Choir Recording Techniques?

[countrylac]

Does anybody have any experience recording a church choir? If so do you have any advice about how many (a what type) mics are needed or any tips about mic placement and/or if a limiter needs to be used to supress sounds from bouncing into the wrong mic?

 

[mshilarious]

Is a school choir close enough Choir on risers in a semicircle, two small diaphragm condenser mics, in ORTF (near-coincident), about head height for the second row of singers, and aimed down towards the first row, placed near the center of the circle. Spot mics for soloists if you like.

Don't know what you want the limiter for--a choir can't generate very loud transients, unless this is a really odd postmodern church choir

 

[AGCurry]

mshilarious is pretty much spot on.

If your room is quiet, a Blumlein configuration can yield a very nice sound as well (coincident X/Y using figure-of-eight mics). But air conditioning and audience noise can ruin it.

 

[pabo]

I used two Rode NT1s placed very high on mic stands.
The mics were at opposite ends on the stage.

I observed the 3 to 1 ratio to avoid phase cancellation.
That is for every 1 foot the mics are from the sound source, the mics should be three feet apart.

This may be difficult or impossible for you depending on the size of the stage but it worked excellent for me...the sound was incredible.

There was a piano and an organ playing with the choir and it got their sound perfectly.

Also, I took a direct feed from the house PA on the soloists' mic.

It sounded great on my Roland VS-880EX

 

[pabo]

USE THE LIMITER!!!

I attended two rehearsals and I thought I didn't need a limiter cause I had the levels perfect but I was wrong.

At the end of choir's grand finale number on their last sustained notes, I got some nasty digital clipping for about 2 seconds...they really sang way lounder than I expected!

I mentioned this to one choir member and he said that it was the angels from heaven who joined the choir that cause the volume to increase!

I wish I would have put a limiter on at the level just before clipping!

Maybe on a 24-bit recorder I could have got by without a limiter but the 880 is only a 20-bit.

 

[Alexbt]

Be it a live concert performance or a studio performance, I greatly reccommend having room mics.

I have been singing in choirs and have listened to choirs for years, and I can tell you that you're going to get a better sound from the group with some distance.

That isn't to say that you can't have closer mics. I just seriously suggest you have some room mics in there if at all possible. (The further the better)

 

[mshilarious]

I wish I would have put a limiter on at the level just before clipping!

Yeah that sucks, you have to hate a bad rehearsal. Even so, with a live performance, you gotta give yourself some insurance. If you need several dB of hard limiting, that ain't gonna sound real good either--2 sec. of cadence isn't a peak. Sacrifice a few more dB of dynamic range, even at 20 bit.

If you have the tracks, run one set with just enough compression to give you the headroom you can't believe you'd need, and one without.

Anyway:

limiter needs to be used to supress sounds from bouncing into the wrong mic

Limiters don't do that. You are probably thinking of a gate, which doesn't have an obvious application for recording a choir.

 

[Richard Monroe]

First, as pointed out by others, a limiter will not do what you are talking about. You don't need a bunch of mics, you need 2 or 3 good ones. I've recorded choirs with some success using a spaced stereo pair (Studio Projects C-4's), coincedent (Neumann KM184's), M-S (AKG C414B-ULS and Neumann KM184) and with a Decca Tree (2 C414B-ULS and one B.L.U.E. Kiwi). A Decca tree is basically a triangular array of three omnis, which can rock on choirs if you can find the right place to put it. In no case did I use more than 3 mics, and in general, the mics were a good 20 feet or more from the nearest choir member.
As far as dynamics, my rule of thumb is that the live performance will peak at least 6 db higher than the rehearsal, because of the net effect of adrenaline. The more professional the group, the smaller the difference. The Boston Pops will stick to the plan, but a bunch of high school kids on adrenaline can be scary. I simply don't use compression on classical music going in, I'll track lower, and compress and boost gain later as needed. There are some exceptions to this, such as "Mars" from "The Planets", and the 1812 Overture. When they start using cannons, all the bets are off!-Richie

 

[pabo]

MS,
Good advice, thanks. I'll remeber that for next time.

I agree with the previous...2 or 3 mikes max.

In the case of a choir, I think the saying "Air is the best mixer" applies.

Finding the best mike placement is what I think will make it sound good rather than a bunch of mikes.

 

[dgatwood]

One trick I've used with some success when dealing with choirs when I want to get a lot of the room acoustics (e.g. recording in a church) is to have either an x/y coincident pair or a M/S stereo mic up close and then another similar configuration a good distance back. Because the difference in level is always significant, comb filtering hasn't really been a noticeable problem for me, so this essentially allows me to control how much of the room reverb I wanted to allow into the mix (in post) by simply controlling the balance between mics.

In one case, I actually used a combination of an X/Y pair at about twenty feet from the choir loft, a M/S stereo at... maybe 60 feet, and a spaced pair of dynamic mics right in front of the two sections (men on one side of a choir loft, women on the other). Both of the coincident pairs were raised to about 8-10 feet above ground level, which was from 2-4 feet below the bottom of the choir loft.

Both of the close mics were panned somewhat to the left and right of center, but not all the way to either side. These mics were mostly used to enhance vocal articulation. A bit of EQ (cutting the lows and mids somewhat) and fairly low levels helped ensure this.... When I got those levels too high, it would sound very awkward, but at a low level, it provided clarity of diction that would otherwise have been utterly lost in that particular hall.

The closer of the coincident pairs (20-ish feet) made up the bulk of the meat of the sound, with the distant (60-80 feet?) mic mainly serving to boost the natural reverb a bit (possibly with a high cut, I forget).

I haven't listened to the recordings in mono (and that wasn't really a consideration for our purposes; it would probably be a disaster if it were), but at least in stereo, it provided a very open, spacious sound while still maintaining the crispness of diction that is hard to get from a distance.

Thoughts?