With experimental music, can you be a little more specific about the goals of the recording? Are you trying to document a live event, or create some kind of 'artistic' result?

Michael

I'm unfamilliar with the MOTUs, but given You can multi channel, I set Your AT4051 sligtly behind and above the conductor (pseudo ORTF), the NT-5's as a stereo spot pair on the quintet, the U195 on the vocalist, take a line or few from the computer/electronics position. The KM184/KSM44 on the guitars, a pair of PZMs infron the basses, and I'd rent/loan a pair of KM184/140 for drum overhead, given its a drumkit, a PZM for the basedrum will work fine... I'd possibly also set a couple of PZM's on the surrounding walls for ambience/effects/suround..

/ptr

Two thoughts...

1) With experimental music of this type, I am assuming it is also of a contemporary nature. If so, that means we can probably take off our acoustic purity hats and consider close miking and multitracking. I find a lot of contemporary music actually benefits from less 'ensemble' and more up close detail. Sometimes the more intense sound suits it better and/or the composer prefers it that way.

2) If the internal balance of the ensemble is half decent, you could consider putting two Crown PZMs on two sheets of perspex (plexiglass in the US?), about 60cm x 60cm each, and suspend them across and above the front of the stage. Experiment with the spacing between them for the best image, and their angle relative to the stage floor for the best coverage and direct/reverberant ratio. This might give you a good pickup of the instruments, but the PZM's polar response is 180 degrees (it's like an omni cut in half), so you'll cut out a lot of that potentially bothersome room noise you're worried about and most of the direct audience noise, too. If you use clear perspex it might be invisible to the audience under show lighting conditions (depending on where the lighting is comig from relative to the PZM positions). The sound from the PZM array will probably be quite dry and direct, which might suit the music, or you can add some impulse convolution reverb and no-one will be any wiser (heck, there's a computer on the stage, it's not as if the composer is thinking about natural purity here!). Then you might choose to spot mic whatever needs it with the most appropriate microphone you've got for the job.

Anyway, just throwing some ideas around based on the tools you've got...

Because your music is experimental, I would mic each section separately and roll multitrack. If possible, I would also set up a stereo pair behind the conductor, for the overall pick up.

You don't need studio condenser Mike's for this application. In fact you may find that SM57 are better for this application?

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