Acappella choral recording review

[johny_r]

Hi guys,
I'd like to ask for a review of a recent recording/mix. Its an acappella choir recorded live during a concert. I'd like to hear those more experienced if there is anything to do to the mix or to avoid next time.
The recording setup was:
- ORTF pair for the whole choir
- 4x spot mic on voice groups (SATB) panned to match the group position in the ORTF recording
- mic for the soloist (although the solo is quite prominent in the ORTF because the soloist is well in front of the choir)
- mic for the percussion

The mix is a combination of all of the above. The spots were de-verbed slightly to increase clarity as the concert hall has quite a lot of reverb present in the ORTF pair. EQ was kept more or less straight only using high-pass filtering to get rid of the drum base note from wherever possible and use as much of the direct drum recording as possible. There is some artificial reverb to blend everything in.

Thanks

 

[rob aylestone]

The dum ding bit at the start seems very dry compared to the sea of reverb the percussion is in. The main voice is oddly either side of central - the classic ORTF hole in the middle (perhaps fighting with the soloist's mic. It's a it like when one channel gets accidentally inverted - it spreads to the sides, away from the middle. The 'african' chant style choir is quite reverby, like the percussion, and then when they start to sing more conventionally - they are shifted to the left side a bit. then we hear the section doing more lower harmonies on the other side which works nicely.

There's plenty of nice bits - the shaker blends really well. For preference, the male voices are a bit light for my taste, and the low drums just blend into an LF reverb mush.

It's a nice job, but I think the different mic techniques are fighting a bit with each other and directional info is a bot confused. The different reverb on some sources sounds 'wrong'. Not a fault, or even a bad choice, but just not quite real? Just comments I typed while listening as new things popped up. So difficult to find words. I'd love to hear a simplified version - the ORTF pair, naked, so to speak - that's usually a good way to hear what was really there? Good for a comparison?

 

[Papanate]

interesting arrangement - nice stereo spead on the chorale - I found the percussion very distracting - but I don’t know if it was the part - or the fact that the percussion isn’t spread as wide as I would want.

 

[johny_r]

The dum ding bit at the start seems very dry compared to the sea of reverb the percussion is in. The main voice is oddly either side of central - the classic ORTF hole in the middle (perhaps fighting with the soloist's mic . It's a it like when one channel gets accidentally inverted - it spreads to the sides, away from the middle. The 'african' chant style choir is quite reverby, like the percussion, and then when they start to sing more conventionally - they are shifted to the left side a bit. then we hear the section doing more lower harmonies on the other side which works nicely.

There's plenty of nice bits - the shaker blends really well. For preference, the male voices are a bit light for my taste, and the low drums just blend into an LF reverb mush.

It's a nice job, but I think the different mic techniques are fighting a bit with each other and directional info is a bot confused. The different reverb on some sources sounds 'wrong'. Not a fault, or even a bad choice, but just not quite real? Just comments I typed while listening as new things popped up. So difficult to find words. I'd love to hear a simplified version - the ORTF pair, naked, so to speak - that's usually a good way to hear what was really there? Good for a comparison?

Thanks, these are some serious comments, I'll have to consider. The dry beginning is definitely because I had to pull up the tenors and bases from the spots here to be loud enough. The part is written low, so it can't be sung loud, and the number of males in the choir is only about a third on the women. The hall's reverb is not so prominent on the spots, so that's probably why. The percussion is taken by the ORTF, so there's more reverb heard there. The question is what to do with it. I know it is a weak point of the mix (and the song, as it is not originally written for a choir and expects a bass singer to be miked).
The solo mic is positioned where the soloist stood, which was slightly to the right. That's why it also sounds from there on the ORTF. I tried to position the solo mic to the same spot. What are the options here?
As for the left-right positioning, the choir stands as STBA, partially because the sopranos and altos often sing in close harmony and it sounds from both sides of the choir. When sopranos have some main part it may sound left-heavy.
Male voices are a bit light, partially because there are not that many of them and also when I push that frequencies, it tends to get muddy. This is certainly a problem. The LF reverb is a problem in the hall. I cut everything below 100Hz to avoid getting the bass drum in any of the channels. I only kept it on the drum mic.
As for the reverb, there are 3 sources of reverb - natural reverb of the hall mainly on the ORTF pair, artificial reverb on the solo mic, artificial reverb on the whole mix.

I'm attaching the raw ORTF. No plugins on it. Will be glad for any direction, what to try to make it better. Thanks a lot.

 

[rob aylestone]

For my tastes - the ORTF recording alone is much more 'real' - I can imagine what the space was like and where people were - the reverbs match, and the drums - even though a bit loud don't have the swampy sound.

One of the choirs I record is like this - lacking men, but particularly good basses - and the ones they have are very er, character, voices.

I have recorded in dozens of venues - good and bad, and experimented with all sorts of mic arrangements. I always have a centre, above conductor mic, and for the majority of the time, it is the primary thing listeners hear. I often have a mic in front of each group - the SA and the TBs - but these are for emergencies really. Very unusual to use much, if any of them. One particular conductor, contracted to the choir springs surprises - suddenly in the live event, a soloist steps out and walks to an empty spot - left or right, or once - up in the pulpit! The spare mics I always use for this group saved the recording. She forgot to mention it!

X/Y is always my favourite with cardioids in less than wonderful sounding churches, and then I will carefully pick a supporting reverb afterwards. If the church has wonderful reverb, then the two cardioids get replaced with ribbons for Blumlein stereo to capture the space. ORTF is my solution to the two groups being wider spaced - with nothing central.

I have NOT become good with blending spot mics even though I have been doing it for ages! It seems to need level, pan position, reverb AND time displacement to make it invisible, but working.

There is a real clarity difference between the mixed and the raw recording - the diction loses definition, and the rumble of the percussion, sort of starts to become a drone - always there. For my money, a few tweaks on the simple stereo technique sound far more realistic than the multi-processed version - all the stereo placement fights are missing, and people seem to be fixed in position, not appearing in multiple places.

A little trick I did discover for the weak men issue so common, is to try A/B - so your two channels are much more men only one side and women only the other. Then put the sopranos and altos centre, and use a copy of the men's track, and pan them left and right, add small time shifts in different ways to the two men tracks and also shift the pitch very slightly on them. In a dryer space this trick sometimes works. It's not very mono compatible, but is one of my rescue techniques - hence why I always record at least 4 tracks, just in case. 99% of the time, ch 1 and 2 are the primary stereo track, but those other two are well worth a few minutes and two extra mics.

One thing I know for certain is that there is no rule - of any kind. Every job is different. One was ruined totally by hired in moving head lights - not there for the rehearsal, but installed in the gap before the evening. All the microphones had one nearby, and the mics all recorded the fans wonderfully, and occasional servo noises. What people actually hear was the recording the video camera I put in the organ loft, dead centre at the rear. Nice acoustics, so while reverby to a high degree, it fit and I used that. One piece was less good - because the organist, who wasnt playing, but there, decided to sing along. She was er, probably a great organist.

 

[Slouching Raymond]

I'd drop the religious theme.

 

[rob aylestone]

Not with you? Religious theme?