Recording Band with Orchestra

[TerraMortim]

You should video record the concert. I'd fucking love to see a BM band play live with an orchestra. (always wanted to see that!)

I'm far from an expert in symphonic recording, but I'm sure that'll do fine. I mean, BM is usually somewhat gritty, so it would be insane overkill to mic it with top quality mics going into world class preamps, only to have the rest of the elements, with that thin-ish harsh and cloudy evil tone the Blackmetallers love so well. I'm imagining, if you're going after the typical black metal sound, that the metal elements aren't hugely fat and "warm" anyway... I'm sure that you could shape the sound to fit very nicely, if need be.

 

[Vagodeoz]

Thanks Terra!
And what you are saying is true... in part...
We aren't the typical we-live-in-the-forest-and-have-crappy-production-on-porpuse kind of black metal.
It's far from the "regular black metal", the kind of sound we are looking for is more like power metal. Guitars ala Rhapsody, Dragonforce...
But still have a lot of black metal elements on the songs, and mainly the vocals.
Maybe you could also give me a little advice about the demos of the band over here?

 

[TerraMortim]

Cool =) I remember seeing Rhapsody in their recording setup on their site a while ago for an orchestra which used a decca tree, and some spot micing here and there, but keep in mind, it was done in a VERY nice old church, and the mics were absolute top quality...they must have had such a huge budget..

Even for power metal, I'm sure that what you have will be good enough for the symphonic elements in contrast to the metal elements. If you want it to be as high fidelity as the metallica video, that would probably need a big budget. Keep in mind, I've never recorded an orchestra, but if I were approaching it, I would figure that any subtleties captured by awesome mics and what not would be lost when mixed with the band...I'm imagining, you would be adding a good deal of reverb to the orchestral tracks if you're close micing (for realism's sake) which would further dilute the signal. symphonic recording is often typical to have the best mics and such to record, but I think you said it best, when you said that this isn't just a symphonic recording, and it's going to be mixed with other (noisy) elements...

I'll take a listen to the demos tomorrow and give my 2 cents...just a bit too tired and drunk at the moment to give any sort of objective opinions on the mix (ears don't work that well with alcohol involved, you know?)