Sound of Music

GuitarLegend

GuitarLegend

New member
Does anyone have any idea of what brand or type of vocal mics they used to record the sound track of "Sound of Music"?

I had occasion to watch the movie for technical reasons and one of the first things I noticed was Julie Andrews' voice in the opening scenes. It reminded me of the dull scratchy sound of the early Disney productions where the vocals always sounded crushed to death, where the instrumental parts were acceptable. I wouldn't want to reproduce that sound but I was curious about why it sounded that way. Almost like the Robert Johnson recordings where he sat in the corner of a hotel room and recorded into a single mic. Anyone here could do a much better recording in the same room with a laptop and an SM58. Robert Johnson inspired a million guitar players with his singing and playing but I doubt that any engineers were inspired by the recording quality - or perhaps they were, believing they could make an improvement
 
GuitarLegend said:
Does anyone have any idea of what brand or type of vocal mics they used to record the sound track of "Sound of Music"?

I had occasion to watch the movie for technical reasons and one of the first things I noticed was Julie Andrews' voice in the opening scenes. It reminded me of the dull scratchy sound of the early Disney productions where the vocals always sounded crushed to death, where the instrumental parts were acceptable.
Click to expand...

Funny I have seen the film quite a few times and never thought it sounded dull scratchy or crushed to death? Which version were you listening too, an old DVD, remastered DVD, reissued etc etc. I do remember that the soundtrack when they made the original film would have been average as the technology was not there, but the new versions should have used the original studio recordings.

Interesting article here.

Also it would have not been much different to how they recorded West Side Story.

Alan.
 
witzendoz said:
Funny I have seen the film quite a few times and never thought it sounded dull scratchy or crushed to death? Which version were you listening too, an old DVD, remastered DVD, reissued etc etc. I do remember that the soundtrack when they made the original film would have been average as the technology was not there, but the new versions should have used the original studio recordings.

Interesting article here.

Also it would have not been much different to how they recorded West Side Story.

Alan.
Click to expand...

It may have been a bit of an exaggeration as I don't have an onomatopoetic word to describe it. Maybe just a little tinny. Worst case was Disney's Snow White. It kind of sounds a little thin. When I heard Sound of Music on DVD, it gave me that same impression. I was just wondering what mic they used for it
 
I'm just joking.
If I remember correctly, the movie was supposed to represent them living in and escaping from Austria.......;-)
 
I would have thought it was a Neumann of some kind, however maybe they did not want to use German mics as they were invading at the time :facepalm:

Alan.
 
I also watched Sound of Music recently (it was an anniversary of the initial release or something) and the version I saw claimed to be digitally remastered. Certainly the pictures and sound were excellent.

I'm going to take a guess here and suggest the the problem you're hearing is likely not to do with the initial recording but with the limitations of an optical sound track. The "scratchy" sound can be caused literally by scratches and dust on the film while the compression is a result of the limited space on the edge of the 35mm print for the sound track. Old analogue optical tracks could only use a few millimeters width on the film print and the dynamic range available was controlled (and limited) by this width.

Doing some Googling, I came across this photo that purports to be Julie Andrews recording for SoM. It's a bit distant but I think that looks like a Neumann U47 which was certainly a popular mic in the early 1960s.

fcc86641280eadcc3b16ce6493a6a864.jpg
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top