Mic selection praise team

G

gbake

New member
Hi there,

I've been reading a LOT about microphones the last weeks, because I'd like to buy (or have our church to buy) some mics for recording our praise team. Here's what I'm currently considering, and for what purposes. Some mics I'd like to use for multiple purposes. Please comment on it. Please do not advise alternative mics that are more expensive then the one listed because of the budget, unless the total costs remain about equal.

Lead vocal (large diaphragm): one Rode NTK

Drum overheads / Vocal group (4 - 10 people) / Percussion (small diaphragm): two Audio Technica AT4041 or two Shure SM81. Are these good on all three purposes? Which ones would you prefer?

Kick drum: one Audio Technica Pro25 or one Audio Technica M25.

Snare, toms: three Shure SM57's (one for snare, two for the four toms). I consider to use these also for electric guitar amp and bass amp.

Kind regards, George
 
Sounds like a winner.

Just a few comments:

* You might be getting in to some overkill on all the tom mics. It's not a bad idea, but two overheads, a kick and snare mic will usually suffice. You should get the sm57's anyway, though, just to have around.

* The sm81's and audio technicas are really good mics. You might save yourself some money, though, and get yourself a pair of oktava mc012s . . . or even a pair of Marshall mxl 603's. Those are some mighty fine mics for the money.

So how do I get on a "praise team?" Is that a competitive sport? I'll bet my praise team could beat the pants off your praise team.
 
chessrock said:
So how do I get on a "praise team?" Is that a competitive sport? I'll bet my praise team could beat the pants off your praise team.
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With "praise team" I mean the group of musicians and singers that accompany the praise and worship in our church.

Thanks for the reply.

George
 
Glad to see there's someone else out there working on recording their praise team. We've been just doing live recordings of worship services, so haven't been using the vocal condensers but have been using Shure Beta 58's. After a lot of frustration with micing the drums (too much bleed from other stage sources, too much bleed into other stage mics), and having every different drummer come in and re-tune the drums the way he/she likes them, we finally went to electronics (actually just bought them yesterday; Roland V-Studio). We'll see how that goes. It definitely makes the soundman's job easier.

But for doing a full drum kit, I'd definitely take Chessrock's advice. A good bass drum mic, a 57 on the snare, and 2 81's for overheads will give you a really good sound that is easy to mix. Just be sure that you have the drummer wear headphones since the 81's will pick up every little sound within a few dozen feet.

Hope your recordings come out great. We've learned a lot, and are preparing to attempt to do a full length compilation of various stuff for the congregation. Most of what I've recorded so far has been used just for evaluating song arrangements, since we do it all our own way.

Darryl.....
 
DDev said:
Glad to see there's someone else out there working on recording their praise team. We've been just doing live recordings of worship services, so haven't been using the vocal condensers but have been using Shure Beta 58's. After a lot of frustration with micing the drums (too much bleed from other stage sources, too much bleed into other stage mics), and having every different drummer come in and re-tune the drums the way he/she likes them, we finally went to electronics (actually just bought them yesterday; Roland V-Studio). We'll see how that goes. It definitely makes the soundman's job easier.

But for doing a full drum kit, I'd definitely take Chessrock's advice. A good bass drum mic, a 57 on the snare, and 2 81's for overheads will give you a really good sound that is easy to mix. Just be sure that you have the drummer wear headphones since the 81's will pick up every little sound within a few dozen feet.

Hope your recordings come out great. We've learned a lot, and are preparing to attempt to do a full length compilation of various stuff for the congregation. Most of what I've recorded so far has been used just for evaluating song arrangements, since we do it all our own way.

Darryl.....
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I'm sure the V-Studio will make life easier, but for me it's not an option, at least not yet. I prefer the real drum sound instead of samples. By the way, I have to get started recording yet. I ordered a multitracker some time ago, but had to send it back 'cause something was wrong.

I'm afraid it might be hard to record the drum nicely. Our drummer is sitting in some kind of aquarium (you know what I mean). I hope that will not result in to much reflections (bleed?). I'm not English so I hope I choose the right words.

Why does the drummer need to wear headphones when recording with SM81's?

What do you mean with a "full length compilation"?

Have you ever been doing live recordings? How did that go? Any comments / tips?
 
You should have a lot of fun once you get your recorder.

As far as your questions go, I'll try to answer them all. We, too, use a plexiglass screen to contain the live drums, and I haven't noticed any issues with reflections on those. The real problem is that we use monitor speakers so we pick up whatever is in the monitor mix on the overhead mics (in your case the SM81's), which is why I recommend having the drummer use headphones.

So far, all of the recordings I have done have been live, with mixed results. Most of what I've done to date has been with a single 8-track ADAT recorder, but I just added a second unit so now I can record 16 tracks. With 8 tracks I was able to get good recordings of the band, each instrument with its own track, but I sub-mixed the vocalists and have not had consistent results with that. With 16 tracks, now, I won't have to do the sub-mix (ie. mix all the vocals together and record them on one track) so I'll have better control when I get ready to do the final mix.

If you can get away with it, set up a pair of condenser mics (like the SM81's) somewhere in front of the stage, in an X-Y configuration, and record these to 2 separate tracks. This will give your live recordings a bit of the flavor of the room and pick up some of the congregation to make it feel more "live". To find the right spot you need to walk around while the band is playing at normal volume to find the spot in the room that seems to sound the best.

Our "compilation" recording is going to be a mixture of the various things we have recorded over the course of time that we think people will enjoy.

Good luck.

Darryl.....
 
Darryl,

A problem that we might face when I let the drummer wear headphones is that we need to find a way to let him hear also other musicians and singers through the headphones, not only the drums.

I have ordered a Yamaha AW4416 lately, but had to send it back to the shop (in a different country, ordered via Internet) so that will have me waiting another month or so. I also ordered an option card for 8 additional inputs, so I should also be able to record 16 tracks simultaneously.

I had the idea to use two small condensers for the vocals, so that I could put more singers on the stage without needing more microphones for each of them, and channels on the mixer. But it seems you had a bad experience with that. Currently we have a vocal group of 4 singers, but that could have been 9 if we had enough mics. With two small condensers I could put them all on stage. I guess that the larger the vocal group gets, the less neccessary it is to give them all a separate mic? How wonder how the pros handle this.

Do you do any processing (compression, reverb, eq, mastering) after recording (or while recording)? The reason I choose for the AW4416 is that I've everything in a single box now (at least, when I get it again :)).

That XY tip seems like a very good idea. How about using cheaper MXL 603's (Marshall) for that? Do they need to be pointed at the stage or at the audience? I guess the audience needs to be recorded as well?

Thanks,

George
 
gbake said:
A problem that we might face when I let the drummer wear headphones is that we need to find a way to let him hear also other musicians and singers through the headphones, not only the drums.
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The idea of making him wear headphones is kindof what you do to make him hear other musicians and singers. ;) Instead of giving him a monitor, you just send his monitormix through the headphones.

Or in this case that would be, feed him the mix of the AW4416. Or if you need the mix to monitor yourself, make him his own mix with an aux or something. Just make him a monitormix, and present it on headphones, so there will be no crosstalk from the monitor to yer mics.
 
Roel's got it right on what I intended for the headphones to the drummer. He needs a mix he can work with, which in my playing experience, needs to be at least the primary rhythm instrument (ie. piano, keyboard, guitar), plus vocals and probably some bass since the bass and the drum rhythms are so integrally tied to each other. A full mix would also be fine as long as it is not too much hassle to get the recording levels set properly and maintain a listenable mix. If the AW4416 only has one headphone output, you could get an inexpensive headphone distribution unit, like the Behringer, which can split the headphone feed out to several pairs of headphones.

As for the condensers on a large group of vocalists goes, that will work as long as the vocalists can sort of surround the mic (say 4 or 5 people to a single mic in a semicircle around the front half of the mic pattern). We regularly mic our 80 voice choir with 4 condensers, and it works alright. The only problem you'll get, which is the same as I noted previously for the condensers on the drum overheads, is that those condensers will pick up a lot of stuff that you may not want recorded. In a live recording (ie. during an actual praise service), it probably won't matter that much as long as your stage monitors aren't really loud. The best I can say is to go try it out and see what you get. If you are happy with your results, keep it up. If you find problems, work on them one by one. There are as many different ways of getting decent recordings as there are recording engineers (well, maybe not quite as many), but the best tool you have for doing this will be your ears and a willingness to play around with it until you are satisfied with what you get. Capturing a good live performance in a good recording is an awesome experience for the recording engineer.

And for the MXL603's, I personally don't have any experience with those mics, but for a house mic pair they are probably suitable. The postings on this forum seem to regard this mic as decent for this type of application.

As far as processing equipment goes, I only have a bare minimum of gear at present which includes a stereo compressor, a dual channel effects processor, and a graphic equalizer. This is enough for what I'm doing right now, but I know I'll probably add more in the future.

My mastering process is not really professional, but it gives me a good enough result for the stuff I've been doing. When I get ready to do a CD that I'm serious about distributing I'll go to a professional mastering service for that. Basically, though, what I do is get my mix setup the way I like it for eq, effects, and a very slight compression, then I send the audio feed to my PC and record it into a shareware program called Goldwave. There I use the waveform editor to cut the beginning and ending of each song, apply fade ins and fade outs, look for any digital trouble spots on the waveform that need some additional compression (very light on this one), and, finally, normalize the volume level. My normalizing process is that I go into the volume maximizer function and use the RMS averaging function to set the average RMS level to a certain point (I use 0.16 which probably means nothing if you don't use the same program). What this does is set all the songs to a volume level that appears to be the same when you listen to it, going from one song to another. I'm sure there are better programs and processes out there, and if you read in the Mixing/Mastering forum you'll learn a lot of stuff.

Good luck and God bless.

Darryl.....
 
DDev said:
As for the condensers on a large group of vocalists goes, that will work as long as the vocalists can sort of surround the mic (say 4 or 5 people to a single mic in a semicircle around the front half of the mic pattern). We regularly mic our 80 voice choir with 4 condensers, and it works alright.
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First of all thanks for your lengthy reply, with all those useful tips.

How do you position your choir? I assume you don't semicircle 20 singers around one mic (20 * 4 = 80)?

Wouldn't it be better in my situation to line the singers up in two straight lines of 4 or 5 people, and then position the two mics in front of them? I guess I'll just have to check it out when we've got the mics.

I also would like to know which microphones you are using to record your choir, and if you are happy with the results.

Thanks and God bless you too.

George
 
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Our choir stands in a semi-circle on stage, in 3 rows, spread over about 40 feet in width, I think. We use older Audio Technica condenser mics that I can't remember the model number (small diameter, black, about 4 inches long; AT33 maybe?). It is not ideal, but it works okay. Our sanctuary is very alive acoustically, so the mics are more for reinforcement than being the sole source of audio pickup for the sound system.

For your situation, like I said earlier, the best thing to do is try everything you can think of and find what works best for you. I think you have a good idea of what potential problems you might encounter based on your questions, and just thinking about it and discussing it should help you get it worked out.

Take care,
Darryl.....
 
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