--make sure you cought a lot in the front row and see how that sounds ;-)

[subspace]

You're pretty much hosed with a backing track. I usually fly a spaced pair of SDC above and in front of the choir but behind the FOH rig in a 1300 seat concert hall. This works for acapella and piano pieces, but if someone wants a backing track, it's a crapshoot between the FOH and monitor bleed. In these cases, I'm almost always better served by using a split off the FOH mics, a spaced pair of SM81s three feet in front of the risers, and a direct feed of the backing track. If you get decent rejection on the monitor spill, you can re-balance it in post. It won't come close to the naturalness of your room mic sound, but they're the ones who took it to karaoke land.

HTH

[Knastratt]

Placing of the choir is essentisl! Try different placing!

Cheers - Pär

[Edited for SEVERE drunkness]

[T.RayBullard]

Hey bud, you shouldask this in the "remote and location recording section" as this is definitely a question for them. Remote location is a completely different animal than studio work....and one has nothing to do with the other. That being Said, I normally do cardiod in ORTF on the choir.. I dont use omnis a lot for the reason that most of the time when I am recording a choir, the orchestra is right in front of them and I dont want much bleed from the instruments.. 3 omnis across the front works well for a unaccompanied group. Make sure to throw some ambience mics out there, behind the main array, facing the other way and about 10db down. I dont like spaced cardiod pairs, and too much spacing with Omnis can give you a hole in the middle. I like near coincident most often. XY is really focused and tight, but IMHO, leaves something to be desired with regards to LF pickup. So..ORTF, BLUMLEIN(in a good room, nothing will top it), or Jecklin Disc..all the time

http://www.gearslutz.com/board/remote-possibilities-acoustic-music-location-recording/

[Remoteness]

Thanks BigRay -- I just moved this over...

Let's help this guy out!

[topslakr]

I have no idea what I was thinking... should have put this here to begin with.

I start recording dress rehersals tomarrow night and am still looking for any tips I can get! Tomarrow I'm going to be a bit daring and test stuff and then I'll try to improve on what works best for next thursday and then the performences. Going to be interesting to say the least!

Robert

[youngsamuel]

face monitors at choir - whatever db you want. record choir with monitors on, bleed and everything. do another pass with everyone in the same place, not singing and the monitors at the EXACT same level. playback both recordings at the same time and reverse the phase on the pass with no choir singing. The phase cancellation should leave you with just the choir and no track. but then again, maybe the crack is starting to get to me.
-ys

[joelpatterson]

One trick that I stumbled on by accident:

If you place an ORTF pair *behind* the choir, facing them, you'll get a nice version of what they're doing without any trace of sibillance--this can be a real life-saver when all the mics infront of them are shrizzly with sibillance, mixing in some of the "muffled" back-of-the-choir mics can balance it out.

But maybe this only works in a stumbly, accidental situation.

[valleysound]

I just recorded a barbershop quartet competition using an AKG 414 EB. The first day I set it to cardioid on a tripod and they just grouped around it. The second day was quartet chorus. I put the mic in omni mode and hung it slightly above eye line off the back row of the chorus and placed equidistant from the furthest singers in the back and sides. The chorus was roughly a half moon. The recording was just a back up off a pa subgroup into my Metric Halo 2882 +DSP with the signal being recorded raw and looped thru the DSP with very slight compression. Very good results with the hung mic sounding a little "distant".