Choral
Music: Choir Recording Tips
Making
a succesful choir recording depends on all the factors outlined
on our mobile recording
pages but I have included a number of choir recordings on
this page made by choirs of different types and different
abilities in very different venues to give you more ideas
on how your sound will be shaped by your choice of venue.To
hear any of the particular choirs just click on the red text
and an mp3 file will play in your windows media player or
default media player. These files are still quite large and
you really need a broadband connection to play them properly.
First
up is the Louth
Male Voice Choir and
this is a large well established male voice choir based in
Louth, Lincolnshire. The recording was made in the west end
of St James' church which is a large medieval church with
a big natural ambience (or reverb time as we sound engineers
will have it.)
I have made many mobile recordings in old medieval churches
over the years and while they are great in that they are often
the largest and least expensive venue you can get they do
have a number of things to look out for. The first is the
natural reverb of the church. Whenever I walk into a venue
for the first time I always check out the natural reverb by
making a single loud clap and listening and counting for the
reverb to die away. Most old churches have a nice smooth reverb
between 2 and 3 seconds but some large churches, Minsters
and Cathedrals can have huge reverbs that can be a real problem.
Some also have strange flutter echoes because of their layout
where the sound bounces back directly off a wall making a
repeat. Other things to remember are that in winter churches
can be very cold places and often have very little light on
a decembers afternoon.With the Louth Male Voice Choir I was
able to get the sound simply by careful postion of the Soundfield
microphone to get the right balance between the choir and
the ambience of the church...Black
Umfolosi 5..are a fantastic acapella
5 piece from Zimbabwe and this recording was made by Reelsound
in Beverley Minster where they were playing at the Folk festival.
Beverley Minster is a huge space with a massive reverb and
from experience difficult to get a good recording. With that
in mind I recorded the choir with the Soundfield about 20
feet infront of the staging and put a small dynamic mic (
Shure 58) infrontof each singer to give me the detail. Back
in the studio I panned the singers 5 mics across the stereo
image and added the soundfield mic to give the sense of space.
The
Maureen Hunter Singers are a very
fine ladies choir and this particular recording was made in
a small methodist chapel hall. The Soundfield mic was positioned
high up about 20 feet in front of the choir but to give the
sense of space for this particular piece I added a lot of
reverb with a long pre delay. I have to include a choir recorded
in a school hall and The
Gentlemen Songsters Male Voice Choir
were recorded in just such a hall at a school in Dudley, west
Birmingham. With these kind of recordings getting a good balance
with the piano accompaniment is a really important consideration.
Choirs, naturally are used to rehearsing and performing alongside
the piano but for recording I often try and move the piano
away from the choir and record it on its own tracks so that
I have more control at the mixdown back in the studio. This
usually works OK but the choir do need to be able to hear
the piano well enough to pitch to or there will be problems.
School halls tend to sound a little "boxy" and accentuate
the lower mid frequencies and this was very true of this recording
so along with the added reverb I have EQed the final mix to
take out frequencies between 550hz and 1k hz. If you are attempting
this yourself be careful and continually check back to the
original sound. Also remember when you are listening to these
recordings Reelsound has a suite of the absolute best EQ and
Reverb simulations available today. Live recordings have their
own set of problems as apart from the coughing and shuffling
of the audience, putting the microphones in the right place
can be a problem as it might spoil the view of the concert.
Ronan Collett, baritone and Mark Padmore
tenor were accompanied by Riger Vignoles on the piano for
a recital of music celebrating the 200 year anniversary of
the Battle of Trafalgar in one of the rooms at Minterne House
in Minterne Magna in Dorset. A live, evening recital, consideration
had to be taken about the microphone placement and the Soundfield
mic was suspended across the back of the Hall and a number
of discrete small condensor mics were positioned infront of
the stage and around the piano. Finally I have added this
piece from The Minster
Song School in York Minster to give an example
of a recording made with just a pair of quality omni microphones.The
Hebden Sound 3010 omni mics are a recent addition
to our microphone collection but are rapidly becoming firm
favourites for choral recording.These mics can give a really
open, natural sound when positioned correctly and this recording
is exactly what you get with a pair of nicely made small diaphram
omni mics.
If
you are in a choir and have made recordings listen to these
clips and particularly notice the balance between the choir
and accompaniment and hear the ambient treatments that have
been applied to create the right sense of space for each piece.
The
Merlin Consort was
quite a different proposition in that the 8 piece had decided
to make a video CD recording with the beautiful French nineteenth
century Erard piano in Sewerby Hall near Bridlington. The
room with the piano was infact very small and I moved the
choir to an adjoining room with the door open so that they
could see and hear the pianist. The choir was recorded in
stereo on the Soundfield mic and the piano on a separate track
with a pair of Neumann TLM 103 condensor mics. Back in the
studio I added reverb and balanced up the tracks to give the
impression of a larger space.The
video was shot in the splendid georgian room next to the Orangery
and edited back in the studio. Video CDs are a relatively
new idea and the CD plays normally in any CD player but if
you put the disc in a PC running Windows it will open up a
special partition and play the video. Its a great momento
for a choir and Reelsound has produced a number of these over
the last year.For more details just contact us.
.Neil
Dunn Operatic Tenor ....
Becky
Bales Soprano ... . Quadrangle
... Dublin
Gospel Choir (Live)
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