orchestra

Cubase 11. Kontakt 6.

Orientation: I am in the process of building a very large, mostly orchestral template in Cubase 11 with Kontakt 6, Halions, EW PLAY, Spectrasonics GUIs and more. for use is a large scale project. The Template has about a thousand tracks and will be used to pull ready made presets for largely (but not exclusively), orchestral projects, that will be part of gthe same production and require similar levels. Live in theaters in London. I am not composing with the intent to go to a live orchestra the tracks will be the end result.

In this lockdown there's loads of material on YouTube with brass bands, choirs, orchestra etc all singing at home and then it sounds and looks so simple.

I got asked - as a freebie of course, to do one for an amateur choir - you know the thing, really nice people but the prospect of using technology at home on their own daunting.

Clearly, my explanations were not working in text - so I did a video explaining what they had to do, and what I needed - which does seem to have worked.

Been working with the built in Studio Strings and oboe for an arrangement of Gabriel's Oboe (from the motion picture The Mission).

I've got it the best I can, so now I need brutal critique from anyone who knows more about mixing and orchestral arrangements than me (so, almost anyone).

Grammy-winning Classical Engineer Robert Friedrich gives us an in-depth look at the recording techniques used when recording "The Carnival Of The Animals" with the San Diego Symphony Orchestra. Friedrich relied heavily on ribbon microphones to achieve the desired sound quality.

This is an interesting set of interactive demonstrations showing the effect of microphone positioning relative to a performer. All the extracts are recorded using DPA4006A omni microphones in A-B configuration in a good acoustic.

We've been working on these over the past week - piano music, extended into orchestral stuff. Still not happy with some of the sounds - but cannot decide on what to get at the mo - but I thought I'd share these. Makes a big change from the usual rock and pop stuff. It's OK for you to hate it, these are quite pleasant ones compared to some of the styles we're working on.

Front of House Engineer Jimbo Neal takes us behind the scenes with the Brian Setzer Orchestra, showing how he uses Royer and Mojave Audio microphones to get Brian's live sounds.



To add more choices, here is a look at Mojave and Royer mics. They are a bit higher priced mics but you can always find second hand deals too.

I found this article - really interesting stuff, on Decca Trees and other stereo techniques

http://www.polymathperspective.com/?p=2484

Some of the orchestras I've seen have engineers using various types of mics hanging from the ceiling and I've been wondering which ones the tiny ones are in this video from Symphony Hall,Boston. From what I've seen they generally use maybe a half dozen hanging across at the front of the stage, what appear to be "full size" small-diaphragm, omnis maybe. But over different sections of the orchestra they use small-diaphragm mics that look like they're no more than 2" or so.
In this video you can see a good array of them at :20 and closer detail of the tiny ones at :35

I am planning on recording a school orchestra recital and need some help deciding on a microphone setup. I've done live sound for decades, but have done practically nothing relating to orchestral recordings. I also have a limited selection of microphones to choose from. The end result will be a stereo audio track to mix with video from multiple cameras for a concert/recital video.