After a very successful rehearsal and practice recording with The Queensland Wind Orchestra as a group we had a mixing session of the rehearsal.
The gear we used was:
Zoom F8 Power lead and Battery Lead. 2 X SD Cards 2 X DPA 4011As (main pair) 2 X KM184s 8 X Leads 8 Channel Multicore 240 V Extension 240 V Power-board Headphones Electrical Tape (important) Masking tape and marker One Manfrotto lighting stands for the main mic array 1 X ORTIF stereo mic cradle 2 X Spare stands for outriggers
Using the Zoom recorder as an interface was defiantly a cool experience. It was interesting to not be mixing on a laptop but using the inbuilt mixer in the interface. Setting the levels was the hardest part as there is a lot of dynamics in the orchestra. There is 6 microphones that we used for this rehearsal and we will use the same set up for the performance this coming Saturday.
The thought of using only 6 microphones to record an orchestra seemed crazy to see to I was eager to see what was going to happen. There were 4 main microphones the DPA's we set as an AB pair above the conductor angled down to capture the softer instruments such as the flutes, clarinets and violins.
There is also two on the outer of the orchestra. They were placed about 6m each side of the main ab pair. To capture the outer instruments.
We also used two ambience microphones that were placed at the back of the hall. These captured the room ambience as the hall has a lot of natural reverb that sounds lovely.
More over using more microphones gave us more to mix and more options while mixing. Even though with the ambient microphones muted in the protools session the oreaqhtra sounded beautiful.
Here are the EQ' that we used on the ambient and the master track. The EQ on the ambient track we cut from about 150hz this was to eliminate the muddiness that was occurring through the low frequencies these microphones picked. We placed them there to capture the natural reverb of the hall so we boosted the high end which created a nice fluttery sound in the reverb from the softer instruments such as flutes and violin. We placed the bell EQ juts above 1k and made the span quite wide as this section of frequencies was where most of the instruments sit and we needed to cut it so that it would make the reverb more prominent in the ambient tracks tracks.
Adrian placed an eq on the master fader also this was interesting to me as i have only ever mixed bands and alike where putting any effects on the master fader is not a professional standard. However he said that because all the microphones are capturing essentially the same sound source that it as okay. he said if it improves the sound in the case even if there is only a small boost in this EQ it can make a significant difference to the track. So, when we boosted only about 2.8 db around 20k we noticed a significantly more even level through out the tracks. There was a large amount of difference in volume between the sections of the tracks as the softer instruments such as harp, violin, and flutes weren't nearly as loud as loud in the mix as the drums and brass sections. Adding this EQ just boosted the softer instruments in the areas the levels sounded slightly unbalanced.
As for the other EQ's this is the set up we had on the OSL, OSR and MAIN pairs. as you can see they are all very similar. Something i learnt about this mix that sometimes when using EQ it can be helpful to cut some frequencies to make other sound more prominent. For example this EQ was used to BOOST the bass in these tracks this didn't make sense to me i though that if we gave the lower frequencies more gain they would be clearer and louder. This wasn't the case. The bass tones sound pretty muddy below 50k so when boosted it effects the clarity of the sound. when cut just above there it actually tightens up these frequencies. So applying this similar EQ to the 4 tracks was appropriate for the overall mix. I had also never realised how efficient it is to use this one-band EQ when cutting frequencies.
here is the overall set up you can see the placement of the microphones and the width of the orchestra we were dealing with. This weekend for the official recording we will need to refer back to the distance of the microphones we used for this recording as we know that it was correct. The main pair in placed above the conductor and the outer microphones are placed 6 meters each side of the main pair. As for the placement of the room microphones they will be taped to the wall as they were in the rehearsal. We need to keep OHAS in mind while setting up prior to the performance also as this set up requires a number of leads running across the ground. It is very important any exposed leads in the way of foot traffic are concealed by a guard.
I am excited to record this weekend and I am confident that it will run smoothly through this practice recording session we did and through the mixing process we have run through. I just need to make sure that we have all the correct gear when myself and another student pick it up Saturday afternoon.
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