Chip Hitchens
New member
Sorry for the extreme length of this, but I finally got my first paying recording gig! A coworker of mine is a semi-professional singer on the side, and her group has asked me to record an upcoming choral performance.
And now I'm all nervous because I generally operate from the "trust your ears" school of thinking, which is fine when you have relatively infinite time to move mics around and play with settings and retake what didn’t work, but it's tough when you're doing a live show. Plus, I usually record either awful rock/pop music or film sound, and I know nothing about recording a classical-style choir except from what I've learned by searching this forum and the web.
I was hoping that some of you who do this regularly could give me some starting points. I realize that my rig is far from ideal, but this is what I'm planning on using:
Stereo Pair of Oktava MK-012's > dbx 286A's > Yamaha AW16G
Questions:
- XY vs. ORTF. I've read just about every article on the web about these two setups, and no one can tell me which is a "safer" bet. I understand what's involved in each, but don't understand the relative advantages and disadvantages of one over the other. Personally, I'm leaning towards ORTF only because it's physically easier to set up my mics like that on my cheeseball stereo mount, but I'd be willing to do either if there was a good reason to do so. Transfer to mono is probably not a big concern (they are not planning on doing a commercial release) but I would like to get a nice stereo image and I don’t have the time or experience to mess around with AB pairing.
- Mic Position. I've heard that 8-10 ft. behind the conductor and 8-10 ft. up in the air is a good place to start. Does that sound reasonable? (not that I can get 10' out of my stand) Where do I point the mics, regarding their up/down attitude? I'm imagining that if I were looking at the whole arrangement from the side, the mics will be pointing towards the heads of the people on the middle risers, but I've also read that that can cause sibilance problems.
- While going through this in my head, I've occasionally had impulses to set up a spot mic for the soloists or a room mic pointed toward the audience so that I can ride their applause in mixdown. More often, however, I've considered that my mixing skills are not that well developed, and I'm worried about creating some sort of phase anomaly during mixdown. Any thoughts? I guess I can always just scrap the spots if I don’t want them.
- Should I track with compression? My instinct is to record dry, especially since it's classical music and they're not looking to impress their friends by blasting this recording in their lowriders, but I was thinking of recording the main pair to two other tracks with compression, in case the initial levels on my dry tracks are too hot and they start peaking out all over the place.
- Is it suicide to ride the faders while recording? I’m concerned because I have no idea how loud they’re going to be or where I should set my levels so that the loudest stuff is still under the peak. If my gear was immaculate, I wouldn’t be so scared, but having used lots of low end gear in the past, I find that the “dynamic hum” is more of a distraction than the steady hum. Maybe it won’t be such an issue since this gear is actually a big upgrade for me.
- Should I engage my highpass filters? I assume that the vocalists aren't going to get down to 80hz, but I don't know what the standard is.
- Should I use windscreens on the Oktavas? I'll have no control over the HVAC and I don't want any surprises (those Oktavas seem especially sensitive to a little wind) but I've also heard that I can loose highs.
Thanks for any help that you can offer. I've been very clear with the client that this will be something of an experiment for me, but I'd really like to do a good job and get a good recommendation from them.
And now I'm all nervous because I generally operate from the "trust your ears" school of thinking, which is fine when you have relatively infinite time to move mics around and play with settings and retake what didn’t work, but it's tough when you're doing a live show. Plus, I usually record either awful rock/pop music or film sound, and I know nothing about recording a classical-style choir except from what I've learned by searching this forum and the web.
I was hoping that some of you who do this regularly could give me some starting points. I realize that my rig is far from ideal, but this is what I'm planning on using:
Stereo Pair of Oktava MK-012's > dbx 286A's > Yamaha AW16G
Questions:
- XY vs. ORTF. I've read just about every article on the web about these two setups, and no one can tell me which is a "safer" bet. I understand what's involved in each, but don't understand the relative advantages and disadvantages of one over the other. Personally, I'm leaning towards ORTF only because it's physically easier to set up my mics like that on my cheeseball stereo mount, but I'd be willing to do either if there was a good reason to do so. Transfer to mono is probably not a big concern (they are not planning on doing a commercial release) but I would like to get a nice stereo image and I don’t have the time or experience to mess around with AB pairing.
- Mic Position. I've heard that 8-10 ft. behind the conductor and 8-10 ft. up in the air is a good place to start. Does that sound reasonable? (not that I can get 10' out of my stand) Where do I point the mics, regarding their up/down attitude? I'm imagining that if I were looking at the whole arrangement from the side, the mics will be pointing towards the heads of the people on the middle risers, but I've also read that that can cause sibilance problems.
- While going through this in my head, I've occasionally had impulses to set up a spot mic for the soloists or a room mic pointed toward the audience so that I can ride their applause in mixdown. More often, however, I've considered that my mixing skills are not that well developed, and I'm worried about creating some sort of phase anomaly during mixdown. Any thoughts? I guess I can always just scrap the spots if I don’t want them.
- Should I track with compression? My instinct is to record dry, especially since it's classical music and they're not looking to impress their friends by blasting this recording in their lowriders, but I was thinking of recording the main pair to two other tracks with compression, in case the initial levels on my dry tracks are too hot and they start peaking out all over the place.
- Is it suicide to ride the faders while recording? I’m concerned because I have no idea how loud they’re going to be or where I should set my levels so that the loudest stuff is still under the peak. If my gear was immaculate, I wouldn’t be so scared, but having used lots of low end gear in the past, I find that the “dynamic hum” is more of a distraction than the steady hum. Maybe it won’t be such an issue since this gear is actually a big upgrade for me.
- Should I engage my highpass filters? I assume that the vocalists aren't going to get down to 80hz, but I don't know what the standard is.
- Should I use windscreens on the Oktavas? I'll have no control over the HVAC and I don't want any surprises (those Oktavas seem especially sensitive to a little wind) but I've also heard that I can loose highs.
Thanks for any help that you can offer. I've been very clear with the client that this will be something of an experiment for me, but I'd really like to do a good job and get a good recommendation from them.