A String Quartet

[joemintz]

I'm hoping to record some string quartet stuff this summer (for myself, not for a client) and I don't have a particularly good setup for ensemble recording. Nor do I think I can even convince a string quartet to get together, learn my stuff, and play it as an ensemble. I can probably manage multitracking, however. Has anyone had any experience multi-tracking string parts? Does it sound good, or realistic, at all? Is good, natural ambience more important for this type of recording? Would I be better off multitracking everything with, say, an M160, a C414, and a C460b or begging these people to learn the music as an ensemble (perhaps even paying them) and recording them live with a pair of small diaphragm condensers? I really have no idea where to start recording string ensembles. I've had good success with bowed and pizzicato stand-up bass, but I've never had to layer parts, or do any sort of live recording of this type of thing. Any help is appreciated.

 

[joemintz]

Does no one care about or record music meant for string ensembles these days?

 

[Rokket]

As far as string sections go, I mostly do mine through my keyboard, because finding a string quartet to do what I want is really hard, but maybe not where you are at.

As far as recording, most of the advice I've seen for mics and tracking has been to use 2 or 3 mics positioned to pick up the instruments evenly, and tracked in stereo, not necessarily each instrument on its own track. If you were to track them separately, it would have to be either one instrument at a time, or have them isolated from each other to avoid bleeding from the mics. So, set up the mics to capture the entire quartet in a balanced stereo mix.

Now, for mics, I guess the trick would be to switch out mics and try each of them on the ensemble to see which one sounds better. I am not an expert on mics, and on my budget, I deal with using what I can afford, which ain't much.

Don't get discouraged that you are not getting answers right away, as this place is usually slow on weekends. Eventually, someone with far more experience than I have will answer your questions.

 

[XLR]

I'd approach this with two contingencies.

1) if you can get string players to learn the parts and rehearse together, that's your best bet as ensemble art music relies to a large extent on the interaction of the performers to make it expressive. In that case I'd use mic's in XY or ORTF stereo configuration. Look here for how those work. http://www.dpamicrophones.com/page.php?PID=131

2) multitrack parts separately then mix to taste. It might be tough, though, to find string players used to playing to a recorded track in headhphones. The positive here would be that you could use your M160, which is great on strings.

Tim

 

[gmhg41]

What Tom said.

My wife is a violinist. We recorded some stuff for a demo cd (short sample at www.2fiddles.com). It took an hour or more to find the best location for the mics, which ended up being across the room near the ceiling.

If you want to find a quartet, look to the wedding scene. Most of the quartets are ad hoc to some extent -- The leader calls various musicians depending on availablity. A typical rate for a wedding around here is $400 to $600. A standing quartet that practices together on a regular basis would probably command a lot more. Getting people who are willing to be recorded playing your music might be tough. How difficult are the parts?

As an incentive, you could offer to record other things for them. So they learn your parts and record your music for you, and in exchange you record a demo CD for them.

Have them record each piece a number of times if they will. If someone make a mistake in one part you can crossfade in that note from another take -- unless they make the same mistake twice.

We also did a few recordings of tracking her playing two violin parts; she found playing with the headphones very difficult for the reasons Tom mentioned.

Bob