Matthaus-Passion coming up, its a beast! Suggestions?

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:32 pm

I am traveling with the Heidelberg Symphony and Chorale of the Holy Ghost Church (also Heidelberg) on a Cathedral tour, which I have the extreme pleasure of recording. All the venues are enormous cathedrals with soaking wet reverb.
Each night there will be two choirs and two orchestras.

choirs will be 50 deep(per choir). Choir_______Choir
two orchestras also (40 per) Orchestra_____Orchestra

orchestras are in front of the choirs, about 20 ft away.

all soloists will be seated on the side and will walk to the front of the group for their pieces....
Anyone done this one with two choirs and orchestras??
Any suggestions?

OH!
Equipment
Mics
AKG 426b
Schoeps CMC62S Pair
Gefell M930 Pair
Gefell M300 Pair
U87s

Preamps
DAVs all the way baby! (10 channels)
mytek stereo 192 X 8 channels
two SD 744ts

Thanks!

Laughing

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 12:59 pm

WOW...I'd love to assist on that tour. Regretfully, I doubt they'll be travelling to Florida. We don't have any cathedrals.

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 4:07 pm

I hope someone can chime in. Im flying solo, and scared out of my wits. Confused

I guess thats how we learn though, right? Choir/Orchestra I can handle, but the two of each thing has me perplexed!

Posted: Mon Apr 03, 2006 10:31 pm

BigRay wrote:

I hope someone can chime in. Im flying solo, and scared out of my wits. Confused

I guess thats how we learn though, right? Choir/Orchestra I can handle, but the two of each thing has me perplexed!

Hello again ....

I'm not sure I understand the setup .... is this "tag-team" orch+chorus, or are they combined into one larger force?

Mike

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:04 am

BigRay wrote:

I hope someone can chime in. Im flying solo, and scared out of my wits. Confused

I guess thats how we learn though, right? Choir/Orchestra I can handle, but the two of each thing has me perplexed!

Ray
When I recorded this work I considered the total ensemble only - as if it was a very wide orch and choir and used a A-B configuration behind and above the conductor. Soloists had accent mics to aid clarity. If I was to do this again my only change would be to use ORFT as main pickup - especially in very reverberant space.

Best of luck

Larry Elliott

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:04 am

[quote="hughesmr]I'm not sure I understand the setup .... is this "tag-team" orch+chorus, or are they combined into one larger force?[/quote]

Both. Sometimes the one setup. Sometimes the other. Sometimes both. They're usually set up as two teams and I suppose that's the image a listener will expect to hear as well.

L

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 4:44 am

One large force.

thanks for the help so far!

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:32 am

BigRay wrote:

One large force.

thanks for the help so far!

Agreed. Unless one orchestra is antiphonal, I would suggest a common ensemble presentation. If its a reverberant space, ORTF will still do nicely and can be sweetened up later, perhaps with ambience mics.

I suppose you could do a weak and left/right presentation, orchestra 1-left and 2-right... and such. It probably wouldn't play back well on simple stereo setup (end-user.)

Chris

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:01 pm

If their largest moment has them coming together as one large force (as oppposed to antiphonal groups at either end of the church, etc.) then your choices are pretty simple based on the 10 channels you say you have available.

One main omni pair spaced wide for the whole thing, a pair of solo/spot mics (assuming there are two locations for the soloists, or even in duets, trios, etc., and the remaining six would be ORTF pairs for the choir(s) & orchestra(s). You may be able to do the orch with just the ORTF pair, and use up to four Cardioids on the choirs when they're at full strength - an ORTF pair (high, looking down) in the center, and a very wide L&R pair if they expand out on each side. (Not seeing a stage plot, I have no real idea what you're facing; this is just a guess.)

Don't want to scare you, but you may need another input or two for accent or spot mics in the orch, etc. (Maybe you only need one solo spot mic - that would give you back an input?) Again, don't know your stage plot or the score from memory.

Good luck and enjoy the ride; the first one may be scary, but once you settle in and get a feel for the thing, you'll do fine as long as the music is good! At least you have several chances to do it. Practice makes perfect.

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 12:21 pm

Wow!!

If I understand your setup, you don't actually have 10 tracks to record on, you only have 8 with the addition of 2 extra channels of pre.

Also, based on the line art diagram, I believe you're saying they will be set up completely opposing eachother - or choir 1 and orchestra 1 together with choir 2 and orchestra 2 together but there is some kind of physical seperation in the middle...this could be trouble with only 8 channels...

If this is the case, I would do A/B over both orchestras, spots on the choruses, vocal soloist mics, wind spots and hall mics.

All told, I would have a hard time keeping it less than 16 tracks. (I just did Mozart's Requiem with only 1 chorus and 1 orchestra and I ate up 12 tracks!)

Given your list of gear, I would go -

Orch/Chorus A - Gefell M930 in ORTF
Orch/Chorus B - Gefell M300 in ORTF
Soloist mic(s) - AKG C426b in X/Y or Blumlein (depending upon the setup of the soloist spot - you'll need at least 2 mics though for soloists - hence the stereo mic)
Hall mics - Schoeps CMC62s
Judiciously spaced spot mic - U87s

In any case - good luck. This will be a hell of a gig.

One piece of advice with the orchestra mics - you're going to want to get close enough to the group as to not get a wash of reverb, yet high enough above the group that you have good line of sight to the back row of vocalists. This will be a VERY deep sounding recording - perhaps even a tad un-natural, but given the max track count, you might have to accept a small compromise.

J

Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 9:38 pm

Hmmmm.... I must've missed the line diagram. If it's all a split situation, with dual orchs & choirs, all bets are off. Thumbs Up

Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:28 am

Thanks all..

Im actually borrowing a Deva V for the run so Ill have 10 tracks.

Im going today to a rehearsal to get a feel for it. Scary, but will be a damn good learning experience!

Teddy

Posted: Fri Apr 07, 2006 12:23 pm

Sure I cannot really add anything to the recording part. Just a few associations though. Probably nothing new, but might just add something.

- if you run several recorders, they should be synched. Preferrably using word clock. Select the most stable of you units and set that as master. Connect from word-clock out to T-connectors on Word-clock in on the other units. Finally, add a termination resistor on the last unit. You might synch using other sources, AES is possible, but WC is the preferred solution.

- consider what will happen if you loose external power for a short while (maybe someone tripping over the cable). The Sound Devices units (and the Deva) can run quite a while on their batteries, but the preamp will stop passing signal. And as the SD preamps are decent (I run a 722 myself), not up with the DAV though (I have a BG2 as well), but just maybe one stereo pair could be run straight in as a "safety" in case of lost power.

- stands, the higher the merrier is my experience in churches with choirs. Guess you already have them, but they are nice to have.

Last, but not least, good luck. I´m sort of envious of the music you will hear and the experience you will gain.

Gunnar

Posted: Sat Apr 08, 2006 6:12 pm

Yeah, Im going with the Deva and for safety, outputting the 426/schoeps/DAV and mytek source to the 744t. I really like the Deva a lot....havent gotten a gear woody from one piece of equipment like this since I heard the DAV. Time to reallocate some funds. (namely, ask my wife:P ) I thought there would be a massive learning curve with the Machine, but not at all!Thanks for the help, Gunnar et al

Teddy

ghellquist wrote:

Sure I cannot really add anything to the recording part. Just a few associations though. Probably nothing new, but might just add something.

- if you run several recorders, they should be synched. Preferrably using word clock. Select the most stable of you units and set that as master. Connect from word-clock out to T-connectors on Word-clock in on the other units. Finally, add a termination resistor on the last unit. You might synch using other sources, AES is possible, but WC is the preferred solution.

- consider what will happen if you loose external power for a short while (maybe someone tripping over the cable). The Sound Devices units (and the Deva) can run quite a while on their batteries, but the preamp will stop passing signal. And as the SD preamps are decent (I run a 722 myself), not up with the DAV though (I have a BG2 as well), but just maybe one stereo pair could be run straight in as a "safety" in case of lost power.

- stands, the higher the merrier is my experience in churches with choirs. Guess you already have them, but they are nice to have.

Last, but not least, good luck. I´m sort of envious of the music you will hear and the experience you will gain.

Gunnar

Posted: Thu Apr 13, 2006 8:02 am

heres the 426b(blumlein)>>>DAV BG-1>>>Mytek source(one clip anyway, the piece is 3 hours long) only thing I did was open in Sequoia and resample/dither.

http://s60.yousendit.com/d.aspx?id=02BMSGBNRW7WI0XWKCQMW3WH7W

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