Last week, acting audio program director Mark Willsher (music producer for Lord of the Rings) picked me to engineer the recording of the Banff Festival Orshestra concert. Recording an entire orchestra properly is quite an undertaking, and luckily, I've had significant orchestral recording experience with the Ball State Symphony Orchestra. Even more luckily, I had a great team with me: Mark, my general advisor, Nathan, my tech expert, James, my digital multitrack operator, Tobias, the producer, Iskra, my cable wrangler, and Laura and Stephane, my general and indispensible assistants. Step one: come up with a plan. Armed with a stage plot, I carefully selected the best mics and mic placements for the job. In the end, I had 24 of them. I ran my plan by Mark, and I was very pleaseed when he didn't change much, aside from urging me to add a few extra string mics just in case. They actually proved to be quite useful. Surprise, surprise.
Step two: Assemble and test entire rig. While Tobias, Nathan and James assembled the oddly complicated digital multitrack and backup system, Iskra, Larua and I put up every single microphone that we planned to use. In an orchestral recording session, the cost can sometimes be as high as $1,000 a minute, so you simply cannot afford for things not to work. While our ocnesquences were not so dire, we did want to make the best recording possible. Surprises were therefore not welcome at all.
Step three: Move in. With two giant racks, one with a console on top, and a coatrack willed with mics, stands and cables, we headed down the long handicap ramp to the loading dock. That was tough, though we were ready to move in the second the doors opened. We had two hours to set everything up before the conductor arrived for rehearsal and soundcheck. We finished exactly in time.p
Step four: get sound. The players came in, sat down, and started to play, and the mics, in their original planned positions, sounded amazing. We were all very happy, and from this very good starting point, we started to make our refinements. I was very excited at the prospect of adding this fantastic recording of these fantastic players to my portfolio.
Snag #1: piece of shit piano. Oh my God. I have never heard such a ridiculous, ajngly, metalic piece of shit Steinway D that the one that lived in the Eric Harvey Theatre. Luckily, I had been told by several people that is was "a bit thin" so I was prepared with a warm, dark set of mics for it. I did the best that I could, tweaking it an uncommon ten or so times. Mark grabbed a pair of hearphones, gave it a quick listen, and was like, "That sounds like shit!" I was like, "I know!" He suggested that I try another pair of mics, and I told him that I doubted that it would be a step in the right direction. He insisted, so I did. He gave it a listen, said, "That sounds like shit!", and he went out to place the mics himself. He gave that a listen, and was like "What the fuck is this instrument?!?" He then told me to go back to what I had. I did.
Snag #2. last minute staging change. Erich Harvey Theatre is a very dull, very dry theatre that from the audiences perspective pretty much sucks the life out of an acoustic ensemble. Maestro Shambadal recognized this, and decided to move everything seven feet forward in order to gain some reflected sound from the proscenium above. OK, fine. Oh shit, wait a minute... my main mics are already at the edge of the stage, and I'm not allowed to put them in the aisle! There goes my perfect recording. I was shocked and dejected, but slowly realized that I still had a job to do. We did the best we could, and I think we can make a very nics mix, but it's still a great shame.
Tobias had been following the scores during the concert, taking notes when problems occured, so after the show was ovefr, the orchestra stuck around and we recorded a few patches to edit in to the live recording. Let this be a lesson to you non music biz folks... 'live' doesn't always mean that the music has not been edited. This is a fairly common practice.
I'll post audio as soon as I have it. Meanwhile, please click the title and enjoy the pics.
