Mixing an Orchestra, looking for starting point..

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James Argo

James Argo

Fancy Rock N' Roll
Hi, it's me again with another great thread to start.. :D
Most of us mixing "ordinary" band material. You know... the usual..
But, today, I chalange myself to mix orchestra song. It's not quite Orchestra recording, just using various samples, synth & keyboards. I have 17 tracks of strings, woodwinds, Brass, Reed, Piano, Orch percussion, etc... However, there's no such "Drums & Bass" in the song. So I just kinda ask of where's the starting point to do the mix. I tried to do the piano & violins first, but they're not quite playing the lead part of the song. Every tracks had their's own big part. Some in, some out... some come, some go.. I believe there's alot of experienced people among you guys who has an opinion on this case. For thou, I thank full...

;)
Jaymz
 
I've never mixed orchestral music, but it sounds like you better have automation or eight more hands.

Are you mixing on an analog console?
 
...in SONAR 2XL. So yes, I guess I have automation.

;)
 
when i was in an orchestra, we were recorded with just 2 room microphones (left and right) in the concert hall. of course it helped that the acoustics were amazing. :)

what you cld do is get a diagram showing the relative positions of all the instruments in an orchestra, and apply panning and reverb accordingly. perhaps u can use cakewalk's fx3 (soundstage i think) where u can model the actual positions of the instrument sections.

u cld use the strings as a starting point since they're the ones with the most stuff to play, and work from there to the woodwinds, then brass. percussion shld be done last.

cheers!
 
I suppose you could try using the physical set-up of a typical orchestra as a starting point - violins left, violas middle, cellos right, etc.
 
littledog said:
I suppose you could try using the physical set-up of a typical orchestra as a starting point - violins left, violas middle, cellos right, etc.
Click to expand...

I think this is where I would start. Orchestras are almost always recorded live to two track, with very few mics. Even if there are more tracks recorded, the majority of the sound usually comes from the main "room" mics. You will also want to be VERY carful about how you handle the reverb. I would recomend using no more than one reverb, or two at most. You will also want to adjust the predelay of individual sections depending on the distance from the virtual "mics". The instruments up front would have a shorter pre-delay than those in the back. You can adjust this by sending instruments through a delay (single repeat, no feedback or modulation) with a fairly short time (no more than 25 ms).

Just a thought.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
What Light said makes sense. If you're wanting to know what order to start in though, since you already have 17 separate tracks, I think I would start with the parts that lay the foundation of the piece (Double Bass, Cello, Percussion), just like is normally done with "drums 'n bass". Get that sounding full and powerful then work the other parts in most likely in the manner others have descricbed here; i.e. in order of the room layout.
Oh, and from what I've read and seen, although orchestral recording is still often done straight to 2 track it is becoming very common for the recording to be done on multitrack.
James, re you going to post the results?
 
Orchestra's "mix" themselves. The mic positioning will be the extent of the engineers contribution (well, and the selection of mic's and to a lesser extent, the mic pre used.....). The sound of the room will of course play a big role too.

You are making electronic music. Different boat altogether. Mix it to sound the way you want. I doubt you will ever get it to sound like a well tracked "real" orchestra though.

Have fun! :)

Ed
 
Cheers everybody. Thank you for all the replies. They somehow open my imagination to do in many exciting way. I decided to try several way to mix, and hear what's best I could get. In my first day, I choose mix by lower frequency first. I thought it similiar in "Drums and Bass" mixing, where we should put kick and Bass line as the first point. So, I grouped tracks by freq range they occupy. Contra Basses, Cellos, French horn & Timpani as the first point. They sound low enough. I didn't make perfect pan, cause I have no idea where the instruments sit in orchestra. So I just figure it out myself... Contra Basses panned about 10 o'clock, Timpani panned centre behind, French horn 2 o'clock slightly behind, and Cellos 3 o'clock front of french horn. Contra basses and french horn first. Then Timpani, and last the Cellos. First I put the Basses on -6dB by view, then french horn followed by ears to somehow equal, starting from the extreme. I closed my eyes along the song, and let my ears tell me what to do next. Finally, I... hmmm... I get slippy... :( Get coffee... :D I open my eyes to see the metter, and made a necessary little adjustment. I haven't put any compression yet, since they're really build from good sample. Nor Eq and reverb. Unless I put a little bit of "Waves True Verb" on Timpani. I solo the timpani, add a reverb to what I liked, play the group together, and slightly turn down the reverb on timpani. Hoop laa... the low squad is done. I have to move around the songs since they are not actually played on the same times almost... Wait for tommorow to do the next session on Brass, Reed and Woodwinds...


Does any have any pic / link to pic showing the orchestra typical set ? Gratefull I will be... ;)
 
Originally posted by MikeA James, re you going to post the results?
Click to expand...

I hope so... But nowhereradio ain't let me do FTP upload. My ISP allowed only FTP to upload more than 1 MB... But I'll see what I can do. ;)
 
typical orchestra setup (rear to front, row per row, as seen from the audience)

- percussion. Mostly timpani in the middle. If there's a lot of different percussion instruments, timpani move to the right.
- brass: french horns to the left, trumpets, trombones and tuba to the right
- woodwinds: flutes, clarinets, oboe, bassoons
- strings: violin I, violin II, viola, cellos, basses behind cellos.
- optional : harp (behind/between violin I & II), piano (id. harp), saxophone (next to clarinet).

here's a (large) picture of a non-typical setup :D

string section changes a lot these days, changing cellos for violin II and such..

Herwig
 
DeaPoet - nice picture! Which orchestra? where? when? - are you in the picture?

- Wil
 
it's 'De filharmonie', a big professional orchestra, based in Antwerp, Belgium. My girlfriend plays violin in it, I am a pop/jazz bass player

(www.defilharmonie.be -> orkest -> persinfo -> pictures)

Herwig
 
...That's a great pic DeadPoet!! Thank's, now I can adjust my mix panning position in a better way now.
;)
 
"Orchestras are almost always recorded live to two track, with very few mics."


2 mics are more common for live recordings (with an audience), but even then usually spot mics are used and audience mics. in a non-audience situation most people including me tend to use decca tree's (or modified versions), flanking mics, spot mics and i like to use pzm's with extended "plates" for the french horns. word dawg.

get nubular!
 
"Orchestras are almost always recorded live to two track, with very few mics."

makes me think about the "Night of the Proms" (80piece orchestra & +100piece choir) special I saw on TV last night... man, I've never seen that many mics in my life.
Every violin, viola, cello and bass had a special mic, inside their instrument, most woodwinds had a C414 in front of them, french horns had err... C1000 or C3000, don't remember too well. I saw sennheisers, neuman KM series, shures, V-drums, ...

A friend/engineer told me the FOH guy gets only groups, there are 4 submixers behind the podium... talk about coordinating, yikes :eek:

off course, this is big bucks 'classical' music. You'll never see the Berliner doing that ;)


Herwig
 
DeadPoet said:
"Orchestras are almost always recorded live to two track, with very few mics."

makes me think about the "Night of the Proms" (80piece orchestra & +100piece choir) special I saw on TV last night... man, I've never seen that many mics in my life.
Every violin, viola, cello and bass had a special mic, inside their instrument, most woodwinds had a C414 in front of them, french horns had err... C1000 or C3000, don't remember too well. I saw sennheisers, Neumann KM series, shures, V-drums, ...

A friend/engineer told me the FOH guy gets only groups, there are 4 submixers behind the podium... talk about coordinating, yikes :eek:

off course, this is big bucks 'classical' music. You'll never see the Berliner doing that ;)


Herwig
Click to expand...

That sounds more like a pops orchestra, than a typical classical orchestra. That is also common when an orchestra is playing live with a rock band, or somewhere the audience will be particularly noisy. There are a couple of companies out there who supply the mics for events like that, and the mics they use are mostly DPAs, which are WAY expensive. There was probably a hundred thousand dollars of mics on that stage. This is, none the less, an uncommon way of recording an orchestra. The most common method for years, and still very popular today (because it sounds really good) is a Decca Tree. These days you will usually find spot mics or section mics as well, but these are there to add to the main mics. The DPA website has a good description of a Decca Tree, here:

http://www.dpamicrophones.com/eng_pub/MicUni/515.html

The one thing they leave out (for obvious reasons) is that the Decca Tree is usually done with Neumann M50s or the newer TLM50 or M150. The unique diaphragm of these mics creates a very unusual pickup pattern which is omnidirectional in the low frequencies, but which shifts to a very tight cardioid in the high frequencies.

There are probably more ways to record an orchestra than any other situation I can think of. All of my favorites seem to be done with a Decca Tree, though.

Light

"Cowards can never be moral."
M.K. Gandhi
 
James, you could always get a NoWhereHosting account, and use FTP to submit tunes...

W.
 
Thank's Waldo. I won't do that by now, but whenever I decide to post them, I'll be sure to go there. Thank's.
;)
 
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