Recording a choir?

LDS

LDS

New member
I got a call to go record a choir later this week. This will be my first time with choral music. Evidently about a dozen singers, a piano and some canned music.

Anyone have recommendations based on what's worked for them in the past? They'll be singing in the music room of a private school, about 20X30 with a 10 foot ceiling. Walls and floors are carpeted, there is an acoustic tile ceiling and a couple of diffusers/bass traps scattered about the room. I haven't seen the room yet but the school A/V guy tells me it sounds really good, not too dead and not too live.

I'll be using a Tascam 1641 into my laptop. It's worked pretty well for recording rock bands live. As far as mics, I have some cheap condensers (2 MXL 992, 2 MXL 603S, 2 Samson C02, Shure SM86), as well as some SM57s and SM58s.

Any suggestions on mic placement, etc., would be helpful. Also if anyone has any horror stories it would be good to hear those, too.
 
Man, I got to get my eyes checked. I could have sworn I read "recording a chair". :eek:
 
I've never done it myself, but our local music / arts center mic's up a choir all the time. I think they just do it for sound reinforcement, but it works great and I'm sure you could get a decent recording from the setup. They have the choir stand in a large arch, maybe 20' across and 6' deep. I think they use 5 or so mics spaced evenly maybe 6' in front of the choir line, at about mouth level, kinda like:

choir.jpg


They have these tall walls behind them that look like cubicle walls, for acoustic purposes I presume, since it's in a huge auditorium. They arch over the singers a little too.. Prolly unnecessary if your room is decent.
 
Given the small room, if the group was good at self-balancing I'd record in stereo, maybe an ORTF condenser pair around 6 ft out, moving it around to find the spot that gets the best balance between singers and accomp. Not an ideal room for a chorus.

Horror stories? Heh. You didn't mention the age, but choruses of young kids can have a couple good singers that are pulling the group along and a bunch of out of tune but enthusiastic followers. That can make mic placement and singer positioning tricky. Watch out if you use more than a stereo pair of mic's too. You might end up with a phase-y mess when you mix them. Also watch out for the canned backing music. It can easily sound crappy recorded live in the room. You'd be better having it played for the singers with a small monitor, minimizing your recording's pickup of it, then mix in the backing track from its original CD or file later. Can only do that though if it's a recording session, not a perf for an audience.

Cables can be a nightmare in a school situation. Make sure all cable runs on the ground are inaccessible or covered/taped.
 
LDS said:
I got a call to go record a choir later this week. This will be my first time with choral music. Evidently about a dozen singers, a piano and some canned music.

Anyone have recommendations based on what's worked for them in the past? They'll be singing in the music room of a private school, about 20X30 with a 10 foot ceiling. Walls and floors are carpeted, there is an acoustic tile ceiling and a couple of diffusers/bass traps scattered about the room. I haven't seen the room yet but the school A/V guy tells me it sounds really good, not too dead and not too live.

I'll be using a Tascam 1641 into my laptop. It's worked pretty well for recording rock bands live. As far as mics, I have some cheap condensers (2 MXL 992, 2 MXL 603S, 2 Samson C02, Shure SM86), as well as some SM57s and SM58s.

Any suggestions on mic placement, etc., would be helpful. Also if anyone has any horror stories it would be good to hear those, too.
Click to expand...

If there is a FOH station as it looks to be you are going to be at his/her mercy for I'm sure with the canned music and live piano they'll be miced along with the choir if they do a good job of mixing then just a stereo recording will work just fine for you.



:cool:
 
Hmmm... I got the impression it was going to be an unamplified performance, except for the canned music.
 
Hard to say XLR until LSD comes back to confirm.
It just makes scene to me that if you have canned music everything else would be in the PA for the reason of balancing it all out. If not then all may be lost.



:cool:
 
Yep, unamplified, just standing in their music room. I'm not sure how they monitor the canned music, but I'm sure it won't be pretty. I'm toying with the idea of taking every headphone I have and chunk 'em in a box to haul out there...

My initial though is a stereo pair similar to what was recommended, with an LDC on the piano and another further back near the back of the room depending on where it sounds good. I'm just going to take a line in for the canned stuff.

Evidently, their music director is very impressed with the current crop of students, and wants a recording before they all graduate and/or go home for the summer. The choir is mostly seniors.
 
I would also probably go with a stereo setup as stated above due to the small room and treatment. I've never recorded a choir but have recorded an R&B group of 4 singers and used MS setup turned out great.
 
I would record in stereo, as suggested, and I agree with the spot mic on the piano, which you may need in the final mix, or maybe not. I would place the stereo pair in coincedent, ORTF, or NOS configuration. (NOS can work well on choirs). Place the stereo array behind and above the conductor, facing down at the choir from above. Then- here's the key- Get control over the volume control of the canned music, so you can get the balance right going in. Find out, if you can, what system they are running the music through, and if it sucks (boombox, etc.), bring a small PA if you have one, or even a power amp and a couple of wedge monitors. You want to be able to put the two speakers/speaker arrays to each side of the choir. If it's possible, put the piano in the center, in front of your mic stand. If it can't be moved, try arranging the choir around the piano. Put altos, baritones and any basses on the treble side and tenors and sopranos on the bass side of the piano. That should give you a pretty good bass/treble balance. The better balanced it is going in, the better it will be for everybody. You can't EQ this stuff in post production. Some very light clean compression added afterwards can be a good thing. Don't overdo it. Good luck.-Richie
 
XLR said:
Hey LDS - let us know how it turns out. And post the recording.:)
Click to expand...

On the way home. It was a piece of cake. Acapella except for one song.

I need to transfer it to the home DAW, but it sounded good in the headphones.
 
I recently recorded a 20+ person group of spiritual singers using a pair of SM81s in NOS, about 8 feet away from the front row and about 8 ft high (ceiling here was 20 ft vaulted). I aimed the mics down (toward the BACK row voices) - this helped balance the front and back rows pretty well. The result was very good. I used no processing on it.
 
I know this thread is really old LDS, but do you have a clip of the recording at all? I'd be really interested to hear it or any other choir recordings just to see how it worked out. Especially as I help to run a choir myself.
 
Your best best will be to record the choir itself with a stereo pair of cardioid condensers. If there's any chance of renting a matched pair I suggest you go for it--in my experience this would only cost $20-30 for a day, possibly less. For live piano, keep that behind the stereo pair (to put it in the null) and mic that as you would normally--but with a short stick or closed lid if it's a grand or one of the techniques with the mics inside the lid if it's an upright.

The other thing you'll have to consider is playback of the pre-recorded tracks to the choir for those numbers. I'll assume that 12+ headphones aren't likely a possibility (and most amateur choirs would find working that way awkward anyway). Again, find a way to put your speakers behind the cardioids and in the null spot. You'll still get some spill but probably not enough to cause problems during the mix.

Above all, give yourself time to play with mic positioning. In this sort of situation, moves of even a few inches can make a big difference.

Ooops, thread necromancy strikes again--I didn't check the dates.

Told you I'm getting senile!
 
I ended up using a pair of LDC mics (MXL992) ORTF and a Rode NTK for the soloists, with a pair of MXL 603S on the piano.

Only one problem - my student assistant decided to turn the wireless on to surf the web while we were waiting for the choir to get ready, and left it on. That causes (and caused) a lot of dropouts...

The choir director wasn't impressed with the performance as a whole, and doesn't want it to see the light of day. He did, however, use the recordings to coach the singers quite a bit.

In the interim I've ditched Audition 3.0 and made the move to Reaper. Wish I'd tried Repaer before buying Audition.
 
Take a page from Darth Belachick's playbook. Trade the student assistant to the Greenland Goons for "future considerations" as a warning to others.-Richie
 
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