Recording Concert Bands and Orchestras

[Chili]

Recently, I've been recording my kid's school band. I'm talking with the director about putting together a CD for sale at the end of the year as a fundraiser. I'm getting okay results, but I think I could do better. The band director told me other schools are interested in hiring my services as well, so it's time to up my game.

For now, I'm using two AKG C4000's about 5 ft on each side of the conductor's podium going into an 8-port Tascam US-1800 interface. The mics are pointed slightly outwards so the cardioid pattern has little overlap (in my imagination, that is). Last recording session, I added two mics near the percussion because they weren't coming through enough for my ears. At least the bass drum wasn't. I liked what I heard.

Post mix, I EQ slightly and use mild compression on the master bus. I'll edit out content between songs.

Anyone else have any experience and/or good results? I'm interested in how others do it.
What are you for mics?
Mic positions?
Any spot mics or supplements?
Post-production process? Tips? etc??

Here's a sample using just the two AKG's. Mind you, these are 12 and 13 year olds.....

 

[snow lizard]

Sounds like the kids are alright.

(pun intended)

I have no experience with this type of recording myself but a couple of observations on your recording are that it sounds dark, ie. high frequency is not emphasized, and it seems like there might be holes in the sound.

Depending on what you have for mics it would be easy to try a couple of things. One would be to set up a centered coincident stereo capture and record that with your current setup to provide a means for comparison and a safety of sorts. I'm not sure if it would be practical to blend sounds from the 2 different setups but one or the other might be more to your liking. Jecklin Disc, Blumlein, X/Y or M/S come to mind. Depends largely on what mics you have available. Could be problematic if there's a difference in distance between musicians in the center vs. the ends. I'd be hesitant to run a coincident setup on its own until I'm confident it isn't going to suck but it's easy to try.

The other idea that comes to mind is modifying your current setup into a Decca Tree or something similar which is common for orchestral recordings. This might be the easiest and most effective approach. LCR panning. Balance levels. Done.

I'm thinking that spot mics might add unnecessary complications.

 

[grimtraveller]

Here's a sample using just the two AKG's. Mind you, these are 12 and 13 year olds.....

I can't help you in terms of how, but two things I want to say.
1]It sounds well recorded to me.
2]The orchestra sound utterly fantastic !
You should hear the orchestra my son plays in. They are awful. Granted, they are 9~13 and they are learning and the brass players are pretty effective {my son plays euphonium}. They suffer from the one thing that will blight a kids' orchestra and that's the strings and clarinet players being 'out' in terms of their pitch too much of the time. In English schools that I've heard, it seems to be the norm rather than the exception. It makes my nerves go !
I taped one of his orchestra's performances once because I wanted to get some sounds of audiences applauding to use as an effect on another song. Some of the playing was so cringeworthy, it inspired me to write a song about going to see an awful band play. When I record it, I'm going to use bits of that performance to emphasize the point !

 

[Chili]

Sounds like the kids are alright.

(pun intended)

I have no experience with this type of recording myself but a couple of observations on your recording are that it sounds dark, ie. high frequency is not emphasized, and it seems like there might be holes in the sound.

Depending on what you have for mics it would be easy to try a couple of things. One would be to set up a centered coincident stereo capture and record that with your current setup to provide a means for comparison and a safety of sorts. I'm not sure if it would be practical to blend sounds from the 2 different setups but one or the other might be more to your liking. Jecklin Disc, Blumlein, X/Y or M/S come to mind. Depends largely on what mics you have available. Could be problematic if there's a difference in distance between musicians in the center vs. the ends. I'd be hesitant to run a coincident setup on its own until I'm confident it isn't going to suck but it's easy to try.

The other idea that comes to mind is modifying your current setup into a Decca Tree or something similar which is common for orchestral recordings. This might be the easiest and most effective approach. LCR panning. Balance levels. Done.

I'm thinking that spot mics might add unnecessary complications.

Good call on the dark mics. The C4000's are advertised as being darker. Supposedly makes them more suited for brass instruments. These particular mics belong to the school and I use them because I don't have two mics similar to each other.

I've read comments elsewhere on the internet that coincident XY doesn't yield a great stereo image. But I'm open to buying some matched mics to try them out. Not sure what to get.

I'm also intrigued by the M/S micing technique. I spent a fair amount of time today reading about it today. Enough so, that I ordered a mic capable of figure 8 pattern to go along with one of my other mic's. (Studio Projects stuff)

I can tell you already, I'm not ready to try the Decca tree method. So far, half the recordings I've done for them have been live performances and I don't want some big apparatus thingy, holding mics and cables, to command more attention than the performance.

Thanks for the thoughts. You got me to do a lot of thinking and that's good start for me!!! (Uh-ohhhh )

 

[Chili]

I can't help you in terms of how, but two things I want to say.
1]It sounds well recorded to me.
2]The orchestra sound utterly fantastic !
You should hear the orchestra my son plays in. They are awful. Granted, they are 9~13 and they are learning and the brass players are pretty effective {my son plays euphonium}. They suffer from the one thing that will blight a kids' orchestra and that's the strings and clarinet players being 'out' in terms of their pitch too much of the time. In English schools that I've heard, it seems to be the norm rather than the exception. It makes my nerves go !
I taped one of his orchestra's performances once because I wanted to get some sounds of audiences applauding to use as an effect on another song. Some of the playing was so cringeworthy, it inspired me to write a song about going to see an awful band play. When I record it, I'm going to use bits of that performance to emphasize the point !

Thanks for the kind words, Tag. I will boast a little bit and say the school district we are in has a tremendous music program. These kids are musically way beyond anything I could imagine when I was their age. But this is Austin and the schools had better be pumping out top-notch musicians. We have a reputation to uphold!!!

I hope your son stays with it. Music builds a solid foundation to build a life upon. But you know that already.

 

[snow lizard]

I can tell you already, I'm not ready to try the Decca tree method. So far, half the recordings I've done for them have been live performances and I don't want some big apparatus thingy, holding mics and cables, to command more attention than the performance.

What you have now is almost like Decca Tree but with the center mic missing. You'd basically put the AKG's in omni and place a 3rd omni in front of the podium maybe 3 feet. It would probably work better with pencil mics but using whatever you have should give you an idea if it's the right direction.

And yeah, putting a mic on the bass drum works good for me. Gotta do what your ears tell you.

I'm still pretty impressed with how well those kids can play. The recording you posted sounds pretty good but that performance sure didn't hurt.